Gun Insurance Required 

It seems that our state and federal government leaders have grave reluctance, approaching cowardliness toward improving gun control.  Furthermore, would the government be good at enforcement even if gun control legislation was improved?  As evidence by systemic failures and holes in background check system, I have concerns.  A private/government cooperative approach may be to use insurance as a means to manage access to guns and provide incentive to responsive and accountable ownership.  I propose we attach accountability to gun ownership and require insurance coverage to compensate victims of gun-violence.  Then with every licensed gun, there would be a required proof of current insurance, with risk of penalties for both unlicensed as well as uninsured weapons.  Insurance companies would be interested in the additional business opportunity, but also would help greatly with assessing and conferring risk to weapon type, owner stability, and other critical factors of risk.  To legally operate an automobile, you are required to have insurance in addition to motor vehicle registration, and the cost of that insurance is relative to the safety of the vehicle, the driver and its use, storage, as well as location.  Seems like a comparable risk profile would be possible, with great differences in insurance cost for a handgun versus a semi-automatic rifle.  Furthermore, a gun store owner, or other weapons dealer, even private sellers would own the liability for selling guns without ensuring insurance was in place.  For sake of an example, imagine a $500 annual insurance for responsible gun ownership of a personal handgun, while an automatic or semi-automatic weapon under questionable ownership requirements may be nearly impossible to insure, or maybe it’s expense would be 10x the handgun, more like $5,000 annual cost.  This would be prohibitive for many, as it should be.  A lower cost insurable solution may be to keep a high-risk weapon at a range under lock and key to be used only there, and to move it would require a special permit and appropriate insurance.  In this way, gun enthusiasts could own, and use at a target range their weapons responsibly and with proper protections and oversight, bringing insurance costs more in line to the handgun price.  The insurance market would set and control pricing based on risk factors.  The government would only legislate the requirement for insurance.  I hope this may be a more palatable path toward gun control, and should be viewed as a part of a bigger picture of improvements in school protections, mental health improvements, ammunition and direct gun control.   We need a practical alternative to the current ineffective approach to gun control in the US today.  Quite possibly the insurance industry would be a suitable lobbyist balance to the NRA lobby.