A Second Amendment Right to Be Negligent?

ABSTRACT:

Professor Andrew Jay McClurg maintains that the Second Amendment has been used to create a right to store firearms negligently. It is conceivable that some such thing could happen, just as the Supreme Court has used the First Amendment to require plaintiffs who are public figures to prove more than negligence in defamation actions. But Professor McClurg presents no evidence to support his claim. To accept his claim that the Second Amendment has caused courts to distort the application of standard tort principles, we would have to believe that they secretly relied on the Second Amendment and that they undertook this insidious project before they believed there was a legal basis for what they were doing. This is completely implausible. Professor McClurg, however, makes two additional claims that require a more extended response.

First, he maintains that courts have misapplied well-established tort principles in refusing to hold the victims of gun thefts liable for injuries subsequently inflicted with the stolen weapons. This is wrong. Courts are simply applying traditional tort doctrines — including proximate cause and limits on duties to protect strangers from wrongdoing by others — when they refuse to impose liability on a gun owner whose unsecured gun is stolen and subsequently used to commit a crime. 

Second, Professor McClurg contends that legislatures have irresponsibly failed to impose objectively reasonable safe-storage duties on gun owners. Unfortunately, he has conflated his personal policy preferences with what is objectively reasonable. He advocates a rule requiring gun owners to store their guns in a sturdy, non-portable gun safe whenever they are not within the owner’s immediate control. This rule simply assumes away the costs of safe-storage practices, which include the expense of gun safes and the risk of being unable to quickly access the gun in an emergency. Furthermore, the imposition of such a duty — whether by courts or legislatures — would raise serious Second Amendment questions.