Earlier this year, a lawmaker from Illinois caused a ruckus among the NRA crowd when he proposed legislation that would force gun owners to buy a liability insurance.
Is Gun Liability Insurance the Next Big Thing?
Potential insurance mandate has gun owners sweating bullets
State Rep. Kenneth Dunkin proposed amending his state’s Firearm Owners Identification Card Act to require gun owners to buy $1,000,000 in liability coverage.
Here’s a excerpt from the bill (which is currently tabled):
Provides that any person who owns a firearm in this State shall maintain a policy of liability insurance in the amount of at least $1,000,000 specifically covering any damages resulting from negligent or willful acts involving the use of such firearm while it is owned by such person. Provides that a person shall be deemed the owner of a firearm after the firearm is lost or stolen until such loss or theft is reported to the police department or sheriff of the jurisdiction in which the owner resides.
The reaction among gun owners was swift and hostile, their rage fanned by Fox News firebrand Glenn Beck, who saw the proposal, as he seems to see most things, as further evidence of a creeping socialism. The bill, Beck maintains, is simply a sly way to curtail gun ownership by making it prohibitively expensive.
Rep. Dunkin is not the first to float the idea of gun liability insurance. Legal experts and policymakers have considered the idea as a way to compensate innocent victims of gun-related accidents and violence, many of whom are killed or injured by stolen guns. In such cases where the gun was stolen, the original owner is typically not liable unless the weapon was stolen through negligence on the part of the owner.
Writing for NorthJersey.com, Rutgers University law professor Bernard W. Bell proposed applying the legal concept of ‘liability without fault’ to owners of firearms.
“For some dangerous instruments, society imposes liability without fault — that is, the person who keeps or uses the item is liable for injuries to others even if he or she is as careful as can be,” says Bell. “For example, those who own and use explosives in this country are generally liable for all the injuries they cause, regardless of their level of care. Such an approach recognizes that, while the activity may be lawful and to some extent necessary, those who engage in the activity should pay for the carnage the activity almost inevitably produces.”
In such a context, a gun owner would be liable even if a thief stole her gun and shot someone.
“Not only does this mean that those who are injured are more likely to receive some recompense for their injury. It also serves as an incentive to conduct the activity as safely as possible and only when necessary,” says Bell.
In other words, a liability-without-fault law envisioned by Ball would put gun owners on notice: If you must own a gun, be prepared to ‘own’ everything that comes with it.
Monthly Archives: December 2012
Ten Arguments Gun Advocates Make, and Why They’re Wrong
A guide to the debate we’ll be having, or at least we ought to have We’re going to hear this over and over, and not just from gun advocates; Jay Carney said it to White House reporters today. But if we’re not going to talk about it now, when are we going to talk about it? After Sandy hit the East Coast, no one said, “Now isn’t the time to talk about disaster preparedness; best leave that until it doesn’t seem so urgent.” When there’s a terrorist attack, no one says, “Now isn’t the time to talk about terrorism.” Nowl is exactly the time. Maybe, but people with guns kill many, many more people than they would if they didn’t have guns, and guns designed to kill as many people as possible. We don’t know if the murderer in Newtown was suffering from a suicidal depression, but many mass shooters in the past were. And guess what? People suffer from suicidal depression everywhere in the world. People get angry and upset everywhere in the world. But there aren’t mass shootings every few weeks in England or Costa Rica or Japan, and the reason is that people in those places who have these impulses don’t have an easy way to access lethal weapons and unlimited ammunition. But if you want to kill large numbers of people and you happen to be an American, you’ll find it easy to do. If that were true, then how come it never happens? The truth is that in a chaotic situation, even highly trained police officers often kill bystanders. The idea that some accountant who spent a few hours at the range would suddenly turn into Jason Bourne and take out the killer without doing more harm than good has no basis in reality. The people who say this are the same ones who fight to make sure that existing laws are as weak and ineffectual as possible. Our current gun laws are riddled with loopholes and allow people to amass enormous arsenals of military-style weapons with virtually no restrictions. The question isn’t whether we could snap our fingers and make every gun disappear. It’s whether we can make it harder for criminals to get guns, and harder for an unbalanced person with murderous intent to kill so many people. The goal is to reduce violence as much as possible. There’s no other problem for which we’d say if we can’t solve it completely and forever we shouldn’t even try. Yes it does, but for some reason gun advocates think that the right to bear arms is the only constitutional right that is virtually without limit. You have the right to practice your religion, but not if your religion involves human sacrifice. You have the right to free speech, but you can still be prosecuted for incitement or conspiracy, and you can be sued for libel. Every right is subject to limitation when it begins to threaten others, and the Supreme Court has affirmed that even though there is an individual right to gun ownership, the government can put reasonable restrictions on that right. And we all know that if this shooter turns out to have a Muslim name, plenty of Americans, including plenty of gun owners, will be more than happy to give up all kinds of rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Have the government read my email? Have my cell phone company turn over my call records? Check which books I’m taking out of the library? Make me take my shoes off before getting on a plane, just because some idiot tried to blow up his sneakers? Sure, do what you’ve got to do. But don’t make it harder to buy thousands of rounds of ammunition, because if we couldn’t do that we’d no longer be free. If that had anything to do with contemporary life, then mature democracies would be constantly overthrown by despots. But they aren’t. We shouldn’t write laws based on the fantasies of conspiracy theorists. Indeed they are, but so are a lot of things, and that tells us nothing about whether they’re good or bad and how we want to treat them going forward. Slavery was a part of American culture for a couple of hundred years, but eventually we decided it had to go. The truth is that when public opinion polls have asked Americans about specific measures, the public is in favor of a much more restrictive gun regime than we have now. Significant majorities would like to see the assault weapons ban reinstated, mandatory licensing and training for all gun owners, significant waiting periods for purchases, and host of other restrictions (there are more details here). In many cases, gun owners themselves support more restrictions than we currently have. OK, that’s actually an argument gun advocates don’t make. But it’s the truth that lies beneath all their other arguments. All that we suffer because of the proliferation of guns—these horrifying tragedies, the 30,000 Americans who are killed every year with guns—for gun advocates, it’s unfortunate, but it’s a price they’re willing to pay. If only they’d have the guts to say it.
There has been yet another mass shooting, something that now seems to occur on a monthly basis. Every time another tragedy like this occurs, gun advocates make the same arguments about why we can’t possibly do anything to restrict the weaponization of our culture. Here’s a guide to what they’ll be saying in the coming days:
1. Now isn’t the time to talk about guns.
2. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
3. If only everybody around was armed, an ordinary civilian could take out a mass killer before he got too far.
4. We don’t need more laws, we just need to enforce the laws we have.
5. Criminals will always find a way to get guns no matter what measures we take, so what’s the point?
6. The Constitution says I have a right to own guns.
7. Widespread gun ownership is a guarantee against tyranny.
8. Guns are a part of American culture.
9. The American people don’t want more gun control.
10. Having movie theaters and schools full of kids periodically shot up is just a price we should be willing to pay if it means I get to play with guns and pretend I’m Wyatt Earp.
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Here comes Santa Claus, Here comes Santa Claus……
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The Real “Entitlement”
