Dakota Dumbass

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Earlier this week a South Dakota Republican decided to mock the individual insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act (originally a Republican proposal) by proposing that every eligible adult over the age of 21 be required to purchase a gun in South Dakota. Ahahaaha! This jokester simply displayed his ignorance of law and history.

As Ezra Klein explains in The tyranny of 1792:

In South Dakota, Rep. Hal Wick introduced a bill mandating that the state's residents purchase firearms so they could protect themselves. But he's not serious about it. “Do I or the other co-sponsors 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 explained. But Wick made two mistakes.

First, South Dakota is a state. As any federalist could explain, it can do lots of things that the federal government cannot. This is why no one is questioning the legality of the individual mandate currently operating in Massachusetts.

Second, as Jack Balkin points out, the federal government actually did tell American citizens that they had to purchase firearms. Here's the Militia Act of 1792:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia … That every citizen, so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise or into service …

Balkin, a Yale Law professor, takes the opportunity to make a broader point:

The notion that being asked to either buy health insurance and make health care accessible for one's fellow citizens — or to pay a small tax — is a form of tyranny akin to George III's regime is simply bizarre: it shows how perverted and twisted public discourse has become in the United States. The assault on the individual mandate is really an assault on the public duty to assist other Americans in need, and in particular, an assault on the legal obligation to pay taxes to contribute to the general welfare. The assault on the health care bill is not a defense of liberty. It is a defense of selfishness.

E.J. Montini of the Arizona Republic has his own take today The coming 'requirement' to bear arms in our state.