Continuing the discussion from Tearful Obama calls for 'sense of urgency' to fight gun violence in America:
What would such insurance cover? Be specific.
How would it be constitutional for Congress to pass a law requiring citizens to buy insurance before exercising an enumerated Constitutionally protected right? USSC declared that poll taxes violate the " Equal Protection Clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment, presumably mandatory insurance would face the same issues as a poll tax.
I dunno. Probably the most deadly weapons.
Possibly. On the other hand Citizens United held that those with more $$ get to supersize their 1st amendment rights. Perhaps sixguns, breakaway shotguns, and bolt-actions would need to be exempt from carrying insurance, just as the framers intended. But if you want to Super-Pack Heat, you’ve got to pay to play. We’ll just call it a tax and not a mandate.
I am neither for nor against firearms, but my main problem with insurance is that I don’t believe in “ownership”. Having property is simply not efficient use or distribution of resources. So, I prefer a pool of community resources. This includes firearms. My municipality has lots of weapons, but they hide them away and are reluctant to answer questions about them. The town considers them government property - not public property. What I am aiming for is to get rid of the notion of “government property”, and have most things be public property. Why “own” a car or kitchen that I use for only a couple of hours per day? Extrapolating from there, how often do I actually need a gun? Seldom, if ever? So it makes more sense to have a public arsenal just in case anybody needs it.
Needs it for what?
I’m not seeing a use case for a gun library outside of Red Dawn.
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[quote=“ACE, post:1, topic:71614”]
What would such insurance cover? Be specific.[/quote]
I dunno. Probably the most deadly weapons. [/quote]
How would that work?
Insurance policies pay out for accidents, you cannot obtain insurance against suicide or an intentional act. Considering that the rate of accidental shootings in the USA is extremely low and dropping, an insurance policy with that sort of coverage would cost pennies per gun per year, while ladders should require insurance coverage at about a 40x higher rate.
You are citing unintentional fatalities. Can we also not quantify the risk for intentional fatalities, and non-fatality harm whether intentional or non-?
That’s cool, but in the current US context it’s also going nowhere, man. Based on the President’s cue, just trying to focus on actionable and meaningful steps in the right direction.
I guess we’d need to ask them. My municipality budgeted for weapons, and keep a stockpile of them somewhere. They didn’t tell me why they buy them.
I am not sure what Red Dawn has to do with anything. But I am not convinced that either you or I would need a use in order for such a supply to exist. Presumably, not each person is going to need each item the town has.
By defining a ‘public arsenal’ that doesn’t belong to anyone in particular, you have in effect drawn a circle around a public tribe that has access to that resource. Since the definition of a firearm is to enforce access to resources.
So while you may posit that an individual may not have property rights, you clearly believe a collection of individuals do. That collection may be fluid, but it does exist.
Therefore, why not agree that people–the smallest unit in a collection–can own things and lend them as they please?
Back to mandatory insurance–if you believe in life liberty, the pursuit of happiness, math, and actuarial tables, I think it becomes pretty clear why we should have certain kinds of mandatory insurance.
[quote=“funruly, post:6, topic:71614, full:true”]
You are citing unintentional fatalities. Can we also not quantify the risk for intentional fatalities, and non-fatality harm whether intentional or non-?[/quote]
Non-fatal firearms accident rates are also low, and (assuming no criminal negligence is found) homeowners are covered for liability claims related to gun accidents under their existing homeowners insurance policies. If gun injury were a problem, insurers would be asking about firearms like they ask about owning a rottweiler.
Additional coverage for unintentional acts involving firearms is extremely cheap. The NRA will sell you a $1 million dollar policy for $200 per person (not per gun, per covered policyholder).
No insurer will underwrite a policy with coverage paying out in the case of intentional acts, including the policyholder’s own criminal actions.
So you wouldn’t have a problem with requiring registration of all internet accounts and requiring mandatory libel+slander insurance coverage before anybody can publish, including posting on internet forums?
How about mandatory malpractice insurance for all religions?
Well, I didn’t draw it. The tribe of this municipality and their arsenal already existed, prior to my arrival here. I am more noting and interpreting these relationships, rather than creating or defining them myself here.
