According to the NRA, we don’t need gun safety laws because
criminals will not obey these laws. The NRA’s argument is that law-abiding
citizens would be the only ones affected, and they would be inconvenienced by
new gun safety laws.
According to a Florida jury, George Zimmerman is a
law-abiding citizen. So by the NRA’s logic, his behavior would not change one
iota if there were more stringent gun safety regulations in Florida.
Balderdash.
Suppose Florida had a law requiring law-abiding gun owners
to carry liability insurance, just as most states require automobile owners and
home owners to carry liability insurance.
Since insurance is sold on the open market by private companies, the
cost of this insurance would be market-driven and risk-based.
I don’t know whether Zimmerman would have had trouble
getting liability insurance before he murdered Trayvon Martin. If that were the
case, and Zimmerman had gone out on his vigilante patrol without the required
insurance, he could have been convicted and sentenced on those charges,
regardless of how the altercation had played out. On the other hand, if
Zimmerman was a law-abiding citizen and could not afford the insurance and
consequently was not carrying a gun, Trayvon Martin would be alive today.
It puzzles me why liability insurance has not been a big
part of the gun safety debate. If gun dealers and gun owners required proof of
insurance at every sale, like auto dealers do today, we would not eliminate gun
violence but we could reduce it and have more convictions of murderers.
Even if you accept the preposterous assertion that Trayvon
Martin started the altercation, and given Zimmerman’s verdict of “not guilty”,
it’s clearly demonstrated that Zimmerman has a propensity to get into trouble
with guns. A market-driven insurance mandate would today raise his rates, just
as if I were in an auto accident that was the other guy’s fault, my rates would
go up. The insurance company’s logic is that I would have a propensity for
accidents. If there were laws mandating gun liability insurance, today Zimmerman would be
required to pay a substantially higher premium before the Florida police return
his gun to him (which they did today.) Seems like a good idea.
Do you not care that an insurance requirement would prohibit poor people from being able to exercise their constitutional right?
ReplyDeleteYour rates do not go up if you are in an accident that is the other guy's fault. It is called liability insurance. Look up the word liability.
ReplyDeleteOh dear me, gun lovers and gun worshippers must not be inconvenienced in any way, not by one iota. The 2nd amendment trumps everything. Owning a gun is the be-all of life itself. Guns don't kill people, only law abiding people obey the laws, so there's no reason to have any new laws, blah, blah, blah. More people are killed by swimming pools, you know, all those swimming pool massacres committed by insane people. The jackassery over guns in this country is astounding, the jackassery of the NRA and their defenders, that is.
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