Mandate Gunowners Purchase Firearms Liability Insurance

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Alright go ahead and sue Nancy Lanza for the financial damage.

If you go buying insurance for anything and everything you do, there is no end.

There are lot more things like illegals are treated in hospitals who pays for them? You work in hospital you know how it works, why don't you first force them to buy insurance?

You must not know private enterprise very well in this country. Liability is everywhere. If you walk into a grocery store, slip and fall on a wet floor that was just mopped, that store has liability insurance. If a delivery truck broadsides your car, there is liability. If a baby crib manufacturer makes a defective crib that maims your child, there is liability. Liability is at the heart of personal responsibility. It's a market answer to promote responsible behavior and punish irresponsible behavior. I know a lot of Right Wingers hate the idea of litigation, but it is the one, single way in which consumers are empowered by having some legal recourse if they are injured.

Bringing up illegals treated in a hospital is a red herring. We're talking about making those who own guns financially liable should their guns are misused or neglected. If you, for example, keep your guns stored safely in your home and when you do use them, you act responsibly, you have nothing to worry about. If, however, you let your 14 year old son have open access to your handgun and he purposely or accidentally injures or kills someone else with your gun, your liability insurance would pay the victims and their families. Whether you have liability insurance or not, you are LIABLE. All that a mandatory liability insurance would do is to ensure that the victims and their families would be justly compensated. They wouldn't have to go bankrupt trying to take care of their son or daughter who is now paralyzed.

It comes down to whether you believe in personal responsibility. If you do, then you accept the consequences of your actions or negligence. It's that simple.

Edited December 20, 2012 by Lincolns mullet

[Karee 4,190]

AUTO insurance companies don't pay either if you get drunk and kill somebody. Even though people are compelled in most states to get insurance. Compelling them to get insurance doesnt stop a person from getting behind the wheel all tanked up on booze on weekend nights either.

I know somone that got drunk off their #### and drove their car into a cement median on the interstate and totalled it. Cops threw him in the clink for DWI. His insurance paid for it.

[SMOKE 1,426]

anyone want to try to explain this?

and we still have no takers.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

You must not know private enterprise very well in this country. Liability is everywhere. If you walk into a grocery store, slip and fall on a wet floor that was just mopped, that store has liability insurance. If a delivery truck broadsides your car, there is liability. If a baby crib manufacturer makes a defective crib that maims your child, there is liability. Liability is at the heart of personal responsibility. It's a market answer to promote responsible behavior and punish irresponsible behavior. I know a lot of Right Wingers hate the idea of litigation, but it is the one, single way in which consumers are empowered by having some legal recourse if they are injured.

Bringing up illegals treated in a hospital is a red herring. We're talking about making those who own guns financially liable should their guns are misused or neglected. If you, for example, keep your guns stored safely in your home and when you do use them, you act responsibly, you have nothing to worry about. If, however, you let your 14 year old son have open access to your handgun and he purposely or accidentally injures or kills someone else with your gun, your liability insurance would pay the victims and their families. Whether you have liability insurance or not, you are LIABLE. All that a mandatory liability insurance would do is to ensure that the victims and their families would be justly compensated. They wouldn't have to go bankrupt trying to take care of their son or daughter who is now paralyzed.

It comes down to whether you believe in personal responsibility. If you do, then you accept the consequences of your actions or negligence. It's that simple.

So in my previous post I assumed you wanted it to work like auto insurance. I see thats not the case, so no I actually wouldn't support this and I think it would create a whole other layer of mandates regarding the ownership of personal property (along with the legal problems I see from my first post).

Edited December 20, 2012 by Usui Takumi

[bsd058 296]

You must not know private enterprise very well in this country. Liability is everywhere. If you walk into a grocery store, slip and fall on a wet floor that was just mopped, that store has liability insurance. If a delivery truck broadsides your car, there is liability. If a baby crib manufacturer makes a defective crib that maims your child, there is liability. Liability is at the heart of personal responsibility. It's a market answer to promote responsible behavior and punish irresponsible behavior. I know a lot of Right Wingers hate the idea of litigation, but it is the one, single way in which consumers are empowered by having some legal recourse if they are injured.

Bringing up illegals treated in a hospital is a red herring. We're talking about making those who own guns financially liable should their guns are misused or neglected. If you, for example, keep your guns stored safely in your home and when you do use them, you act responsibly, you have nothing to worry about. If, however, you let your 14 year old son have open access to your handgun and he purposely or accidentally injures or kills someone else with your gun, your liability insurance would pay the victims and their families. Whether you have liability insurance or not, you are LIABLE. All that a mandatory liability insurance would do is to ensure that the victims and their families would be justly compensated. They wouldn't have to go bankrupt trying to take care of their son or daughter who is now paralyzed.

It comes down to whether you believe in personal responsibility. If you do, then you accept the consequences of your actions or negligence. It's that simple.

I think I agree with you. Liability in cases of negligence, but obviously losses caused on purpose cannot be covered. That's an uninsurable loss.

