A New Way to Backdoor a Gun Ban: Onerous Insurance

Want a gun in Illinois? Fine. Then you’ll be forced to carry an expensive, million dollar insurance policy to be “allowed” to observe your Second Amendment right. At least, that will be the law if lefty gun-banner Kenneth Dunkin has any say in the matter.

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Dunkin (D, Chicago) has made this attempt to undermine the Second Amendment even worse than a mere “insurance” policy. He has also slipped into this unConstitutional morass a provision that says gun owners will be liable if their gun is used in a crime after it has been stolen from them. The bill also authorizes the State Police to confiscate the firearm owner’s ID (FOID) from any citizen that doesn’t comply with purchasing the hefty insurance policy.

Rep. Kenneth Dunkin’s bill seeks to amend the state’s Firearm Owners Identification Card Act to provides that any person who owns a firearm in the state maintain a $1 million or higher policy of liability insurance “specifically covering any damages resulting from negligent or willful acts involving the use of such firearm while it is owned by such person.” A gun owner would be responsible after a firearm is lost or stolen until the loss or theft is reported to the police department or sheriff of the jurisdiction in which the owner resides. Police would be empowered to pull the gun license of anyone who does not submit evidence of having the required insurance.

Now this stolen-yet-liable idea is one that the city of Philadelphia dealt with not long ago. It passed there so apparently it has given other cities the idea to pursue this back door demonization of gun owners. Dunkin has introduced HB 687 in the State House in Springfield supposedly to assure that firearm owners are “legal” in the Land of Lincoln but as gun owners continue to point out legally owned guns are rarely connected to crimes of any kind. Obviously, though, this has nothing at all to do with public safety, legality, or the Second Amendment. This is but one more backdoor attempt to make owning a gun so expensive, fraught with regulation and difficult that more and more people will simply give up their rights. It is a backdoor banning plain and simple.

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