Linsky filed the Comprehensive Gun Violence Prevention Legislation Earlier This Week
The Office of Representative David. P. Linsky (D-Natick) announced earlier this week that Rep. Linsky has filed “An Act To Reduce Gun Violence and to Protect the Citizens of the Commonwealth.” The proposed Bill will aim at closing loopholes in existing state laws, requiring mental health background checks, strengthening gun storage requirements and would requiring liability insurance for gun owners.
“This bill is a comprehensive effort to reduce all types of gun violence – murders, intentional shootings, accidental shootings and suicides. There is not one solution to reducing gun violence – we can’t eliminate it – but there are a lot of common-sense steps that we can take to significantly reduce the everyday tragedy of gun violence and deaths,” said Linsky.
The section requiring insurance can be found in Section 4 of the Bill which simply states:
Requires liability insurance for possession of a firearm, rifle or shotgun.
WBUR’s Morning Edition spoke with both Representative Linsky as well as Jim Wallace, the executive director of the Gun Owners Action League about this issue. At one point during the debate, the two weighed in on Rep. Linsky’s suggestion to require that all Mass. gun owners be required to have liability insurance. Here is what they had to say on that point:
You also want to require gun owners to purchase liability insurance. What’s the point of that? Isn’t that just going to make it more expensive for gun owners to buy and own a weapon just so that there will be fewer sales?
Linsky: No. That’s not what it’s about. What’s really behind that is, it’s getting insurance companies involved in gun safety to have a role in seeing how guns are manufactured, how guns are stored, how guns are kept in houses, what types of guns, what types of ammunition.
How much is it going to cost?
Linsky: I’m talking to people from the industry and it could be as little as $50 a year.
Jim, your view on liability insurance?
Wallace: To bring insurance companies in on a civil right in Massachusetts or anywhere else, frankly, is just unacceptable. I mean, I’ve dealt with insurance companies and I’ve got friends that are agents. The first thing they do when something happens is try to deny your coverage. So, I’m not exactly sure they’re the ones to tell us how to do things safely or manufacture things safely.
To read the entire transcript or to hear the podcast, continue on the the WBUR site here. To read the actual legislation Rep. Linsky is proposing click on the link below.
An Act to Reduce Gun Violence and to Protect the Citizens of the Commonwealth