Insurance as Gun Control

"In response to the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., some legislatures have begun to consider new regulations requiring gun owners to purchase liability insurance. Unlike similar requirements for automobile owners, such laws could easily be written in ways that would render them unconstitutional. This article explores some of the constitutional pitfalls, but concludes that a carefully drafted statute would probably be upheld under current constitutional doctrine. The benefits to public safety would be modest, but such a regulation would be preferable to many politically popular gun control proposals that would be ineffective, unconstitutional, or both. The Second Amendment protects "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms." This right is not unqualified, but its core purpose is to protect the individual's interest in self-defense. Regulatory measures that may decrease the misuse of guns frequently also compromise the ability of individuals to defend their lives. Thus, gun control laws make tradeoffs between the legitimate interests of the individual and the government, and the judiciary's emerging Second Amendment jurisprudence will largely be concerned with policing those tradeoffs."

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