Author of Be Ready for Anything and Bloom Where You’re Planted online course
New York state is still busily chipping away at gun rights and now they’ve introduced Obamacare for guns. Legislators are hard at work trying to force every gun owner in the state (who isn’t a cop or active military) to purchase and maintain a minimum $1 million liability insurance policy.
§ 2353. FIREARM OWNERS INSURANCE POLICIES. 1. ANY PERSON IN THIS STATE WHO SHALL OWN A FIREARM SHALL, PRIOR TO SUCH OWNERSHIP, OBTAIN AND CONTINUOUSLY MAINTAIN A POLICY OF LIABILITY INSURANCE IN AN AMOUNT NOT LESS THAN ONE MILLION DOLLARS SPECIFICALLY COVERING ANY DAMAGES RESULTING FROM ANY NEGLIGENT OR WILLFUL ACTS INVOLVING THE USE OF SUCH FIREARM WHILE IT IS OWNED BY SUCH PERSON. FAILURE TO MAINTAIN SUCH INSURANCE SHALL RESULT IN THE IMMEDIATE REVOCATION OF SUCH OWNER’S REGISTRATION, LICENSE AND ANY OTHER PRIVILEGE TO OWN SUCH FIREARM. (source)
Hmmm…privilege? I had no idea it was called constitutional privileges. I’m going to have to go back and fix some articles really quickly where I called them “rights.”
New York wants to make it impossible to own a gun. Although the bill clearly states it’s been read twice, it’s rife with grammatical errors, almost to the point of illiteracy. (I italicized them for ya.) But I digress. Under the heading “Justification” the bill states:
Injury and death by gun has increasingly become a problem in U.S. and in New York State. In the wake of recent mass shooting incidents in Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut; there has been a nationwide attention on gun control and public safety.
According to FBI Crime Report, there were 445 firearm murderin New York in 2011 and 517 firearm murder in 2010. However, there is little attention on the economic impact these shootings have on the victims and their families.
This legislation establishes and requires gun-owners to obtain and maintain liability insurance policy prior to such ownership. By having this insurance, policy in place, innocent victims of gun-related accidents and violence will be compensated for the medical care for their injuries.
In such cases where the gun was stolen, the original owner is typically not liable unless the weapon was stolen through negligence on the part of the owner.
This insurance policy will also serve as an incentive for firearm owners to implement safety measures in order to conduct the activity as safely as possible and only when necessary.
This isn’t the first time recently that New York has proposed something outrageous.
In December of last year, they proposed a bill that would require anyone in NY who wanted to buy a gun to turn over their internet search history and their social media passwords. Seriously. According to Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, “A three-year review of a social media profile would give an easy profile of a person who is not suitable to hold and possess a firearm.”
Previously, I wrote:
Applicants to purchase a gun would be required by law to turn over their social media passwords to accounts like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram, and they’d have to allow police to see a year’s worth of their searches on a year’s worth of searches on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. As well, anyone renewing their permit for a pistol would be subject to this invasive investigation.
Now, for those of you sitting there saying, “That’s fine, I don’t use social media and I use Duck Duck Go or StartPage” this is great – for now.
How long do you think it would be before other outlets like blogs where you comment or these different search engines are added to the list of things that are searched? Trust me, if it gets passed, this is a greasy slide straight to the bad place. (source)
If you wondering what they’d be looking for, wonder no more.
Police would be required to look for evidence the applicant searched for or used racist or discriminatory language, threatened the safety of another person, inquired about or alluded to an act of terrorism, and, finally, “any other issue deemed necessary by the investigating officer.” (source)
How arbitrary is that? It’s basically down to whether the officer likes you and your beliefs our not.
Think for a moment about how much the investigating officer’s bias would come into play here. In some ways of thinking, people who say “all lives matter” are considered the epitome of racism even when taken out of context.
And what about a couple of women talking about a breakup using heated language in a conversation about the ex who has become the enemy? Are they really going to act on it or are they just blowing off some steam?
Then I think about my search history regarding terrorism – I’m a blogger, for goodness sakes. My search history is a dark place. What if you’re researching what kind of gun you want to buy and you’re looking up things like “stopping power” or some other thing the anti-gun folks consider “scary” that is a completely legitimate question in reality?
And “any other issue deemed necessary” is just far, far too broad to provide any comfort whatsoever that the investigations would be fair and impartial. All of this is completely subjective. Anyone with a dark sense of humor, regardless of their sanity or upstanding citizen-ness, is going to be in for a hard time. (source)
It’s all just another paver on the highway to total gun control.
If you think this is crazy, stay tuned. It’s just going to get worse.
It’s all about civilian disarmament.
Bottom line: If they can’t disarm us, they can’t control us.
.
As to the Constitution, it’s just an old piece of paper and doesn’t mean anything, according to them.
