Posted on 12/26/2012 9:00:28 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
NOURIEL ROUBINI, a guy who knows a lot about risk, tweets in favour of mandatory liability insurance for gun owners:
“ If we had liability insurance on guns, as we do 4 cars, we will see which insurance company would insure at which price folks with arsenals”
It's an idea that seems to be gathering a bit of steam. At Forbes.com, John Wasik lays out the logic behind treating firearm deaths as a market externality to be compensated via insurance, as we do with cars: "Those most at risk to commit a gun crime would be known to the actuaries doing the research for insurers... An 80-year-old married woman in Fort Lauderdale would get a great rate. A 20-year-old in inner-city Chicago wouldn’t be able to afford it. A 32-year-old man with a record of drunk driving and domestic violence would have a similar problem." Robert Cyran and Reynolds Holding write that mandatory liability insurance is a measure that could pass Supreme Court muster where other restrictions might fail: "[T]here’s a strong argument that damage caused by firearms gives the government a 'compelling interest' to require insurance, the test for infringing a constitutional right."
The first objection that leapt to my mind was that given that 9,000 people per year are murdered with firearms in America, and that essentially every one of those killings entails a wrongful death that could be grounds for a suit, liability insurance for firearms might be so prohibitively expensive that no one would be able to afford it...
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
ya, like that 20 year old inner city Chicago kid would just say “oh, that much huh? well forget it then. I won’t buy the gun”
Something tells me that 20 year old didn’t buy the gun from a dealer in the first place. And would not even bother to insure the weapon anyways.
(and he probably does not have insurance on his car either)
More lib morons.
The guy that killed at Ft. Campbell would take out insurance?
The nut that just killed the firemen would have taken out insurance?
Total morons whose real goal is only to end gun ownership by the death of a thousand cuts.
Sadly, I think Sebelius could hammer out a ‘regulation’ on this, as part of Obamacare.
YA!
If the average gun nut could kill and average of 20 people, if he went on a rampage, then he’d only need about $20 Million in liability insurance......
Neither the insurance company, or the gov’t needs to know what I have!
Driving is not a right; it is a privilege and therefore the state can require one to have insurance. In the second place, the only place where it is the purview of the frigging federal government to require car insurance is on federal installations and military bases.
Owning a firearm is a Constitutional RIGHT, and the federal government, nor the state has the right to require it.
The Left says we have a right to healthcare, while mandating that we have insurance.
I’ve already had this debate in posts at my local newspaper. The editorial page espoused an ammunition tax shortly after the tragedy. I noted how quickly we were past the “grieving for little kids” phase and into the “screwing legal gun owners” phase.
You can’t tax away evil.
This is an ugly option. I have worried for a long time they might do this via homeowners/tenant policy. Just like car insurance it would land on the responsible gun owner...the crooks and illegals would still go without. They have nothing to loose. If they do this..we would need to start a cooperative insurance company..like USAA..to cover one another. Maybe that would be a good move..then that organization would be another one to lobby for our gun rights.
Obviously, this propsal is not meant to increase liberty and advance social harmony, but as yet one more back door way to disparage people from exercising a right that “shall not be infringed”.
But if we are allowing that regulating firearms could include compensation for risk, since most deaths due to firearms due to actions that are illegal, are we suspending the legal doctrine of Force Majeure?
Fair is fair here. Do we really want to hold owners of all autos liable for financial damages arising from when, for example, an illegal immigrant kills someone in an auto accident? Or what liability will government itself have, when for example, an felon is released from prison on parole and he kills someone with a firearm?
I don’t think the people who advance this proposal have really thought out all the legal mischief it invites once it opens the door.
Yeah, ghetto boys gonna take out policies? WTF are these people smoking?
Fortunately there are already insurers who will provide it. NRA endorses a couple of them. There is insurance for gun shows, collecting, etc.
How about liability insurance on the First Amendment freedom of the press? Dishonest journalism causes more real and lasting damage to society than private gun ownership ever could.
No good money gubbin' bastards.
This is the way it goes, FRiend. First there's a national tragedy that brings all people to the table to discuss gun control. Cooler, statistically- and fact-based heads NEVER prevail, and gun control laws are enacted.
After the new laws are in place, even greater, more egregious crimes are committed, oftentimes with stolen firearms. Then come the calls to get ALL of the firearms away from EVERYONE, and thus blanket confiscation is called for in order to "prevent this from happening EVER again."
You have your holdouts, but most people would willingly give up their arms under the threat of prosecution or death at the hands of the ATF/FBI/FEMA/HHS, etc. Overtime the violent crime rates soar, first in the inner cities and then out into the suburbs and the rural areas. Home invasions would soar, rapes, murders, gang activities would increase across the board. People would be unable to defend themselves. There would be calls for more police. Communist/Fascist governments would call for military to patrol every city and street. Then you get martial law.
Eventually, the power hungry in DC would institute lockdowns and curfews. People would be unable to go anywhere without providing papers. We would become prisoners in our own homes. Any level of social engineering up to and including genocide could then occur at the hands of a narcissistic megalomaniac like the Marxist faggot in chief.
Knives would be outlawed at some point in all of this, but it won't matter. By then, if you're lucky enough to still be alive, you'd either be imprisoned "for your protection" in a camp or otherwise mixed up with illegal elements of society.
There's a very minimal amount of suspension of disbelief necessary for this to be believable. The right forces are in place now, and really the last and only hope is that good men (and women) refuse to be disarmed and fight the oppressors who are demanding it. Storm clouds are brewing.
They would treat it like obamacare. If you don’t provide proof of gun insurance the feds fine you via IRS. More tax revenue for them and headaches for legal gun owners. Of course criminals will go underground and won’t be affected. In fact eventually most gun purchases will go underground to avoid all this crap.
In 2010, 10,228 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes. So why don’t we have alcohol liability insurance? How is the beer in my fridge any less liable than the AR rifle in my safe? Beer kills a hell of a lot more people every year than ARs do. Why don’t we have to have an insurance policy to own and consume alcohol? Oh, that’s right. Because certain people in powerful positions don’t give a damn if we have alcohol. They just don’t want us to have firearms. Well, wealthy people such as themselves will still be able to have them. I guess that’s OK, isn’t it?
How much insurance will the Obama black gangs in Chicago and Philly take out? Any guesses?
doesn’t insurance come with a NRA membership?
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