If you live in South Dakota and don’t buy yourself some armament, you’re gonna be violating the law…
The measure is known as an act “to provide for an individual mandate to adult citizens to provide for the self defense of themselves and others.”Rep. Hal Wick, R-Sioux Falls, is sponsoring the bill and knows it will be killed. But he said he is introducing it to prove a point that the federal health care reform mandate passed last year is unconstitutional.
“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,” he said.
The point is valid; if the government can force you to buy one private product (ie: health insurance), then they can force you to buy any private product (ie: a gun). Funny thing is, it’ll be harder to argue the gun law seeing as gun ownership is a protected Constitutional right and health care is not.
Normally I would be annoyed at a showboating move like this, but if the court rules (like others have) that you can’t force someone to buy something, it’ll be a tough precedent to avoid once the health care legislation legal fight really starts happening.