A Bad Idea Whose Time Will Never Come
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes, of Como Park, emails:
Gun control proposals never die, they just rest a while. Mandatory insurance has staggered back to life.
The notion is that guns cause injuries which require medical attention which the public must pay for; therefore, gun owners should have insurance policies to pay the cost of treating those injuries. It’s like car insurance, see?
Of course, unlike car insurance, the real hope is that such insurance would be so expensive, nobody would buy guns and if nobody has a gun, gun violence ends.
Two things:
First, unlike driving, gun ownership is a Fundamental Right protected by the Constitution. We don’t require journalists to buy insurance in case an inaccurate, misleading article ruins someone’s life. On the contrary, under the New York Times v. Sullivan standard, the more likely the harm, the harder we make it for victims to recover. Remedies for problems caused by privileges don’t apply to problems caused by rights.
Second, I am forced to buy uninsured motorist coverage to subsidize law-breakers who drive without insurance. I am forced to buy Obama-care compliant health insurance to subsidize scoff-laws who lack health insurance. Neither of those schemes eliminated the uninsured, they simply shifted the cost to me. Similarly, forcing gun purchasers to subsidize criminals using guns to commit violence won’t eliminate gun violence.
It’s wrong and it won’t work. So naturally, Democrats are all over it.
Joe Doakes
Voluntary gun insurance, driven by the free market, makes sense.
Mandatory gun insirance is nothing but back door gun control.
The left must be counting on the idea that Second Amendment advocates turn over every couple of years, so all of these ideas sound new.
September 2nd, 2015 at 9:10 am
“Of course, unlike car insurance, the real hope is that such insurance would be so expensive, nobody would buy guns and if nobody has a gun, gun violence ends. “
gun control pimps, like DG, who vigorously flog the idea of gun insurance dont want to eliminate all guns, just guns in the hands of the wrong sorts (i.e. Clarence Thomas with a CC permit). In her idealized presentation well educated (Harvared, Yale, and oddly even St Olaf), properly trained and licensed, successful (rich) elites would not only be able to afford the insurance but would know how to use them wisely to protect the progressive utopia she envisions for us all.
The insurance scam is all about using the market to confiscate guns because there would be severe penalties for possessing an uninsured gun.
September 2nd, 2015 at 9:28 am
Won’t this equivalent to a poll tax? A way to keep the poor from their constitutional rights?
September 2nd, 2015 at 9:33 am
chuck, yes this is exactly equivalent to a poll tax.
September 2nd, 2015 at 10:27 am
“Neither of those schemes eliminated the uninsured, they simply shifted the cost to me.” It’s worse than that, I should have said:
Neither of those schemes eliminated the uninsured, they simply shifted the burden of bearing the cost from the larger group of “all taxpayers” to the smaller groups of “law-abiding motorists” and “law-abiding insureds,” which is regressive and therefore contrary to good public policy.
September 2nd, 2015 at 10:52 am
If the cost of such insurance was calculated by actuaries, rather than by politicians, it’d be so low that we’d need to bring back fractional cent currency.
September 2nd, 2015 at 3:53 pm
We don’t need insurance, we just need “Active Shooter Training” because this?
http://mn.gov/mnsafe/
Thanks, HR.