Skip to footer

Next big thing in gun control? 7 questions about mandatory gun insurance.

As President Obama prepares to travel the country to drum up support for federal gun control laws ahead of a Senate vote in April, one idea is gaining steam at the state level: mandatory gun insurance.

2. Is it currently law anywhere?

Jessica Hil/AP/File
Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) of Connecticut, seen here are a gun violence conference in Danbury, Conn., in February, has asked state officials to study the efficacy of gun insurance legislation.

  • By Husna Haq Staff writer

No. No such law currently exists at either the state or federal level. However, liability insurance bills have been introduced in California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland as part of larger gun control packages.

Congress, notably, has not said it would consider mandatory gun insurance. Though President Obama has advocated for “common sense gun safety measures,” he also has not proposed such legislation.

At the state level, Massachusetts state Rep. David Linsky (D) is an outspoken champion of mandatory gun insurance laws and is pushing the legislation in his state. Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) of Connecticut has asked state officials to study the efficacy of such a measure.

2 of 7
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.