Kind of like liquor liability insurance where if the host of a party or other event providing liquor to guests would be found liable for his guests causing damage to others as a proximate cause of the liquor he served them, the policy pays out. In this case it would pay out if an owner is found negligent in not storing firearms, as a reasonable and prudent person would do, or not reporting their firearm stolen and the firearm causes damage to third parties. That's not a bad idea.

Edited December 20, 2012 by bsd058

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

anyone want to try to explain this?

I'm surprised Obummer and Holder didn't try to plant that rifle on the shooters dead body right before they wheeled him out of that school. They were probably too busy atm handing out automatic weapons to members of Mexican drug cartels.

Edited December 20, 2012 by Bad_Daddy

[SMOKE 1,426]

I'm surprised Obummer and Holder didn't try to plant that rifle on the shooters dead body right before they wheeled him out of that school. They were probably too busy atm handing out automatic weapons to members of Mexican drug cartels.

or shipping them over to the middle east to our 'friends'.

[Karee 4,190]

I'm surprised Obummer and Holder didn't try to plant that rifle on the shooters dead body right before they wheeled him out of that school. They were probably too busy atm handing out automatic weapons to members of Mexican drug cartels.

Interesting to say the least. So prediction. If it comes out that no assault weapon was used, you can bet your a$$ that everyone here that was going on and on about banning and restricting assault weapons, will suddenly turn around and say, "who cares what kind of weapon was used, 27 people are dead!"

Edited December 20, 2012 by Karee

[SMOKE 1,426]

Interesting to say the least. So prediction. If it comes out that no assault weapon was used, you can bet your a$$ that everyone here that was going on and on about banning and restricting assault weapons, will suddenly turn around and say, "who cares what kind of weapon was used, 27 people are dead!"

bank on it.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

How do you indentify firearms owners? There is no Federal record or registry, and currently illegal to establish one. "It's impossible to know for certain how many guns are in private hands because there is no central firearms registry. The 1986 McClure-Volkmer Act forbids the federal government from establishing any "system of registration of firearms, firearm owners, or firearms transactions or distribution." And the 1993 Brady Act prohibits the establishment of any electronic registry of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions."

Most of the people I know would not even answer the question as to firearms ownership if asked. Remember, there are probably than 300 million firearms in private hands, and since the tragedy in CT, probably another million have been sold.

An interesting article from NBC a couple days ago. NBC News

Under the Commerce Clause, Congress has the constitutional power to regulate commerce which means that if you purchase a gun, that purchase can be taxed and regulated (licensed and insured). But even with the 2nd Amendment - registration is not outside of common practice.

Read here:

...the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said that the Second Amendment poses no barrier to mandatory regulation because it does not "invalidate any and every regulation on gun use."

Even some pro-gun scholars and advocates reluctantly agree. "I think under the Heller decision, registration would be constitutional," Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation in Bellevue, Wash., told CBSNews.com this week. "It doesn't make it good public policy."

...

"Registration is probably not unconstitutional," says Don Kilmer, an attorney in San Jose, Calif. who has sued two California counties for denying law-abiding citizens permits to carry concealed weapons. "There's a difference between registration as a permissible regulation and registration as good policy."

Part of this conclusion stems from the approach that the pro-gun side adopted when suing to overturn the District of Columbia's handgun ban. To make their case appealing to as many Supreme Court justices as possible, the attorneys shouldered the legal equivalent of a rifle instead of a shotgun, and argued only for Americans' right to possess firearms for self-defense -- not for the right to avoid registering them.

Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion in Heller noted that, because the plaintiffs "conceded at oral argument" that they do not "have a problem with... licensing," the court would "not address the licensing requirement." The appeals court in that case did, however, and suggested that registration was just fine: "Reasonable restrictions also might be thought consistent with a 'well regulated militia.' The registration of firearms gives the government information as to how many people would be armed for militia service if called up."

The problem for gun rights advocates is that, if you look at the language and custom at the time the Second Amendment was written, laws like the Militia Act of 1792 pop up. It required men between the ages of 18 and 45 to register themselves for militia service, and specified they have certain weapons such as a "good rifle." Similarly, a report from Philadelphia in 1823 showed that there were 12,678 rifles in private hands, indicating some records of who owned what.

"Systems akin to registration were quite common at the time of the framing of the Constitution and the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights," says Dennis Henigan, vice president for law and policy at the Brady Campaign and author of the new book Lethal Logic. "Even before that the state militia statutes had the same kind of requirements, so they can track how well the militia was armed."

Then again, the reason for registration in Colonial America was the opposite of today's. In the 1700s and early 1800s, public policy encouraged firearm ownership. Now governments that mandate gun registration tend to want to discourage it.

At the moment, a minority of states including New York, Maryland, California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts require mandatory registration for handguns. Others, like Pennsylvania, require sales of handguns to go through a dealer, who keeps records of the transaction.

