Added responsibility has been placed upon US citizens purchasing and owning guns. This is following New York House Representative Carolyn Maloney’s new bill. The legislation requires all gun owners to have liability insurance cover. Failure to have this sort of insurance protection is to attract fines of up to 10,000 US dollars.
The New York House Representative has compared this liability insurance to car insurance. In her view, the car insurance has contributed to low fatality rates in the transport industry. The gun insurance policy is intended to introduce responsible behavior among those who are buying and owning guns for self-protection.
Maloney observed that auto insurance carriers have been obliged to incentivize drivers to take precautions that reduce accidents. Gun insurers will have to follow the same line of action with their clients to reduce gun fatality rates.
A large number of people are purchasing their firearms online. This rule will apply universally to people who buy their guns from an online merchant who has an online firearm merchant account just the same way it does to those who buy guns in-store.
This piece of legislation comes as an adjustment to the Second Amendment rights that allow all the US citizens to purchase guns for their individual security.
In a statement that has been met with strong criticism from different analysts, Rep. Carolyn Maloney has observed that car insurance has contributed to a 25 percent decline in the number of related fatalities in the last decade alone. Gun fatalities on the other hand have been on the rise according to her.
Some critics have termed Maloney’s stats as incorrect. They have noted that gun related homicides have reduced by 39 percent between 1993 and 2011 according to the Bureau of Crime Statistics. They have further supported their counterargument with data from Pew Research that provides a higher figure. According to this research agency, gun homicides are down 49 percent between 1993 and 2010. This shows that America is least violent at the moment, with violent crime continuing to go down.
Whether or not this piece of legislation is going to make America a safer place remains to be seen. The effectiveness of this law now lies upon its implementation.