In the last few days, there’s been a new proposal popping up all over the internet: force gun owners to buy insurance for their guns, to prove they are responsibe, and this would be liability insurance. It has been picking up endorsements from New York University economist Nouriel Roubini, The Economist, and Robert Cyran and Reynolds Holding at Reuters Breaking Views, among others.
The crazy far left idea is that insurance would make gun ownership more expensive and a hassle, which would discourage some people from buying weapons, or at least from acquiring huge arsenals. But it would make gun ownership particularly expensive for those who are most likely to get caught up in some sort of violence. This would mean that hunters with spotless criminal history would get a great rate — the Economist notes that National Rifle Association members can already buy $100,000 worth of gun liability coverage for as low as $165.
A jobless 19-year-old male with a disorderly conduct arrest on their record, on the other hand, would have to pay a whole lot more than they could afford. Hmm, that is discrimination there.
But it gets even better as Forbes contributor John Wasik argues that the idea should be taken a step further, by making gun owners liable for any accidents or violent crimes committed with a weapon they own, even if they weren’t directly involved.
The liberal whackos never give up, do they?
What this means is that if you don’t keep your gun under lock and key, and somebody gets a hold of it and commits a crime, you’d be on the hook. So dummy up liberals, this won’t cure anything…..how are you going to force a criminal, who most often obtains a gun illegally to pay for gun insurance?
But at the very least, it might help rectify a serious market failure, which is that the costs of firearms ownership are born by society more than actual gun owners. This is a banner year for guns and ammo sales, which is expected to profit over $11 billion. And this you can blame on the crazy ideas of Democrats and Obama, and their plan to disarm, (yes disarm) the American people, and break the Second Amendment.
Forcing gun owners to cover some of that price via insurance — or at least making them compensate victims — would help restore balance to the market, according to liberal thinking. How about making stiffer penalties instead, for criminals?
And the biggest question of all is if this is Constitutional….but we know Obama and his cronies care nothing for that great document, which gives us our rights, as he is slowly taking them away.
The Supreme Court could easily conclude that making it prohibitively expensive to own a gun amounts to infringing on the second amendment. The question, then, is where you draw the line. Is requiring any insurance an excessive burden? Or can the government attach a certain, reasonable price to exercising a constitutional right? And if so, how much is too much?
Cyran and Holding suggest that “tying the price of coverage to the cost of gun incidents” might help an insurance requirement pass constitutional muster, by proving that the government had a legally relevant “compelling interest” in the issue.
GunRightsAttorneys
/ 12/29/2012Should candy makers be responsible to pay for root canals?
Figgy
/ 12/29/2012Here’s an idea that makes at least as much sense. People who refuse to own a firearm to protect their life and property should be forced to buy liability insurance . They are actually adding an extra burden to gun owner’s who might feel the need to risk their own well being or life to protect an innocent neighbor. So who’s going to be liable if the gun owner gets killed or injured protecting them? Who’s going to be liable for taking care of the gun owner’s family and reimburse their loss of income in the same cases. Probably not the ignorant people they were trying to protect. If I am legally carrying a weapon and come on a violent crime should I just say ” Oh well, it’s their problem, they could have bought their own gun so I think I’ll just mosey on down the street and let them deal with it!”
hobbit55z
/ 12/29/2012My guess is that regardless of who’s putting that proposal forward, there’s insurance companies behind them pushing it.
hobbit55z
/ 12/29/2012Besides that, most homeowner and renters policies already provide liability coverage so this would only be requiring those who have insurance to buy more insurance just to cover one specific form of liability. Yep, definitely something the insurance companies would love to see happen.
Janet
/ 12/30/2012Now this is what Obama is really up to should Lady Feinstein get her legislation passed:
Around 5.5 million firearms are legally owned by 1.4 million Germans, according to new Interior Ministry figures released on Friday ahead of the creation of a national gun register on January 1.
The figure is at the bottom end of previous estimates, which had previously put the number of privately-owned guns at between five and ten million.
The new national gun register bundles together the data from some 551 local authorities, which were previously not interconnected. Some still had not even digitized their records, and still kept weapons ownership information on index cards.
According to the Interior Ministry, this will be the first time that reliable information on the legally-owned guns will be available to the police and other security authorities. A spokesman said the initiative would make an important contribution to public safety.
With the move, Germany is conforming to a European Union directive which obliges all member states to set up a weapons register by the end of 2014. But calls for centralized, easily accessible information were intensified after the 2009 school shooting in Winnenden, southwestern Germany, where 16 people were killed, including the 17-year-old perpetrator.
This all comes from the gun do gooders and having one governing body telling you what to do.
thelocal.de
sgs
/ 01/11/2013Gun insurance should be required. This will get the ball rolling in the right direction. It’s the same principle that applies for auto insurance. A person can be killed with a vehicle, or likewise, a vehicle can be stolen and used illegally. It’s still the same principle (let the insurance companies figure it out). Then parents who are negligent in letting their children have access to guns are held accountable for the safekeeping of the guns (just like the keys to the car). There will always be the con artist that will get insurance for a gun and then let it lapse, but at that point maybe the insurance can make a list available to local authorities re: the lapsers, and if the insurance isn’t reinstated, then, I don’t know, maybe have the guns go to the gun pound and held till insurance is reinstated. There are numerous ways to go about this.
Figgy: I would call 911 if I came upon a violent crime.
Gun Rights Attorney: There’s already a solution for that, it’s called dental insurance.
Janet
/ 01/11/2013Oh come off here. Insurance for guns? There’s already insurance for that, for those who wish it. Since when do we allow government to dictate that too? Just because one is a gun owner doesn’t make them crazed killers like the left is trying imply. I grew up around guns, and if parents are smart enough they teach their kids not to touch. I didn’t become a mass killer. It’s an insult to law abiding citizens to even suggest that. What will the far left demand next, insurance for knives or baseball bats? Fact: No criminal is going to buy “gun” insurance. The goal of the progressives and Obama has been the same for a long time: Destroy the Second Amendment, disarm law abiding citizens and have them at the mercy of a tyrannical government. Furthermore, a criminal isn’t going to wait to commit bodily harm until you dial 911.
hobbit55z
/ 01/11/2013Homeowner and renter insurance covers liability. Those that have it, are already covered. Those who don’t, doesn’t matter. No gun insurance is going to cover criminal acts by the owner or someone else. If a criminal steals a gun, the insurance will pay the owner for the loss of the gun, but not any damage done by the criminal as the owner is not liable. If the owner kills someone and is convicted, any insurance policy would exclude payment of liability for the result.
No insurance company is going to offer the type of coverage people are talking about without charging a fortune. They can’t afford to.
Figgy
/ 01/11/2013sgs. I sure hope there is someone around ready to take more direct action if I’m ever in trouble. I hope it never happens to you but…say you are in line waiting for your burger and someone comes through the door shooting? Are you going to hope 911 gets called and they get there before you get shot or are you going to hope there is a legally carrying individual that takes them out post haste? Post haste, I’ll bet.
magicbullet
/ 02/06/2013Hey, sgs, I have a great idea. The fed could require all ammunition to have the same charachteristics as the “magic bullet” that killed Kennedy. That way the bullet could be made to pause while 911 is called and the proper authorities arrive. Really, though, for a free state, all laws and officers can only be reactive. When laws and law enforcement become pro-active, the freedoms of the right and just are infringed. Freedom comes at a cost, the cost of being responsible for self. You can’t run to big brother everytime someone farts crooked. And as far as the safety of the people, we could take that tack until there is a padded room for one and all, or we could put an officer on every corner, wait, isn’t that a police state?