New State Gun Laws My Require More Insurance
- Author: Jessica Williams
- Posted: 2024-06-03
When you think about insurance, you probably get a headache when reminded that you have to pay for health insurance, auto insurance, home insurance, and more. If you're a business owner, you also have to pay in for unemployment insurance and other sorts of premium costs that are no big help to you but certainly help big corporations profit. Wherever you look in the world, there's some law telling you that you're required to spend money on insurance because it's needed. Before you know it, you're spending the bulk of your monthly bill payments on insurance. If you live in New Jersey, you may have to pay for even more insurance, at least if you own a gun. The state of New Jersey is introducing legislation that will require all legal gun owners to purchase liability insurance in order to own a firearm. This is insurance that covers the owner in the case of any sort of harm, but most experts agree that it's really just an initiative the government is taking to price most people out of being able to own a gun. The more guns you own, the more you would have to pay, and so not owning any guns becomes the better financial choice in a climate where everything is much more expensive.
The government of New Jersey came right out and admitted that this has nothing at all to do with insurance and everything to do with passing tougher gun laws. The way politicians see it is simple. They might not be able to overturn the 2nd Amendment themselves, but they can surely make it more difficult for you to bear arms. And that's precisely what they're going to do, and they will stand on a podium and tell you exactly that. The State Senate gave a press conference earlier this week, where Senate President Nicholas Scutari and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin outright stated that they want New Jersey to have the strictest gun laws in the nation.
Of course, having new background checks and waiting periods makes it a lot tougher to get guns for people who want new guns, but it does nothing at all for existing gun owners. This is something that the State Senate openly has an issue with. They cannot be the toughest state on owning guns if they're not attempting to punish people who already legally own them, and so their answer is to force gun owners to purchase expensive liability insurance. Since a gun will always be considered high-risk, this is insurance that could cost people a few hundred extra dollars every month. This is New Jersey doing precisely what it said it would do, and so no one in the state is really caught off guard by this. They may be angry, but they're not surprised.
It's Not Just New Jersey
New Jersey might be planning on being the toughest state on gun owners in the nation, but they're certainly not the first state to push this sort of legislation on its residents. Hawaii, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and California have all pushed and passed similar legislation already. In New York now, it's easier to find a four-leafed clover in the middle of the street than it is to find a legal gun owner. Legal gun owners are exceedingly rare in the state. Out of 8.5 million people in New York City alone, fewer than 30,000 legally own a gun. When it comes to illegal guns, however, most estimates from law enforcement suggest that there are over one million residents who own guns illegally. So, the moral of the story: These laws did not in any way get guns off the street; they merely kept them out of the hands of law abiding citizens.
This is something that state and city governments don't seem to care about, however, because gun control is a hot-button campaign issue.
Gun Control is a Huge Campaigning Issue
New Jersey is a very left-leaning state, a perennial blue state. Drug overdoses are at an all-time high in the state. Drunk driving, violent crime in general, and issues with homelessness are all up. Gun crime by legal gun owners is at an all-time low. And where does the government focus? On legal gun owners. It's obviously political, but that obviously doesn't matter. If you live in New Jersey and own a gun legally, prepare to spend a lot of money on insurance.
