Weighing run for governor, David Jolly proposes gun liability insurance to reduce violence
When it comes to guns, doing nothing can be an accomplishment for the Florida Legislature.
Now, David Jolly is asking voters if they are OK with that.
Jolly is a former Republican congressman from St. Petersburg introducing himself to voters elsewhere as a potential Democratic candidate for governor. He's holding a series of town halls; among the things he's talking about is gun violence.
At an April 30 town hall in Broward County, he said lawmakers should look into requiring liability insurance for firearms as a way to reduce gun violence. The idea is to leverage the profit motives of insurance companies as part of a responsible gun ownership framework.
One catch: The idea is under challenge in the courts.
Nonetheless, a change in approach is needed, according to Jolly: Florida witnessed six mass shootings – defined as an incident involving four people injured or killed, not including the shooter – in the first four months of 2025. The shootings claimed 10 lives and injured 20.
There have been 19 mass shootings in the state since 1987, when lawmakers began a spree of repealing gun control measures to make firearms more easily accessible.
According to information from the Statista data company, combined with the Gun Violence Archive daily totals, Florida is third in the number of mass shootings since 1982, behind California with 35 and Texas with 29.
In a follow-up conversation with the Democrat, Jolly said a major obstacle to reducing gun violence is that the 'Republican majority in Tallahassee won't even consider talking about gun safety measures.'
While Luis Valdes of Gun Owners of America calls liability insurance for firearms a violation of civil liberties – 'We don't force insurance on free speech. Why guns?' Valdes said – he probably doesn't need to worry about the conversation Jolly wants to have.
The GOP supermajority at the Capitol, backed by a base of Second Amendment absolutists, rarely allow such a proposal or any gun safety measure to see the light of a committee hearing.
For seven years straight, Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, has filed bills to strengthen background checks for firearms purchases and require safe storage requirements to no avail. None of her bills have ever been scheduled for a hearing.
Polsky said legislative leaders do not want to expose their members in a discussion or recorded vote about public safety and the Second Amendment.
'If they vote for gun safety, then the people on the right go nuts. If they vote against gun safety, then people in the middle and on the left go nuts. So, they kind of feel like there's no winning, and we do nothing,' Polsky said.
This year, when a proposal to lower the minimum age to purchase a rifle was defeated, advocates for gun safety, Democrats and Republicans all declared victory – albeit behind closed doors.
Nothing was done to make the state's gun laws worse, Polsky said, but lawmakers 'certainly are not making them any better.'
Jolly says he does not know if leveraging insurance companies' profit motives to vet potential gun owners as responsible adults would be any more effective than relying on the political motivations of elected officials to do it.
Jolly responded to two Florida mass shootings as a member of Congress, explaining Florida's gun culture and laws to reporters, including after the Pulse nightclub killings in Orlando, the second worst mass shooting in U.S. history. And he served as an MSNBC commentator during coverage of eight more Florida shootings after he left Congress in 2017.
The idea of liability insurance for firearms dates to the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six staff members died.
In 2022, the San Jose City Commission approved a Gun Harm Reduction Ordinance that requires gun owners to obtain an insurance policy to cover any damages created by a shooting. New Jersey requires a $300,000 liability policy to carry a handgun in public. Both laws are currently tied up in lawsuits.
It's a conversation Jolly wonders whether Floridians are interested in having as he weighs a decision to enter the 2026 gubernatorial contest.
'I do know we're not doing enough, and everything should be on the table,' Jolly said about gun safety.
If the goal, as Jolly says, its to construct "an architecture around gun ownership that increases the level of responsibility," then Valdes has an idea for the table to discuss.
"Let's make the (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's) hunter safety course part of the high school curriculum so that every student learns responsible firearm use and graduates smarter – and safer," Valdes said.
James Call can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com and is on X as @CallTallahassee.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Liability insurance for guns? David Jolly's plan to curb violence
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