Comment: Insurance required for cars; require for guns, too
By Jason Abaluck and Ian Ayres / Special To The Washington Post
A breakthrough on potential new gun regulations is welcome news, but the recently announced proposals from a bipartisan group of senators are striking in their narrowness. They include incentivizing states to pass more red-flag laws, improving background checks for buyers younger than 21 and widening the group of sellers required to register as federal firearms dealers. Better than nothing, these reforms nonetheless would address only a small fraction of the more than 45,000 gun deaths and 120,000 gun injuries that occur each year in the United States.
The modesty of the ideas on the table is a byproduct of intense polarization over gun rights, suggesting a need for new approaches. One possibility — long advocated by some economists — is to require gun owners to purchase liability insurance. This would create a several-hundred-billion-dollar incentive for insurers to find ways to reduce gun violence. Relative to other regulations, this requirement might even appeal to some gun rights advocates. The National Rifle Association wouldn’t support it, of course, but it might win support from conservatives looking for a market-based approach that wouldn’t have much impact on responsible gun owners.
Gun insurance would accomplish two goals: First, it would raise the cost of gun ownership for people whose firearms are deemed relatively more likely to be used in crimes (by themselves or others), based on an assessment of risk factors made by insurance companies. That would make those people less likely to obtain guns in the first place. Second, it would provide a strong financial incentive for gun owners to keep these weapons out of the hands of people who might commit crimes with them. Granted, mass shooters won’t be concerned about their future premiums; but many owners would take steps to ensure their weapons are well secured. And a 21-year-old with a history of violent behavior might find it much harder to obtain a gun if insurers insist that they pay premiums equal to several times the purchase price of a weapon. (Insurance would be a condition of ownership.)
The logic is analogous to that underpinning car insurance. If you drive a car, you may seriously damage another person’s property or even kill them. To discourage reckless driving, the law makes you legally liable should this happen. For most people, the potential liability exceeds their savings, which is why all 50 states require car owners to buy car insurance so payments can be made in the event of an accident.
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