Category Archives: Legislation (Advocated Here)

What Should Insurance to Counter CCR Look Like?

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Persons wanting a level of responsibility for public carrying of firearms should take the proposed federal Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (S-446) seriously.  It is the NRA’s biggest want out of this Congress, was introduced by John Cornyn–a very powerful Senator and has support by at least 37 Senate co-sponsors. There is similar support in the House. It could become law very quickly.  Its provisions would have the practical effect of making uncontrolled carry of weapons nationwide policy.  They would also be an impediment to stopping illegal street sales and possession by prohibited persons.  Adoption of an insurance requirement to protect victims is one of the most effective way to reduce the dangers that this would bring.

Mandatory gun insurance to gain adoption and to withstand the inevitable court challenges should be designed to provide real protection for victims and promote safe practices.  It should be structured differently than either insurance as a backdoor gun prohibition or “shooter protection insurance” as currently sold by the NRA and others.  The overall purpose of this blog is to examine how this is best done.

The sections below show the terms that should be included in an effective insurance mandate for this purpose. They can serve as an outline in drafting legislation when applied in light of other firearms laws in the relevant state.

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Concealed Carry Reciprocity and an Insurance Requirement

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Proposed bills have been introduced in the House (HR-38) and the Senate (S-446) which would allow holders of permits to carry firearms in all states. They have gathered a substantial number of sponsors. The current language of the bills is very broad and would not only prevent state restrictions on out of state permit holders but allow residents of states without a permit requirement to carry firearms nationwide. There are provisions to allow persons arrested under state laws to recover damages and legal expenses.

If this law passes states will have great difficulty enforcing any restrictions on gun carrying because of the difficulty in establishing that a person is not a resident of another state and because of the difficulty of checking the validity of out-of-state permits. There will be great pressure on states to relax requirements for their own citizens to match those of other states with no restrictions.

In this situation, an insurance mandate could be very important in providing at least some responsibility requirement.

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HR-2546 Firearm Risk Protection with Suggested Personal Injury Clause

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Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY-12) has introduced a bill, HR-2546, to require insurance for firearm transfers again in the congress.  The bill has been co-sponsored by representatives: Blumenauer (OR-3), Clark (MA-5), Grijalva (AZ-3), Lynch (MA-8), McGovern (MA-2), Rangel (NY-13), and Tsongas (MA-3).  It is a requirement for liability insurance for sales of firearms.  As introduced it does not specify the amount of insurance required or the parties to be protected by the insurance.

This blog has pointed out many times the limitations of the liability insurance model for protecting victims of gun violence; but many people easily see the parallels between the car insurance requirement and the need for gun insurance.  Liability insurance, as implemented in various states for the protection of people injured by cars, is often modified by the provisions of a mandate to be in a form which, while called liability insurance, is really based on some other insurance system.  These systems are typically called no-fault insurance or personal injury protection as well as being nominally called liability insurance.  They pay benefits directly to victims.

One of the good models for gun insurance is found in the requirement for a personal injury protection endorsement to car insurance in Rep. Maloney’s own state, New York.  It is codified in New York Regulation 68.   This provides for persons not covered by their own insurance (such as most pedestrians) a requirement for no-fault benefits which are paid directly to first parties (injured persons). 

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Mandatory Insurance for Armed Professions is Normal

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We see armed people working around us on a daily basis.  Some of these private professionals are highly visible such as guards for banks and armored car services and some are less obvious to the eye such as private investigators or detectives.  In almost all states there are requirements for them to have licenses and in most states they must have insurance or bonds that function as insurance.  But there is tremendous variation in the requirements and in the definitions and terminology of the various roles.

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Voluntary Insurance and Strict Liability as Good First Steps

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Much of this blog is about how insurance should be designed and how it would work if an ideal insurance mandate was in place.  Opponents of such a mandate point out real and imagined problems that would prevent such insurance from working.  When the possibilities are examined the problems turn out only to apply to particular models of insurance and can be avoided by designing the insurance for the particular nature of guns and gun violence.

But there are also transitional problems that could block adoption of an insurance mandate that would work well once it was in place.  The most important of these problems is the fact that gun insurance that would protect victims does not exist currently.  The insurance that is designed to protect gun owners from accidental or self-defense incidents is very narrow and is not adapted to the need to protect victims even to the extent that existing liability laws could allow the redress in the courts.

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Federal Mandate for Top-Down Insurance

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A federal requirement that all manufacturers and importers have insurance that protects victims of their products with a top-down provision requiring it to continue until replaced is the core of a successful system for guns. Ideally this requirement would specify the terms and benefits laid out in the next level for state legislation that seriously provides for victims, but this will describe the minimum requirements that should be specified on a national level.

