There has been a stream of media articles and blog posts calling for mandatory gun insurance since Newtown.  Many of them point out the desirability to have the market weigh the risks of different styles of gun ownership and price accordingly. Almost all have an underlying concern about Second Amendment issues with such a requirement but try to state bravely that it won’t ultimately win out. Here are some interesting recent ones. Continue reading →

Much of the discussion of gun insurance that is currently going on is for requiring that gun owners have liability insurance covering injuries from their firearms.  There is often a question as to whether it would be necessary for the owner to have been negligent in the incident or if a concept of strict liability would be made to apply.  This would require payment regardless of fault. Continue reading →

If you have information especially links to English translations of gun laws in other countries please send them to me.  (tom@guninsuranceblog.com) or make a comment to this post.  I have found some information about insurance of 100,000 euros being required in Portugal.  In Germany the amount is one million euros and the law (link to German Weapons Law)  says:

Section 4
Requirements for a licence

(1) In order to be granted a licence, applicants shall

1. be at least 18 years of age (Section 2 (1)),

2. have the necessary reliability (Section 5) and personal aptitude (Section 6),

3. demonstrate the necessary specialized knowledge (Section 7),

4. demonstrate a need (Section 8), and

5. enclose proof of liability insurance cover of one million euros for personal injury and property damage when applying for a weapons licence or shooting licence.

On Saturday 12-22-2012 the Journal News in New York State published the addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties in an article titled “Map: Where are the gun permits in your neighborhood.” This has generated a lot of predictable media articles and blog postings. Examples include ABC news blog, Daily Mail Online from London and HuffingtonPost. Most of the articles claim that there is widespread outrage but don’t give specific examples.

A blog For What It’s Worth is asking “Did the Journal-Newsbreak the law by posting gun permit holder’ s names?” It quotes a section of a bill in the New York state legislature which forbids giving out lists of holders for geographical areas. A comment points that this is just a bill not passed into law. The attempt to limit the requests shows something about the depth of concerns about privacy by gun advocates.

A tweet search shows about 20 critical tweets about “publishing gun owners” and several media articles claiming widespread outrage.

This looks to me more like an assumption on the part of the media than a lot of actual expression. If the intuition of journalists that a lot of objection to breaking gun owners privacy is there, they are probably right; but it’s not clear that it immediately surfaces. While I think that potentially vocal gun owners have deep feelings about being involuntarily made public, they have not yet been mobilized by a current threat. Perhaps the greater fear is that government identification is more important than public identification.

Robert Cyran and Reynolds: Holding Congress Should Pushfor Mandatory Gun Insurance

Guns are like cars–something with a built in danger which we have for better or worse to have around in our society.  But, with cars, we have a system for responsibility; the most important element is insurance to insure those who are hurt can be compensated.  This blog will look at some ways to accomplish this for guns.