People have been talking for years about trying to make gun owners maintain some kind of special insurance. San Diego, however, was the first to pass it and now a lot of people are trying to pass it at various levels of office.
What no one seems inclined to answer is just what they think they’re accomplishing.
San Diego’s law basically just boils down to requiring gun owners to have homeowners or renters insurance, for example, and that’s likely because other types of insurance simply don’t exist.
But a Colorado news station called out state lawmakers over their bill to require just that.
A local news outlet accused Colorado Democrats of pushing a “backdoor gun tax” through legislation that would require firearm owners to purchase liability insurance.
Three state Democrats — two representatives and one senator — on Feb. 13 introduced the legislation, which would require gun owners to maintain insurance that covers anyone injured from an accidental shooting. Failure to buy the extra coverage would face a $500 fine for the first offense and $1,000 for the second.
“That’s right, the same ‘justice reform’-obsessed lawmakers who had to be publicly shamed into cracking down on auto theft last year after previously reducing it to a misdemeanor — have no problem socking it to lawful gun owners,” The Denver Gazette’s editorial board wrote Sunday.
One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Steven Woodrow, said the bill would encourage responsible firearm ownership amid escalating gun violence. He pointed to a study that found deaths and injuries from firearms cost Colorado nearly $12 billion each year.
But the Gazette editorial board said the bill was simply a guise to limit legal gun ownership.
“In other words, it’s gun control by another name,” the editorial board wrote. “It also amounts to a gun tax (as well as a boon to the insurance industry).”
The Gazette’s editorial board is completely correct, though. It’s all of those things and then some.
It’s basically, among other things, a poll tax–a fee required in order for someone to exercise a constitutionally protected right. It’s a way to hurt law-abiding citizens who wish to exercise their Second Amendment rights, all while doing absolutely nothing to target the very people who are the cause of the problems in the state.
See, they can claim that guns are used for X dollar amount of damage in deaths and injuries, but they’re not differentiating between lawful and unlawful gun possession. They’re not accounting for the fact that most law-abiding gun owners–the very people who would follow this measure–aren’t the ones shooting up neighborhoods just to settle a score with one guy.
Frankly, for a party that likes to claim they’re looking out for the poor, those are the people most likely to be hurt by a bill like this.
I can afford insurance. You probably can, too. That’s assuming neither of us has it already.
But the grandmother on a fixed income who wants a gun because her neighborhood has gotten a little on the rough side? She probably can’t. Neither can the single mother who is barely scraping by but is worried about someone breaking into her home.
There are good people out there who aren’t flush with cash. They shouldn’t have to decide whether or not to become a lawbreaker just so they can keep their families safe. That’s really what’s on the table here.
