Not That We Were Going To, But We Cannot Trust John Delaney With Big Decisions

After the death of more than two dozen people in less than 24 hours at two mass shootings at opposite ends of the country, presidential candidates started to weigh in with potential potential policy solutions. Former Maryland congressman and CNN favorite John Delaney suggested a doozy of an idea.

I’ll type the tweet out for you: “There are many things we need to do on gun safety, including requiring liability insurance to own/purchase a firearm (like we do to own a car). It would probably cost an average hunter $5 a year, but if you have a history of hate crimes it would be cost prohibitive. Commonsense.”

Here it is in case you think I made something up, or made a typo.

I truly don’t know where to start. I guess we’ll go with the most bananas phrase I have ever read — and I finished Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. This is not a brag (the book was bad), just a way to show you that I have a high tolerance for utterly bananas phrases showing up in the written word.

“If you have history of hate crimes” ????? “it would be cost prohibitive” ???? “Commonsense.” ????

I actually looked up the definition of “commonsense” to see if I learned the wrong definition somewhere along the 27 years I’ve been on the planet. I haven’t. I just hadn’t apparently adequately considered what goes through the mind of a mass shooter before they decide to commit a utterly horrific act against their fellow human beings. Apparently a shooter couldn’t possibly live with their gun liability insurance premium going up after committing (I guess) another hate crime (because in Delaney’s world they’ve already committed plural hate crimes)! Insurance is apparently the thing that’s going to get us all out of this gun violence mess!! Who knew!!! The insurance company man THAT’S WHO.

The fact that this man has (successfully? He is worth a lot of money) led large corporations is a credit to all the people that helped him not say ideas like this one to shareholders. I blame CNN.