Federally Mandated Firearm Liability Insurance (Reposted)

 

In the immediate aftermath of the Newtown massacre I posted a short piece on the issue of gun control. Twelve years later, the idea I proposed in that essay has achieved no traction. In the wake of the most recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, the discussion of the issue has settled into familiar patterns. Calls for "common sense legislation" like background checks abound. Unfortunately, the inevitable lack of motion on such basic proposals cannot help but radically demoralize citizens and politicians. I thus hope that re-posting my idea from a decade ago might be timely in the face of persistent sorrow, in the hope that a different approach to the problem might break our political deadlock:

The legal and social forces impacting this question [of gun control] are intensely complex, but the need is so urgent that I hope we may see forceful and rapid action to reform our gun law regime in significant terms. In that spirit, I would like to add my voice to others who have proposed a policy solution that might form a departing point of consensus over a fraught issue: the adoption of a federal mandate requiring liability insurance for the purchase and ownership of a firearm.

First, let me address the underlying principle of such a proposal. The logic of requiring gun owners to purchase liability insurance is the same as that which applies to users of automobiles. Right now the rights of gun ownership are private, but the costs of gun accidents, injuries, and violence are socialized. This is a fundamentally unfair situation. The second amendment guarantees that gun ownership is a right, not a universal actuality on the terms most convenient to those desiring weapons. If the second amendment allows that every citizen may be compelled to pay the fair market value of a weapon, it also allows that each gun owner may contribute toward private funds mitigating the social costs of gun use.

This policy would naturally serve as a "gateway" impediment that would deter gun sales, and those who oppose gun law reform might argue that it would keep firearms out of the hands of those who "need" them. This is a complicated point of contention, but it in no way rises to the level of a disqualifying objection. The potential benefits of such a policy are so salient that any ancillary "down side" could be remediated by, for example, the passage of subsidies to make coverage accessible to small business owners and low-income citizens who might otherwise be blocked from gun ownership.

In social policy terms, this measure would be a versatile means to use the forces of the free market to foster gun safety and responsible gun use. Actuarial studies could determine the level of liability coverage that was optimal for all gun owners, and private insurers could be relied upon to sell such coverage to individual gun owners at the fair market cost. Naturally, gun owners who could demonstrate that they had adequate gun safety training, had laid plans for the secure storage of their weapons, and had purchased weapons whose design minimized social hazards (e.g. "smart guns" with private locks or designed to be operable only by their owner) would attain the most favorable rates of coverage from private insurers. Such an insurance regime would not only influence gun owners, but gun manufacturers and retailers as well, incentivizing them to adopt best standards and practices that promote gun safety and security in the community at large. Thus with a minimum of government intervention behaviors could be widely fostered that would be socially constructive and might deter tragedies like the most recent sorrow in Newtown.

We Will Only Miss Roe When It Is Gone

It was very disorienting, on stepping off the plane after an 18-hour flight to Singapore, to be assaulted by the news that the Supreme Court is on the verge of overturning Roe v. Wade. It was a scene from a sci-fi novel. Somehow the plane had not only deposited me on the other side of the globe, but in an alternative reality. Something like the “multiverse” described in the most recent Spider-Man movie.

            The gratuitous pain that will flow from these events is bizarre to contemplate. Media coverage and mainstream political commentary will focus on the reductive issues of abortion and choice. We will hear much about the horrors of back-alley procedures and the crushing economic consequences of unwanted pregnancy. While all of those concerns are real, they are just the tip of a large and grotesquely toxic iceberg. Roe has been protecting us from some of the most malignant dimensions of our own politics for many decades. We have taken the decency and social equity produced by Roe for granted, and are going to REALLY miss it once it is gone.

            Absent a consensus that a woman has full rights over her own body, the full power of the government will be available to be harnessed by fanatics and bigots of all stripes and magnitudes. If the rights of a fetus can trump those of the woman who carries it, all women become subject to massively expanded surveillance powers of the state, and will be susceptible to controls to which no fully autonomous citizen would be compelled to assent.

The government will have an interest in knowing whenever a women is late for her period, so as to know whether or not she is carrying a “person” in need of “protection.” Each woman’s movements and habits will thus be open to expanded scrutiny to that end. Any time a woman might be pregnant it will be logical to restrict her work and travel. She could not do any job that might increase the risk of a miscarriage, and would have to be prevented from traveling to a place where abortion is legal.

Anyone who scoffs at such worries sounds a lot like those Germans who laughed off the danger to Jews in Germany in 1933, when Hitler first became Chancellor. If you create an opportunity for fanatics to use state power they seize it, and they use it without any regard for what the majority might consider “reasonable” or “decent.”  Most Americans do not vote on the issue of reproductive freedom because it is much like food: as long as you have it in good supply, you pay little attention to where it comes from. It is only when such a basic asset begins to run out that it becomes an urgent concern. Those voters who did concern themselves intensely with reproductive freedom before now were mainly concerned that everyone else had too much of it. As those voters' wishes come true, everyone else is going to feel the noose drawing tighter.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, it will be the moral equivalent of reinstating the Dred Scott decision or nullifying Brown v. Board of Education. Instantly, millions of Americans will be turned into second-class citizens. The practical impact of that state of affairs on the lives of millions of women will be slow to build, but inexorable. The only redress will be to amend the Constitution by way of restoring the autonomy and dignity of all Americans. In the current climate of polarization it is difficult to imagine such a remedy meeting with success. But as the fanatics and bigots do their work, and as the peace, security, and decency that Roe afforded us as a society melts away, the momentum to amend the Constitution will build. The task will be long and the effort strenuous, but the work begins now.