The Associated Press

Hundreds Attend Boston Anti-Gun Violence Rally

BOSTON — Hundreds of Massachusetts residents have rallied on Beacon Hill in support of legislation to reduce gun violence, joining similar gatherings elsewhere in the country sparked by the December school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

U.S. Rep. Ed Markey and state Rep. David Linsky of Natick addressed about 200 people who attended Saturday’s rally, asking participants to contact their elected representatives and press them to support gun control.

Linsky, a former Middlesex County prosecutor, is the lead sponsor of legislation to require liability insurance for gun owners, among other proposals to tighten state gun laws.

He and other supporters of the bill filed last week say it would give those injured by a weapon a legal recourse, and create financial incentives that could reduce accidents and fatalities.

Other proposals are also being introduced.

WBUR Topics · Boston · Crime & Justice · Policy · Politics
  • http://www.facebook.com/rdubay1 Ryan Dubay

    Linksy is a moron is current bill is absolutely unconstitutional

    • X-Ray

      He is a Liberal. They are fond of telling people how they should act, feel and think, according to their precepts.

  • David_McClurkin

    Requiring “liability insurance for gun owners” – just like automobiles, I guess. Hmm, must be part of that taking personal responsibility thing. Guess that’s what “well-regulated” means there in the Constitution. Is insurance requirement some kind of “infringement” or something?

  • Derek

    “The Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.” -Samuel Adams, debates & Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 86-87.

  • http://www.facebook.com/kelly.allen.1481 Kelly Allen

    Hundreds? Only Hundreds? Really? Boston has changed.

  • Poor Richard

    Maybe 100 supporters at most and they were all bused
    in. I was there and live on Bowdoin st. where the coach buses were
    parked. A weekend or two ago people were there protecting our 2nd amendment
    right and the crowed dwarfed the crowd this weekend. Don’t let the media
    fool you, the crowed this weekend was minuscule compared to the crowed a few
    weeks ago.

    • http://www.facebook.com/futo.buddy Futo Buddy

      yup why was there so little coverage of the thousands who attended gun appreciation day?

  • http://www.facebook.com/futo.buddy Futo Buddy

    gun control is already dangerously out of hand in the commonwealth. we need to take the local bureacrats out of the process

  • http://www.facebook.com/futo.buddy Futo Buddy

    In recent weeks we have been deluged with legislative proposals attacking our Second Amendment Civil Rights in the wake of the horrific murders in Connecticut. One such proposal has been mandatory liability insurance for anyone lawfully owning any type of gun. Lawful gun owners rightfully consider this to be simply another way to tax gun ownership. They are of course correct on that assumption, but this proposal goes much deeper and is much more insidious!

    The anti-civil rights movement would gladly add taxes to our ability to lawfully possess guns, but the real purpose for mandatory insurance is to avoid the legislative and regulatory process altogether. The real purpose for insurance is to bring the “power” of the insurance companies against the Second Amendment. What does that mean? Our opposition has crafted a new way to attack us through the potential policies of private insurance companies who make up their own rules as to whom they insure and under what circumstances. Here are some possible examples of how these attacks could happen:

    Mandatory storage laws currently exist in Massachusetts. An insurance company as a condition of coverage could mandate an inspection of how you are complying with those laws. They could easily mandate the most expensive safes or even where those safes are kept.

    If you keep a loaded gun in the home for defensive measures, insurance premiums could be drastically increased or simply not provided.

    As so-called new technologies are proposed for firearms such as GPS locators insurance companies could mandate that all of our guns are “updated” as a condition of insurance.

    These companies could use bogus statistics from groups like the Violence Policy Center as a means of raising premiums for the ownership of certain firearms or deny coverage outright.

    If you have children in your home or perhaps an aging parent or spouse, companies can mandate certain conditions or again deny coverage.

    They could insist that ballistic information about your firearms be submitted to them and in return the government. The excuse used would be to defend a claim by using such info.

    Insurance companies would also be able to go after the industry as well. Federal legislation was passed years ago to prevent the firearms industry to be bankrupted from bogus lawsuits. However, the insurance companies would not bring lawsuits, but instead more insurance “policies” about what can be sold to their customers and how they should be manufactured.

    In the case that an insurance company chooses not to cover people for any reason, the mandatory insurance would then be provided by the government. This would further regulate how you obtain your insurance policy.

    These are just a few examples of the real purpose behind mandatory insurance so don’t be fooled that it will simply be an “affordable” and “reasonable” component to “responsible” gun ownership.

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