Maryland House Democrats introduced a controversial gun safety bill requiring gun owners to forfeit their ability to wear or carry without firearm liability insurance.
Introduced by Del. Terri Hill, D-Howard County, the legislation would prohibit the “wear or carry” of a gun anywhere in the state unless the individual has obtained a liability insurance policy of at least $300,000.
"A person may not wear or carry a firearm unless the person has obtained and it covered by liability insurance issued by an insurer authorized to do business in the State under the Insurance Article to cover claims for property damage, bodily injury, or death arising from an accident resulting from the person’s use or storage of a firearm or up to $300,000 for damages arising from the same incident, in addition to interest and costs,” the proposed Maryland legislation reads.
Any precedent you can cite on this?
Google “poll tax”.
Poll taxes had to be explicitly banned in the 24th Amendment which is specific to voting. This is actually an argument against the idea that it’s unconstitutional, because an amendment wouldn’t have been necessary if it was already unconstitutional to force payment to exercise a right.
Good example, thanks.
You’re not required to carry insurance before you can post online just in case you defame someone.
Common sense?
Eh, we have a right to travel and states have a right to put limitations on that when it comes to motor-vehicles. The courts have allowed limited oversight on firearms before so this potentially could have legs. I am guessing not in the current Supreme Court though.
The right to travel is an intuited right as a consequence of other explicit rights, but more importantly is a freedom of movement between geographic areas. You can achieve this through walking, riding a bus, riding a horse, hitchhiking, etc, While driving a car is statistically the most frequent way people do this now, it is not the only way. There is no constitutional amendment saying you specifically have a right to drive a car. If there was, drivers licenses would be unconstitutional and mandatory insurance would probably be so as well.
The more equitable example would be requiring you to buy and maintain a passport to leave your town or neighborhood, putting your actual right to travel behind a pay wall. Poll taxes were deemed unconstitutional for the same reason. You can weaponize these to prevent those you deem undesirable from exercising their rights by making it prohibitively expensive to participate. The constitution deems all the natural rights outlined in the Bill of Rights to be the same as breathing; you were born with the ability, not granted it by the government.
I find “common sense” to be used almost exclusively when a person can’t come up with an actually reason to support their point. This is especially true here because there is very little about constitutional law that is as easy as “common sense.”
As Chocrates said above, the Fifth Amendment gives the right to free movement, but SCOTUS has approved licencing for motor vehicles, and certain restrictions on firearms, so there’s some precedent, though the current SCOTUS may disagree.
Motor vehicles arent a right, travel is. If motor vehicles were explicitly named then those would be illegal. Motor vehicles are not the sole form of travel.
By that logic, are only guns considered arms? If the right is “keep and bear arms,” wouldn’t that imply the right to keep and bear any arms? Guns aren’t the only type of weapon, just as cars aren’t the only form of travel. If we can put restrictions on certain forms of travel, as long as alternative forms of travel exist…why would the same logic not apply to keeping and bearing arms?
Yes the right implied is to keep an bear any arms. You know private citizens can and have bought tanks right? Why do you presume I would disagree with that?
Yes the right implied is to keep an bear any arms. You know private citizens can and have bought tanks right? Why do you presume I would disagree with that?
Because it’s objectively false. You need a special license to own a machine gun… you can buy a tank, sure, but it will have been demilitarized or would require a destructive device permit from the government. You can’t own a working missle or biological weapon either without being granted special privledge from the government.
According to German law crossbows, swords and polearms are arms, but unrestricted (well, you have to be 18 but that’s it) and of those only crossbows, as projectile arms, have storage requirements (locked box, ammo separate). Bows maybe surprisingly aren’t even arms and you can open-carry them without any issue – culturally speaking, only if you’re young enough or look like you’re on your way to a range. Certainly open-carried a bow at times when I was six or seven, thereabouts, granted the thing was so shoddy you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with it.
I’d say if the US can restrict you from bearing howitzers and F16s, it can restrict you from bearing guns, or enact requirements proportional to their power as arms and the risks involved.
That’s exactly the point. Nobody arguing in good faith thinks that any US citizen should be able to own missiles or artillery or machine guns. All the reasonable folks agree that the government DOES have the power to limit our right to fire powerb it’s just a matter of where you draw that line. I’d prefer it to be drawn somewhere that meant less than 630 mass shootings a year… maybe somewhere closer to 1 or 2 a year as opposed to 1-2 a day, but I’m clearly a communist/socialist/deep state lizard person.
If you were a communist you’d like guns, and revert to the strong ‘under no pretext’ instead of the weak ‘shall not be infringed’
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Lmao. Sounds like you don’t understand what a constitutional right is.
The best argument you can come up with is “common sense” but it’s me who doesn’t understand constitutional rights. Lol It’s still early, but I’m going to bet that this is the projection of the day.
If you understand it so well, you should be able to explain it to everyone else.
I guess it isn’t common sense. You have the right to bear arms, requiring you to pay to carry arms infringes that right.