No, I don’t believe in property rights. I think it is mostly wishful thinking. Having a “right” to a special relationship with objects seems kind of delusional. Unless your property knows that you own it, it is only a one-sided circle-jerk amongst people with no direct relationship to the world at large. (And if your property does know that you own it, that would be slavery)
But, as a system for managing resources, it can be a useful framework.
Because, as I mentioned above, it’s a horribly inefficient way to manage or distribute resources. Individual ownership greatly increases the consumption of raw materials, and the collective costs of ownership of things which most people are not using most of the time. Things should move freely between people, not unlike the spread spectrum and frequency hopping of mobile phone networks. The framework just helps traffic go where it needs to, with the existing resources.
I am not convinced of the value/utility/benefit of most kinds of insurance. Which is complicated greatly by many proposals of it being tied to the concept of ownership.
Hey look, companies that use automated dialing services are encouraged to seek special liability insurance to cover for the FCC cracking down on TCPA violations.
I can draw some parallels between a machine-dialer and a machine-gunner if you need. But you seem to be staking out a zero-tolerance position for any type of insurance tax for even a subset of firearm types. If you are complacent with the status-quo, please make it known. I want progress, not stasis, so I don’t want to waste your time.
“DIE! Right now. Do it. Be dead.”
Are you dead?
I don’t think so. Therefore using my 1st amendment rights to their fullest extent doesn’t actually harm you. I could, possibly, doxx you or something, if I knew who you were, etc. But that still isn’t killing you. It’d be what other people physically did to you.
Exercising my 2nd amendment rights against you can make you dead in less than 1/100th of a second. They’re not the same thing.
On this front, I’d really like for religions to be treated the same as everyone else, and be taxed. As it stands they’re given special treatment for no reason I know of. Individuals shouldn’t be taxed for participating of course, but if you have a church, I see no reason it shouldn’t be taxed. If it wants non-profit status it needs to do ALL the paperwork and accounting of any 501C3, prove its benefit to the rest of us, and be open to auditing. Just like all the inclusive and non-politically-active tax exempt orgs. Like Doctors Without Borders and such.
There’s a huge difference between insurance being available and it being mandatory. The NRA is one of several groups who make insurance available to gun owners, at a very affordable price.
The first amendment stakes out a zero-tolerance policy for prior restraint on individual non-commercial communication, even in mediums never envisioned by the founding fathers. For example, the machine-dialing discussion you link draws a line around commercial speech, and does not suggest insurance coverage be mandatory.
I’m not opposed to firearms insurance as a concept, though I suspect the constitution does not support making such insurance mandatory. Progress shouldn’t be achieved by pushing through an unconstitutional mandate and then waiting for the courts to rule on it.
Generally the proponents of “mandatory firearms insurance” aren’t looking to actually allocate the true costs of legal firearms ownership in an equitable and non-punitive fashion so individual gun owners can have liability coverage to repay any actual cost of their gun ownership to society as a whole (like malpractice insurance), but rather approach the concept at best as a backhanded way to discourage ownership (as in House Democrat Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s bill requiring proof of insurance to purchase any firearm, and a $10,000 fine for failure to comply), and at worst as a sort of “sin tax” or even a means to build registries of firearms and firearms owners and implement confiscation through market forces.
The latter is what I oppose.
So, out of your cold dead hands then? Gotcha.
That answer your question @funruly?
That was a sticking point with The Affordable Care Act too, but Justice Roberts said a penalty for not obeying an insurance mandate could be interpreted as a tax.
Correct – the penalty is a tax. The government cannot tax a constitutional right, so a second amendment “tax” would be no more constitutional than a tax on exercising your first amendment rights.
Do you have a source on that? I mean, I’m trying to engage you in good faith on this “poll tax” defense you are mounting by doing my own searching, but all I found so far are NRA talking points about the Seattle law and… a Judge upholding the legality of the Seattle law. So, it seems to be far from settled.
Furthermore, healthcare is a human right, so if we can regulate those then why can’t we regulate some constitutional rights?
Huh?
