Five South Dakota legislators introduced a bill requiring adults to own a firearm “sufficient to provide for their ordinary self-defense.”
Many readers didn’t understand that this was tongue-in-cheek. One bill sponsor expects the bill to fail, but he introduced it to make a point about ObamaCare.
“Do I or the other cosponsors believe that the State of South Dakota can require citizens to buy firearms? Of course not. But at the same time, we do not believe the federal government can order every citizen to buy health insurance.”
Reading the article comments, it appears they made another point: Those who think it’s okay to mandate buying health insurance will hyperventilate over mandating gun ownership.
It’s also clear that many readers couldn’t comprehend the article, which was only 191 words long. This makes another, even sadder point: We’re losing the ability for civil discourse partly because so many people can’t read. The way public education is going, don’t look for this to change anytime soon.
I thought that you could not get comment streams with more stupidity than those at the Huffington Post, but the comment stream on the ArgusLeader article shows that I was wrong.
The failure to comprehend goes beyond the Argus readers, I’m afraid. Yesterday in claiming Judge Vinson had stayed his order, the anonymous WH spokesman and various reporters including those at the NYT and Washington Post all erred. This is an astonishing example of the sloppy thinking an inadequate reading skills of our cultural and political elite.
The obvious solution to this is for anyone who doesn’t own health insurance and needs medical help be liable that their property or valuables be confiscated up to the point of paying their medical bills. This of course would not apply to anyone who did not own anything. This way the burden would fall on the person who refuses to plan for his/her future and is too cheap to pay for their own care. This would not require a new law since one’s debts are already subject to many laws, both state and federal.
If it’s an attempt to make a point about HCAA, it’s an exceedingly dumb one. The health insurance mandate has logic on its side whereas this is just theater.
Logic is in the mind of the beholder. I used to believe nobody should own a gun, but after extensive research (no NRA data allowed) I found it was more logical for good people to be armed. After all, if it saves a life…as the gun banners say.
You also need to study the history of Obamacare. The insurance industry and AMA were behind it. Makes one wonder…