NYS is getting a front row seat to the US Supreme Court.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/us/politics/supreme-court-guns-nyc-license.html
https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/new-york-state-rifle-pistol-association-inc-v-city-of-new-york-new-york/
I don’t think it will go well gpe them or the Sullivan Act
New York has had a long history of shamelessly corrupt gun laws, starting with the 1911 Sullivan Act, as this NY Post article describes:
https://nypost.com/2012/01/16/the-strange-birth-of-nys-gun-laws/
One item stood out in the current insurance proposal, that of “negligence.” I would predict there will be an ongoing catfight (that’s the clean language version) over what constitutes negligence. I would further expect that if passed, this proposal will give a mighty boost to the underground, but completely legal most places, market of “ghost guns” — where for an hour’s work on a home drill press, one can finish out a mostly completed weapon blank. The federal law on ghost guns means that they can’t be sold or transferred to anyone else, since they don’t have any serial numbers. So if there’s a risk of a gun theft from you, your best protection would be for it to have been a ghost gun with no identifying serial number that could otherwise have been traced to you. I would expect a very hot black market in ghost guns as a result if this proposal passes. I could even visualize that owning a small cheap drill press would be a way for very non-mechanical people to be able to claim that they were the maker of a ghost gun they possess, instead of being the illegal recipient of a ghost gun made by somebody else. And as always, cash would be king.
We learned a long time ago that Prohibition laws almost always stimulate an immediate and thriving black market, whether the product is alcohol, formerly legal medicinal drugs, or whatever. Al Capone’s zillion dollar alcohol bootlegging racket was only possible because of Prohibition. Similarly, Nixon’s “War on Drugs” made the CIA’s cocaine smuggling racket up through Latin America incredibly more profitable.
This proposal is just one more in a very long list of reasons why people are fleeing New York State.
—Lewis
It’s just another day in the People’s Republic of New York. Obviously gun crimes are not being committed by the kind of people who legally purchase and register and buy liability insurance and use gun safes for their guns. This action is intended to preemptively disarm people who might rebel against the goobermint. It’s not intended to stop crime, but to prevent political rebellion.
>>…it’s rife with grammatical errors, almost to the point of illiteracy.
With all due respect, Daisy, you have an obvious spelling error and a repeated paragraph in your own commentary. “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
Whoops!!!! That’s humbling 🙂
Thank you, Miss Manners…
Just remember:
“I Will Not Comply”.
NY can make all of the laws that they want-no one will obey them. Many guns will be lost in tragic boating accidents. Except for the criminals of course, their guns will be secure and loaded. But NY does nothing about criminals-except to force free citizens into being one.
Indeed.
Mine are mostly on the bottom of 350 feet deep Lake Champlain. A tragic canoe roll over event that occurred a few years prior to my departure from The Peoples Republic of NY. The sad part is that the vast majority of NT counties are glow in the bright red part of the spectrum. We collectively loathed Albany and NYC since the 8 counties of the cities and the immediate neighboring ones completely disenfranchise the other 54 counties.
Daisy,
This is the way “progressives” aka Socialists end run our Constitution–the very Constitution many of them took an oath to protect and preserve. Gun control is people control and that is what they are after–all in the guise of making us “safer.” The morons who vote these Constitution abusers into office have no idea they are abandoning precious liberty for the illusion of safety.
But then “safety” coupled with “free stuff” is the cheese in the mousetrap of tyranny.
I know this is going to sound bizarre, but as a 14th amendment, federal U.S. Citizen in the jurisdiction of Washington D.C. YOU ONLY HAVE PRIVILEGES NOT RIGHTS. Until all concerned, especially gun owners become familiar with jurisdiction, they will continue to bitch, moan and groan about Constitutional Rights.
You want to stop this legislative bullshit, change your political status to an American born on the soil and land of your birth state, your original jurisdiction and all your natural and unalienable Rights will come back to you. You notice the legislation cites “person”, this is a legal construct, not people born on the land and soil of their birth state.
You believe your a U.S. Citizen, tell me when you signed up for U.S. citizenship…??? You never did, it was conferred upon you without your consent. Look at your State Birth Certificate, do you see anywhere “U.S. Citizenship”….. You are a State Citizen.
Learn the difference in jurisdictions and Constitutional Rights and make the necessary changes to your political status or live with these corrupt politicians and their meddling in your life.
As an insurance Broker with 30 years experience, there is no policy available that would cover illegal “willful acts,” and it’s doubtful that those constructing this legislation would be unaware of this fact.
What about all the crooks in the Mafia and other organized crime groups? Will they be required to buy insurance also? This is just another gun-grabbing scheme by the anti-freedom do-gooders. Keep in mind that New York’s Sullivan Law was created by organized crime to give criminal gangs a monopoly on firearms.
By definition, criminals are people who do not obey law.
How then does antigun legislation effect criminal operations?
In the positive, as it greatly increases the likelihood of disarmed victims. This is desired by totalitarians as they are criminals in office who desire their victims to be disarmed,as do their criminal brothers out of office.
Anyone who wants to disarm you is your enemy, and means to do you harm once you are disarmed.