When San Jose decided to mandate insurance for gun owners, it was pretty simple. They decided to just require homeowners or renters insurance. That kind of insurance doesn’t actually cover most things, though it will cover an unintentional shooting. It won’t do anything about a stolen gun or a gun used willfully in an illegal act, but it made people feel special trying to force the issue.
And as a result, other places have tried to do the same, though again, the mandate wouldn’t do all that much, if anything.
Now, Illinois is looking to do it, but they’re hoping to go in a slightly different direction.
Insurance could potentially look a little different in Illinois. Lawmakers are pushing to enact a new bill that will require gun owners to have insurance.
Illinois State Representative, Bob Morgan, told me this idea has been in the works for years, and the main goal is to make Illinois a safer state.
“Not just making sure we’re looking at the ways in which people have access to firearms,” Morgan said. “But what are the ways in which we’re paying for the societal costs when there is gun violence in our communities?”
Morgan is in the early stages of getting a gun insurance task force approved to help this legislation come to life.
“It’s representation from the insurance industry,” Morgan said “ Those who are promoting gun violence prevention, and those who are focused on gun rights, gun owner rights. Basically, have a broad-based representation to have this conversation and figure out whether this is something we can, and should do in Illinois.”
With the new legislation, there are several questions about how claims would work and if gun owners would have to get insurance for individual weapons.
Morgan said it’s something the task force will have to examine.
“Because this kind of insurance just doesn’t exist anywhere in the country,” Morgain said. “This will be the first state to really adopt an idea of creating a specific rider effectively, when we have insurance riders for flooding in our homes. This will be an additional rider for someone who has a firearm in their home.”
Of course, Morgan isn’t sure how it would work, but I’m skeptical it would cover much of anything other than what a homeowners policy might.
After all, is the individual being insured or the gun? If it is, what insurance company is going to accept liability if a stolen gun is used in a criminal manner? For that matter, insurance companies can’t cover criminal acts except when covering the victims of those acts.
Yet even if they somehow came up with something, the fact that Illinois is trying to mandate it means that the mandate will amount to a poll tax on those who wish to exercise their Second Amendment rights. This is something that is blatantly unconstitutional and will not be able to survive a fair judicial hearing after the Bruen decision. Even the Rahimi ruling doesn’t give any state or municipality license to pull something like this.
But that’s not likely to stop Illinois, unfortunately.
It’s funny, too, because the FOID requirement was supposed to keep bad things from happening. Now, they’re wanting legal gun owners to have to get insurance to stop bad things from happening, all while failing to acknowledge that FOIDs did nothing to help.
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