Philip Ting
“If you can’t force people to do what you want, force them to buy insurance,” writes James Taranto in his Best of the Web Today column on Thursday. “That seems to be the strategy of the liberal left in the Obama era.”
Taranto’s reference is not to Obamacare but to newly proposed legislation in California that would require gun owners to buy liability insurance to cover damages or injuries that might ensue from the use of their weapon.
San Francisco Assemblyman Philip Ting, a co-sponsor of the bill, is quoted by FOX News as saying:
I was moved, like many others, being the father of two young children, by the Sandy Hook incident and looking for constructive ways to manage gun violence here in California as well as the rest of the country. There’s basically a cost that is born by the taxpayers when accidents occur … I don’t think that taxpayers should be footing those bills.
Ting equates the idea to the requirement that vehicle owners buy auto insurance. FOX notes that similar bills have been introduced in other states, including Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York, adding that Massachusetts and New York have been attempted — unsuccessfully — too force through legislation of this sort since at least 2003.
So what could be bad? Well, for starters analogizing the requirement with the auto insurance requirement is flawed. As Taranto points out:
States require auto insurance as a precondition not of ownership but of driving on public roads. Guns, by contrast, typically are kept in the home, and liability for accidents there is covered by homeowners insurance.
“It would also be constitutionally suspect,” he adds, “for the government to condition the exercise of one’s rights under the Second Amendment on the purchase of insurance.” Then again, the Supreme Court decided last year that the right to draw breath on planet Earth can be constrained by a tax levied by the federal government.
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How, exactly, does personal liability insurance pay *anything* towards the “costs” (as yet undefined) imposed on society by criminals?
Criminals are going to buy such insurance? Criminals are going to leave their policy details at the scene of the crime so that authorities can recoup the costs?
Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you “The Ting Strata” – a level of stupidity so incomprehensible and impenetrable, even Occam’s Razor cannot cut through the drivel.
Or perhaps…this idea is a moronic effort to cloak the desire to inflict costs *on gun owners* – a poll tax for possession of firearms.
You are much kinder in your assessment of Mr. Ting than I would have been so I’ll stay silent on that respect. But seems to me that we could force the owners to buy the insurance, then through a series of transactions involving multiple entities (and with federal gov’t backing), we could package those policies and sell them on the open market. We could make a lot of money I think. If my business plan has a flaw, we can get a bailout.
Now at the risk of offending somebody, I’m surprised his first name is Philip. I thought all Ting’s were Sam (look it up…it’s an old joke).
Teejk…a clever plan, indeed. Let’s see if you can get a credit rating company to asses the risk.
Steven
It’s a pretty easy plan Steven…my wife is mandated by the government to sell these policies and has gov’t protection if things go wrong. She’s in the family room right now (20 feet away). She sends them to me. I lie through my teeth to get a gold credit rating from S&P or Moody’s and then put them on the open market (nice underwriting fees there for my efforts btw). Then my wife buys some and my sons buy some. A few get sold to the public.
When things go wrong, the gov’t sues S&P or Moodys and gives me my money back! So we get to keep the underwriting fees and are made whole on our investment. And the gov’t leads the charge on the legal front so it costs me nothing there.
Don’t share this with anybody else. I’m afraid that the mortgage industry might try to modify this.
Next up, mandatory flood insurance for people living on high ground…in the desert.