Under federal law, there's no formal registration for any non-automatic firearm, and unrecorded transfers between private citizens are permitted. A kind of distributed registration requirement exists for anyone buying a firearm through a dealer; they must fill out Form 4473, which the dealer is required to keep on file for 20 years. (Fans of the movie Red Dawn probably remember Form 4473's cameo appearance. And, yes, attorney Stephen Halbrook, author of a book about World War II, has noted that the Nazis "disarmed Berlin's Jews using the Weimar firearm registration records.")

No less an authority than the late William Rehnquist, who became the chief justice of the Supreme Court, once wrote a memo saying there is no "serious legal obstacle" to registration. Rehnquist was no anti-gunner; he subsequently wrote the opinion in U.S. v. Lopez (striking down the Gun-Free School Zones Act) and joined the majority in Printz et al v. U.S. (striking down part of the Brady bill). Then again, because he wrote that memo while an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, it's not clear how much of it represents his own opinion.

....

Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at UCLA and curator of the libertarian-leaning Volokh.com site, addresses this in an article in the latest UCLA Law Review. It argues that a registration requirement is commonplace among other constitutional rights.

Volokh writes: "Even speakers may sometimes need to register or get licensed. Parade organizers may be required to get permits. Gatherers of initiative signatures may be required to register with the government, and so may fundraisers for charitable causes, though such fundraising is constitutionally protected." He adds that even the right to marry and the right to vote can require licenses or registration, and he believes gun rights are "more like the trackable rights, and that it is the untrackable rights that are the constitutional outlier."

http://www.cbsnews.c...192-504383.html

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I think I agree with you. Liability in cases of negligence, but obviously losses caused on purpose cannot be covered. That's an uninsurable loss.

Kind of like liquor liability insurance where if the host of a party or other event providing liquor to guests would be found liable for his guests causing damage to others as a proximate cause of the liquor he served them, the policy pays out. In this case it would pay out if an owner is found negligent in not storing firearms, as a reasonable and prudent person would do, or not reporting their firearm stolen and the firearm causes damage to third parties. That's not a bad idea.

Yep. This to me seems the most reasonable answer to trying to lessen the frequency and destruction of these mass shootings while supporting gun ownership.

[DaveE 178]

Under the Commerce Clause, Congress has the constitutional power to regulate commerce which means that if you purchase a gun, that purchase can be taxed and regulated (licensed and insured). But even with the 2nd Amendment - registration is not outside of common practice.

Read here:

http://www.cbsnews.c...192-504383.html

I didn't say you couldn't start a registry. I am saying that there are 300 million guns out there that would not be registered. Are you willing to go to peoples homes and search for firearms? I also said it was against current law to register firearms, not that the laws couldn't be changed.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Yep. This to me seems the most reasonable answer to trying to lessen the frequency and destruction of these mass shootings while supporting gun ownership.

You are asking private property owners to take out insurance on a product even if it sits in a storage locker perm. and insure it against criminal acts by a third party. Can you not see how far reaching that is?

Edited December 20, 2012 by Usui Takumi

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Canada should start banning eagles seeing how they are preying on little children these days. I think the the eagles should have a mandate for insurance.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

You seem upset and perhaps you do not know how either auto or liability insurance works. Plus you do not appear to be the sharpest crayon in the box either. This makes it hard to convey simple facts to you that may or may not, depending on how socialist you are, help your logic.

I will now step up and help you. Please read the below carefully:

http://www.lindjensen.com/CM/Articles/Crime%20Doesn't%20Pay-%20The%20Criminal%20Act%20Exclusion.pdf

So do you get it yet? Deliberate shootings are crimes. Insurance. won't. pay. damages. resulting. from. criminal. acts. Is that too many words in a row for you.

So, suppose you have a policy? Then shoot someone. Accident? Yes, the insurance company will pay. Shoot up a school? They don't pay a dime.. So, your cool-sounding idea simply boils down to a fee to enjoy what is considered a basic right only.

Our homeowner's liability / umbrella insurance policies otherwise already cover firearms accidents.

Now with your new found knowledge on how insurance works help me understand how an insurance policy taken out / forced on people who won't commit a crime anyway will reduce shootings by those who will.

AUTO insurance companies don't pay either if you get drunk and kill somebody. Even though people are compelled in most states to get insurance. Compelling them to get insurance doesnt stop a person from getting behind the wheel all tanked up on booze on weekend nights either.

Your logic does not hold up. Only an idiot would assume that an insurance company would willingly underwrite cold-blooded murderers LOL. (your next cool idea would probably be to compel them to do that too)

Are you really that dense? Geezuz. The gun owner in this latest tragedy was NOT the one committing the crime. Her insurance would pay for the victims and their families for her NEGLIGENCE, if it was determined that she was in fact, negligent.

But, hey, I would venture to guess you are the Libertarian type, so here's from the Libertarian Party:

Let us put the responsibility where it belongs, on the owner and user of the gun. If he or she acts responsibly, without attacking others or causing injury negligently, no crime or harm has been done. Leave them in peace. But, if a person commits a crime with a gun, then impose the severest penalties for the injuries done to the victim. Similarly, hold the negligent gun user fully liable for all harm his negligence does to others.

http://www.lp.org/issues/gun-laws