I don't expect much out of gun control advocates or the media, even when you have cases of those terms not be synonyms, but you'd think that people who are going to pontificate on the subject would at least be familiar with what others have said, right?
Well, you might well be asking too much.
One common refrain we've heard throughout the years was for various forms of insurance to be required. In fact, San Jose did just that last year, and Sacramento is considering it right now, with there being a strong chance it will pass.
But still, when some random anti-gunner on TikTok makes the suggestion, everyone in the media acts like they're breaking new ground here.
In a TikTok video, a content creator named Ryann proposed an idea that could potentially help with the problem of how easy and accessible it is to buy a gun, especially an assault rifle or automatic weapon. She claimed that if lawmakers and politicians required insurance for gun ownership, it would decrease the accessibility of firearms.
She proposed that people should be required to have insurance policies to be gun owners.
"Call me radical, but I think guns should start to have insurance policies," Ryann declared. "If I've gotta insure my Honda Civic, you need to insure your gun. As with anything valuable in this life, your health, your phone, your house, your car — you insure it."
She explained that if a person's gun is valuable to them, then it shouldn't be a problem to get insurance on it. If you can't afford gun insurance, then you shouldn't be allowed to own or carry a firearm in public.
If something happens and someone misuses their gun, then the insurance provider is liable and has to pay for the damages and other associated costs.
"If you're at my house and you fall off my roof, that's on my insurance policy," Ryann continued. "If you play with my gun and you shoot somebody, that's on my gun insurance policy, right? I'm just saying, and I don't say this often, but I think the insurance companies need to get involved."
Oh, wow. So groundbreaking. It's not at all like the thousands of others who have made that suggestion.
Recommended
Of course, it should be noted that injuries from negligent discharges are currently covered under a homeowners policy for most people. However, those incidents account for only a tiny fraction of a percent of all shootings in the United States every year.
The problem we currently have is intentional shootings. When someone picks up a gun, points it at another person, and pulls the trigger, that's not "playing with a gun." That's an intentional action and guess what? Insurance will never cover that, at least for the shooter in this case.
This has been a topic of discussion for years surrounding the suggestion that people be required to get insurance, but let's also note the whole bit about, "If you can't afford gun insurance, then you shouldn't be allowed to own or carry a firearm in public."
I'm pretty sure Ryann here will probably think she cares about the poor among our numbers. These are people who are a lot more vulnerable to violent crime than most of us. They live in high-crime neighborhoods and likely have more direct contact with violent criminals on a daily basis than most of us will have in a lifetime. Considering how many violent criminals view insults as killing offenses, these folks may well find themselves needing to defend themselves.
But Ryann here thinks that these folks surrounded by criminals--who have their guns illegally, generally via theft or black market purchase, and won't have insurance on them--shouldn't be able to have guns simply because they can't afford an insurance policy.
This is the most ivory-tower elitism you're ever going to find. This is the gun rights equivalent of "let them eat cake" and we all know it.
Yet the media has run this particular bit repeatedly. Multiple outlets have covered Ryann's comments as if they're something groundbreaking when they're not. They've been floated for decades. As noted, a couple of places are even trying to do just that.
But in the end, it's still nothing more than a way to make sure the richer you are, the more rights you actually get to enjoy, and that's not what our Founding Fathers wanted. Not for the poorer among us and not for anyone else, because what starts as something relatively modest that might only hurt one group will inevitably expand until everyone is caught up in it.
