Maryland bill would force gun owners to get $300K liability insurance to wear or carry
Maryland bill would force gun owners to get $300K liability insurance to wear or carry
As the bill is currently written, local and state law enforcement officers are not exempt from the insurance requirement.
Maryland House Democrats introduced a controversial gun safety bill requiring gun owners to forfeit their ability to wear or carry without firearm liability insurance.
Introduced by Del. Terri Hill, D-Howard County, the legislation would prohibit the “wear or carry” of a gun anywhere in the state unless the individual has obtained a liability insurance policy of at least $300,000.
"A person may not wear or carry a firearm unless the person has obtained and it covered by liability insurance issued by an insurer authorized to do business in the State under the Insurance Article to cover claims for property damage, bodily injury, or death arising from an accident resulting from the person’s use or storage of a firearm or up to $300,000 for damages arising from the same incident, in addition to interest and costs,” the proposed Maryland legislation reads.
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Aside from this being a regressive tax, how many unjustifiable shootings result from people legally permitted to carry a firearm?
A lot, mostly NDs. I can't find any statistics because google sucks these days, but you can find video after video after video of people shooting themselves and their friends with "empty" guns. I used to frequent the /r/IdiotsWithGuns subreddit. Some great examples of how badly someone can ruin a life in an instant on there
I think most gun deaths tend to be handguns, and tend to be suicides, which would probably be people who would still be allowed to have a firearm in this circumstance, though I can see the insurance dissuading that in the case of people who are killing themselves on impulse (though I would think a wait period would be equally as effective, is already implemented in some places, doesn't financially discriminate, and neither legislation nor really any legislation we have actually would flag someone as being at risk if they wanted to kill themselves, except for the kind of pathetic mental health check form).
The other large category of gun deaths tend to be what is defined as "organized crime", which tends to stem from a couple different convergent factors. High value property, in drugs, that exists outside the legal system but still must be protected, lack of real social safety nets, large amounts of poverty, redlining, etc. . Generally though these people aren't like, legally acquiring their firearms anyways. What they are doing, and what is a real concern, is them acquiring firearms from legal gun owners, as the US has quite a lot of guns and not a lot of limitations or protection on them. The cartels can get a bunch of fourth generation military surplus used up garbage at an expensive black market price, or they can just rob like one gun nut, shave off a sear, and bing bang boom you have a spiffy new gun, pretty easily. I don't have a great solution to that problem, but in any case you could tackle that issue from the other side by just providing social safety nets, legalizing drugs, trying to lower housing prices, shit like that.
The stand out category in everyone's mind tends to be "mass shootings", or, lone wolf, usually stochastic, terrorism, which is kind of an interesting hot button political issue. By any analysis, though, it tends not to be a huge issue in terms of raw deaths, though, I would like to see some sort of crackdown on it happen, but you would probably need some even-handed, discriminating approach to that, or, again, better flags for mental illness, rather than a large encompassing law. Also getting a shoutout is unjustifiable police shootings but I also don't have a great solution beyond that outside of abolishing police, and getting rid of this stupid fucking patent that axon has on the taser.
In any case basically, you are correct, this law's gonna do jack shit.
Too many, probably? Do you see any downsides?
There are some serious downsides. In this case, this should get progressive alarms going off.
But before we get to the bulk, I'm going to repeat my last line's question first. Why invent new ways to fuck the poor in the name of gun control when we have solutions that work?
- It encourages transitioning gun ownership percentage to wealthy white people and less gun ownership to less-wealthy and non-white people (who, on average, make less money). This is the big one
- People don't like to admit it, but gun ownership DOES have a deterrent effect in high crime areas. Home invaders regularly mention avoiding houses of armed people when interrogated. I don't want ANYONE robbed on my street, but I definitely don't want my family victimized. My road has a dramatically lower home invader rate (based on value of property) than surrounding areas. Why? Outspoken gun owners due to the hunting culture (we have too many deer)... Do we really want to pretend to justify all the upsides of gun ownership to going to rich white people?
- Over 90% of gun crimes are committed with illegal weapons, a majority of which go back to legitimate owners and were stolen/given illegally. That means the liability insurance chain is already broken (or the rates go up, further alienating poor folks)
Simply tracing, background checks, and better regulation all-round would be more effective than a regressive tax on gun ownership. And those things are well-established and well-tested in society. Regulations WORK. So why invent new ways to fuck the poor in the name of gun control when we have solutions that work?
EDIT:
And some other thoughts that kinda go both ways at once. It looks like $300k is the quoted amount by most 2A firearm insurance companies. Almost like they lobbied for the bill. It makes me wonder if they would also lobby for weakening other regulations because "well gun owners are insured".
And part 2 as a flipside. It looks like the costs might not be terribly high. I'm seeing quotes as low as $30/mo. It's hard because they are all EXTREMELY shadey companies and (like other insurance companies) they like to hide their rates from potential buyers. As well as their fine print since the rates are so low from them avoiding paying out. By their fine print, it looks like they don't pay out if your action might have been criminal. So the insurance doesn't actually pay the victims of anything except accidental discharge.
But then, do we want to empower another questionably corrupt industry by mandating gun owners be their customers?
How about instead of requiring the poor to spend money on guns, you make sure that they don't need guns to be protected?
I agree completely. That's a better use of time than passing a law that will have little to no positive effect on gun control and only hurts the poor.
Just because a bill says a certain phrase doesn't mean we need to support it. A Gun Control law that says "White people get to take black people's guns" is not a good law. A Gun Control law that says "Gun ownership is punishable by death" is not a good law.
A law that says "you have to buy this insurance prohibitive to poor people but not rich to people" is not a good law.
The only thing worse than "a lot more guns" is "a lot more guns in the hands of only certain classes of people who already have too many"