A bill (H.R.1369) proposing mandated gun insurance was introduced in the United States Congress in 2013, but it did not specify details of the insurance required in the language of its introduced.

The legislation should require that, before manufacturing or importing a firearm, insurance must be accepted by an insurance company specifically authorized to issue such insurance by some state. In order to make certain that the required financial stability is available, all such insurers should be required to join a pool backed by all such insurers guaranteeing each insurers ability to pay valid claims. Once an insurer accepts responsibility for a certain gun, that responsibility is only relinquished when another qualified insurer takes it on. Continue reading →

Questions and Answers on Mandating Gun Insurance.

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Updated 12/22/2022

This post is a good place to start if you’re new to this blog. Scan the questions and follow the ‘Related:’ link(s) if you have an interest in a particular area.

Q: What is the purpose of mandating gun insurance?

Required insurance for guns or gun owners should be designed to provide benefits for victims of gun accidents or violence. Insurers will automatically take appropriate steps to encourage gun safety as part of their loss control and underwriting activities.

Related: Insurance-Good for Victims, Safety and Gun Owners

Q: What specifically would be the best insurance system for guns?

Each state should adopt a system of no-fault insurance with a system of delivering medical and cash benefits directly to victims. This insurance should be required to be in place for any firearm brought into or kept in the state in order for that firearm to be legal. It should provide all of the benefits available to victims of motor vehicle or workplace injuries.

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CCW Permit + Stand Your Ground = Insurance Need

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Many states have adopted stand your ground laws that protect shooters in public spaces that accidently(with or without negligence) either unintended bystanders or innocent persons who are wrongly believed to be a threat.  This is the most uncontroversial situation where insurance should be required.  These innocent people need to be protected and many of them are not insured themselves.

As this blog has argued people who have permits to carry weapons into streets and outside the home.  These people are more likely to confront real and perceived threats with an audience of bystanders.  They represent an additional risk over those who only have guns for protection in their homes.  These risks and the relative ease of insuring against it are described in another post “Enacting a Concealed Carry Insurance Mandate”

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Enacting a Concealed Carry Insurance Mandate

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While it would be ideal to have a gun insurance adopted at a single time as one well designed national mandate, it’s likely that political reality will force it to come into being in stages.  The logical place to start is for the more amenable states to require insurance for holders of permits to carry firearms in public.  If this can be extended to general coverage of guns in some of these states, the stage is set for a federal mandate for top-down insurance which extends into any state requiring insurance.  This in turn will encourage other states to have their own requirements in order not to have their citizens paying for insurance without their state receiving benefits for victims.

Concealed Carry as a Start and an End in Itself

Mandating gun insurance for holders of permits to carry weapons in public is much simpler than mandating gun insurance in general.  Permit holders are already registered with state government agencies; there is no need for an additional registration system.  They are generally responsible people who have already shown their willingness to cooperate with reasonable regulations.  Insurers will find these people to be desirable customers.  Most measures to deal with gun violence have to deal with the flood of illegal weapons that come from states with weak regulation of gun trafficking.  But, states requiring insurance for permits can simply refuse to recognize permits from other states without insurance requirements or require proof of insurance in addition to such a permit.

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The Need for State Regulated Gun Insurance with a Federal Mandate.

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The answer to the question of whether we need to mandate gun insurance at the federal or the state level is to have the mandate at the federal level and the regulation of the insurance at a state level.  The special problems that guns have of illegally traveling across state lines to do their damage and of states varying so much in their willingness to regulate guns can be solved by this structure.  The federal mandate should implement the top-down process for continuing insurer responsibility advocated by this blog.  It should require that the insurance pay benefits to victims in accordance with the gun insurance requirement in the state where the shooting occurs.

One of the special difficulties that makes guns different than almost any other risk, is that move around from state to state so easily once they are in illegal hands.  Much of the country has a relatively small problem with illegal guns and people there see no need to make access difficult.  In other parts of the country, there is a major problem with death and injuries from illegal guns.  No matter how carefully places like New York, Chicago and Washington, DC work to stop the transfer of firearms to dangerous people they cannot control the flood of weapons that come in from areas with more permissive policies. The process has been named the Iron Pipeline.

This blog believes that requiring insurance is a practical way to deal with the problem.  Insurers that remain responsible for deaths and injuries from guns after they pass into illegal hands will set up conditions to prevent that passage.  They will find ways to do this that are minimal inconveniences to legitimate gun owners.  The question is how to get a requirement for such insurance into place in this environment.  The states that sell the most guns are least likely to make such a mandate.

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