No-fault is necessary for Gun Insurance

No-fault is necessary for Gun Insurance

A new posting on YouTube by this blog.

Good insurance for protecting persons injured by guns has to be no-fault. No-fault insurance does not require showing the INSURED person – the gun owner – has been negligent. It can be based on victims having their own insurance. But that isn’t the way for gun insurance. In most areas such as cars and jobs with worker’s compensation insurance – the vehicle or company owners take out the insurance.

The video can be accessed at

https://youtu.be/yLOWV9MWPpA

Script

We need to require good insurance to compensate victims of gun violence.

One of the most important principles for effective insurance is that it must be no-fault.

If error or misbehavior on the part of the shooter or of the injured person has to be weighed before benefits can be given, they will be too late and too uncertain.

#####################################

Good insurance for protecting persons injured by guns has to be no-fault. No-fault insurance does not require showing the INSURED person – the gun owner – has been negligent. It can be based on victims having their own insurance. But that isn’t the way for gun insurance. In most areas such as cars and jobs with worker’s compensation insurance – the vehicle or company owners take out the insurance.

A requirement to prove negligence on the part of the insurance buyer is the biggest barrier to insurance being effective for gun injuries.

This may be because the gun owner is not be the shooter.

Many incidents happen when someone else has the gun.

Perhaps, kids in the household have found an improperly stored pistol.

Perhaps, the gun is in the name of an illegal straw purchaser who bought it for her felonious boyfriend.

Perhaps the gun was stolen.

There are many possibilities.

And, it’s hard to prove what happened in an incident.

The shooter is likely to deny responsibility or

To claim it was an unavoidable accident OR

That the victim was in some way responsible.

The person who was shot may have died and only one side of the story is available.

And, then, many states have STAND-YOUR-GROUND laws which block responsibility.

The other side of the fault concept is “blaming the victim.”

This seems to be so common whenever someone is afraid of being responsible for their actions.

From saying it’s the kids fault for getting in the forbidden closet — to saying that the late night visiting friend, unfortunately, seemed to be a criminal breaking in the house, there’s always a way to attempt to shift responsibility.

These issues will take years to settle if it’s done by the legal system.

But the needs of victims are there regardless of fault.

The needs are immediate.

The victim may be dead or lack the means to press a complex claim and to fund a law suit.

The insurers have a massive incentive to fight to the end and to resist.

This is both because the claims can be very large — and because a reputation for an insurer being tough prevents future claims from others.

Running out the clock is an effective strategy for those who don’t want to pay.

But the no-fault concept avoids these problems.

Just two factors to determine benefits—the nature of the injury with resulting needs and that the covered firearm was involved.

So we can concentrate on being able to identify guns to know the proper place to make the claims.

Tracking serial numbers and sampling projectiles or casings can be of potential use.

If most incidents have identifiable insurers, an uninsured gun fund can be established which would be similar to the uninsured vehicle funds found in some states.

No-fault especially simplifies the use of non-monetary benefits such as medical care.

These are for the most time sensitive needs.

There just isn’t time to determine responsibility for the shooting before treatment in an emergency room.

Even payments for burial in fatal cases can’t wait for years.

Certainty and speed go hand-in-hand in providing for real needs.

And, there are other time sensitive needs.

Lost work can so damage the finances of a family that it falls apart — and this can happen quickly.

The injured person can be disabled temporarily or permanently, leaving dependent survivors destitute.

Per-diem payments for lost work should start right away and are provided for in many other kinds of insurance such as worker’s compensation and automotive personal injury protection systems.

The no-fault concept has proven effective in diverse areas when insurance is required by law for those engaging in specific activities.

For example, some states have their automobile insurance systems basically no-fault.

In most cases, this means that you would collect first from your own insurer.

But, if you are in a category, such as being a pedestrian, which does not require insurance, then you can collect on a no-fault manner on the insurance of the car which hit you.

Seventeen states require that car owners have personal-injury-protection (PIP) insurance which covers injuries to people in the insured car in a no-fault manner.

Where the purpose of the insurance is to encourage confidence in the safety of an activity or to compensate those harmed by the activity rather than those ENGAGED in the activity, no-fault is by far the better approach.

There are some interesting federal programs that are essentially no-fault insurance.

One is the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The Health Resources and Services Administration says: “The V I C P is a no-fault alternative to the traditional legal system for resolving vaccine injury petitions.”

Another is the fact that the so-called “liability” insurance requirement for Nuclear Accidents was amended in 1966 to be no-fault.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says “Price-Anderson claimants would need to show only (1) personal injury or property damage, (2) monetary amount of loss, and (3) causal link between the loss and the radioactive material released.”

The most important no-fault system we have is our Worker’s Compensation system.

This is why it’s the best model for the benefit system for gun insurance.

One is only required to show the injury with a need for compensation or medical services and that the injury was incurred on the job.

Insurers know that prompt and effective medical care is cheaper in the long run.

So that have established a wide variety of systems in various states provide that care.

We need to require gun insurance; and, if it’s going to work to mitigate deaths and injuries, it has to be no-fault insurance.

The Workers’ Compensation Bargain. A Model for Gun Insurance?

This is the second post in a series about workers’ compensation insurance as a model for mandating gun insurance.  The series starts with Firearms and the History of Workers’ Compensation.

The two sides of the bargain

The Great Bargain of Workers’ Compensation is called that because employers gain immunity from lawsuits for negligence from their workers and the workers gain certainty that they will be compensated for work injuries by compulsory insurance purchased by the employers.   As the first post in this series described; the system came out of an intense reform effort from many people determined to protect and benefit workers; but employers, especially the larger firms, also pressed hard for enactment of the system.  The result was adoption of compulsory insurance in many states before 1920.  Even in states where an employer could elect not to participate (still allowed in Texas) nearly all employers opted in to get protection from liability.

Continue reading

About a Law Review Article on Stolen Guns

This post was published on Daily Kos.

I have been advocating a mandate for gun insurance for two years now.  In order for insurance to cover the majority of shootings, it must cover not only the original, proper or legal owner of a gun but anyone who might pick up the gun or steal it and later use it.  This is the most controversial part of my recommendation, which is:

Insurance should be required of manufacturers and importers of firearms that would cover all persons injured with a firearm having at least the benefits for an injured worker of average wages under workers compensation in the state where the injury occurs.  The insurance should remain in effect no matter how the gun is transferred to anyone else until it is replaced by similar insurance taken out by a new owner or the gun is certified destroyed.

Continue reading

Firearms and the History of Workers’ Compensation

This is the first of a series of posts which are designed to show that workers’ compensation systems, insurance and laws are an excellent–the best that we have–model for dealing with gun violence victim compensation and for reducing that victimization.

A little over one hundred years ago, our country faced a crisis that was quite similar to the gun violence problem that we now face.  Industrial and work related accidents were completely out of hand, producing deaths and injuries that reached almost every family.  Looking back on my own family history, a great uncle on my fathers side was killed and my mothers grandfather lost an arm–both in railroad accidents of that era.  It’s mostly forgotten today but it was a great issue at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Continue reading