Today’s feature is from the NSSF via our companion service Shooting News Weekly.
Bigstock
New York Democratic state Sen. Kevin Parker thinks he has a solution for Big Apple crime. He’s “California dreaming” about more gun control in the hopes he can solve the problem for Empire State residents. Never mind holding violent criminals accountable for their crimes, though. No, Sen. Parker introduced a bill to mandate all law-abiding gun owners in New York purchase gun owner liability insurance coverage, instead.
Nickle and Diming Gun Owners’ Rights Away
Add liability insurance to the growing list of gun control restrictions that activists and their elected allies are pushing to create higher roadblocks for law-abiding citizens to exercise their constitutional rights while ignoring the criminals causing the harm and ignoring those laws.
State Sen. Parker’s bill would require New York gun owners or potential owners to “obtain and continuously maintain a policy of liability insurance to cover any damages resulting from the use of such firearm.” Insurance, with damages covered of no less than $1 million in value, would also be required prior to the purchase of firearms by anyone not currently in possession of a firearm, according to media analysis.
Gun control activists like Sen. Parker must think New Yorkers are stupid. He’d require law-abiding gun owners to carry insurance but everyone knows that criminals are the ones misusing firearms. They don’t have nor will they heed insurance mandates, much less bother obtaining firearms legally. He even added language to his proposal to suggest as much. “By having this insurance policy in place, innocent victims of gun-related accidents will be compensated for the medical care for their injuries,” the bill states.
The only glimmer of hope law-abiding New York gun owners have regarding Sen. Parker’s bill is that it has failed before. The bill is sitting in committee awaiting a hearing, where it might linger like it did in the 2023-24 legislative session and five previous sessions going back to 2013.
However, New York gun owners know Gov. Kathy Hochul currently is still the state’s top executive and never met a gun control proposal she hasn’t liked.
Cross Country Copycat
New Yorkers have reason to remain vigilant over gun owners’ liability insurance mandates. They only need to look west to California. That’s where gun control cheerleaders and their media allies heralded the new at-the-time “innovative” tax was a shining example where city officials in San Jose, California believed the insurance mandate would offset the costs of criminal violence.
Former Democratic San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo pushed the measure through, all while suggesting it wouldn’t work. “Skeptics will say that criminals won’t comply. They’re right,” the mayor said. The former mayor is now Congressman Liccardo (D-Calif.), now bringing his gun control ideas to the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 2022, when the insurance mandate was implemented, it was a first-in-the-nation policy. The city ordinance was quickly challenged as unconstitutional. Harmeet K. Dhillon, an attorney representing gun rights advocates, spoke at a press conference to announce the legal challenge.
“It’s going to be the law-abiding citizens who actually deter crime by having weapons in their homes who are going to be the ones who bear the burden of this unconstitutional ordinance,” Dhillon said. Dhillon now serves in President Donald Trump’s administration as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 Bruen decision, the legal challenge to the insurance mandate was relitigated. However, in 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the insurance requirement for gun owners did not restrict gun firearm possession or use. While the requirement went into effect in 2023, San Jose officials are still “hammering out plans to enact the fee portion” and continued legal challenges remain likely as the process moves forward.
New York State of Mind
New Yorkers need to remain vigilant on gun control proposals bubbling up from Albany, no matter what their previous track record of failure may be. After all, Gov. Hochul has pushed for and signed several gun rights restrictions into law since she’s been the state’s top executive.
That includes at a recent signing ceremony where the governor enacted three separate gun control measures that won’t do anything to hold criminals accountable for committing violent crimes.
The first bill added illegal pistol converters to the definition of “rapid-fire modification devices,” which are already banned by federal law. The second bill ratchets up warnings firearm retailers must give customers about safety risks, as well as implementing the infamous and ineffective Merchant Category Code (MCC) to firearm-specifical retailers so the state can track how law-abiding New Yorkers might use credit cards to lawfully purchase firearms at retailers. Banking executives have stated the code won’t work as gun control enthusiasts want.
The hits keep coming for law-abiding gun owners, lawful purchasers and neighborhood firearm retailers in the Empire State. It’s more of the same nickel-and-dime laws that chip away at the ability of New Yorkers to exercise their constitutional rights. Sen. Parker’s gun owner liability insurance mandate is just the latest example of lawmakers suffocating the rights of law-abiding citizens while criminals will keep ignoring laws.
— Jake McGuigan is the Managing Director for Government Relations, State Affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
If you would like to receive a weekly rundown of stories from Shooting News Weekly you can subscribe here to the Friday newsletter.
