We need a system of required insurance as a tool to fight the tide of gun violence in this country. The insurance has to be adapted to the needs of the situation, as insurance is in almost every area. It needs to be real insurance to compensate the people who get shot and their families. Insurance designed just to hold gun owners and shooters responsible won’t cut it.
The time has come legislate such a system. There are some principles which would cause the system to work on a practical level, reduce the carnage and mitigate the damages. They include:
Direct payment to the injured persons, their families and medical providers.
Insurance that pays on the basis of the injury not fault by the shooter
Principles for requiring gun insurance that would protect everyone
A new posting on YouTube by this blog.
For gun insurance to be effective it must be designed for the situation we have with guns. If the wishes of either the NRA which wants guns everywhere or gun control advocates who would have no guns are applied than we would not have effective protection from insurance. This video describes the principles needed.
The first local laws have been
passed to require gun insurance. These are for liability insurance
requiring fault by the gun owner or shooter and certainly don’t pay directly to
victims or cover all guns. But this is a
start on a path that as it evolves will give good protection and promote
safety.
The
first gun insurance requirements have been passed into law in the United
States. Let us celebrate the beginnings
of a culture of responsibility around firearms.
Two separate jurisdictions at opposite ends of the country have launched
on this long awaited return to sanity.
This video looks at the new gun insurance laws in California
and New Jersey. What they cover, where
they came from and where they’re going.
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The
first local laws to require insurance for gun owners will go into effect in 2023. They have been passed and signed into law by
the Mayor of San Jose, California and the Governor of New Jersey.
San Jose requires gun permits but exempts those who have
concealed carry permits, New Jersey’s new law only applies to those with
concealed-carry permits.
You can
see from this that it is only a step toward the insurance we need. These laws take great care to avoid various
kinds of potential interference with gun ownership. The exceptions limit the usefulness and
protection of the insurance, BUT this care proves that the objections of gun
proponents are misguided. As we learn
from the new laws, we’ll find ways to make the insurance more effective.
Insurance can be tailored to the requirements of a
specific risky activity. This is why
it’s a powerful tool both to allow the activity and to mitigate the harm that
results.
We need
insurance that pays benefits to victims, applies without excessive delay and
litigation, and which covers all guns. This
current baby step is important but it will need to followed by more steps that
lead to the goals.
The
ordinance in San Jose takes effect in January.
The Mayor, Sam Liccardo, thanked
those who helped pass the ordinance and
“the many others who work tirelessly to help craft a constitutionally compliant
path to mitigate the unnecessary suffering from gun harm in our community.” The ordinance only covers accidents
that involve firearms. The city plan
envisions that homeowner’s insurance will handle most cases with minimal
changes. That is, no-doubt, the reason
excluding intentional shootings.
Most homeowner’s policies have this exclusion and it would
be a major disruption for insurers to require it to change. Another factor is that there is no specific
loss limit required, this would allow existing insurance to apply regardless of
its limits.
San
Jose’s requirement does not apply to peace officers. That is not unusual as police, even retired
police, have been exempted from many gun laws.
Also exempted are holders of
concealed carry permits. Both exemptions are somewhat illogical as the law
isn’t aimed at preventing anyone from having a gun and it applies only to
accidents.
While
the new ordinance in San Jose was passed in February 2022, its implementation
was delayed by lawsuits from gun supporters.
Most of these have been dismissed and the law is to take effect. Additional lawsuits are expected.
The new
law in New Jersey on the other hand covers those who have
concealed-carry permits. It was enacted
in December 2022 and will take effect in July ‘23. When he signed the bill Governor Phil Murphy
said:
“today’s law fully
respects the Second Amendment while keeping guns out of the wrong hands and
preventing them from proliferating in our communities.”
As expected, lawsuits were immediately filed by gun
proponents.
New Jersey previously had a restrictive law allowing
concealed-carry permits. That law was
struck down by the US Supreme Court. Before
in 2021 there were 870 concealed-carry applications, but the number is now expected
to rise to about 11,000. The insurance
requirement is part of a new package which governs concealed carry in
accordance with this decision.
Applicants for permits will have to demonstrate insurance compliance.
It calls for liability insurance
and would only apply if the gun carrier is at fault. The required insurance limit is
$300,000.00 The governor’s statements
show that he contemplates that homeowner’s insurance can meet the requirements;
but, given the many limitations in typical policies, this will be complex.
These two new laws will launch a
process that will require a substantial time to complete. In addition to the inevitable court battles,
there will be bills introduced and debated in other legislative bodies. This process has happened in other areas
before.
For example, requirements for
insurance for cars started in the early 1930’s and were not fully developed
until the 1960’s. In that case, the
first laws in many states were “financial responsibility laws” which only
required insurance for people who had already been unable to pay for the
consequences of car accidents. While the
insurance industry has often claimed that a new requirement can’t be
implemented, they have historically been able to adapt to whatever is
needed. They will do that now.
Both of the laws assume that
most cases will be handled by some extension of homeowners insurance. As gun insurance matures and adapts to the
needs of supporting victims and providing gun safety, homeowners insurance may
continue to play an important part. The
terms will need to be specifically defined to give coverage of all the
possibilities and to allow the insurer to be protected from particularly
dangerous persons and weapons. In the
less dangerous cases, it should not raise costs greatly. There will be many situations outside the
willingness of home insurance carriers to absorb the risks, and in these cases
special insurance will need to be developed and priced.
Requiring
insurance need not interfere with the safe use of an insured activity or thing. We continue to drive with an insurance
requirement, we work at jobs with workers compensation and we require insurance
for many commercial activities. In all
of these cases the protection provided by the insurance mitigates the risks and
reduces the need for tight regulation.
Insurance is both a means and a symbol of responsibility. We need responsibility around firearms if we
are to allow their existence and reduce their dangers.
Because we don’t have a gun insurance requirement yet in this country, we don’t know what the rules would be. But insurers in other areas watch their losses and costs carefully and set their rates and willingness to insure on the basis of risks. There are a number of factors that would make insurers wary about issuing insurance to this shooter.
The shooter was young only 21 years of age. Automobile insurers have special tighter rules and higher rates at least up to 25 years of age and often higher.
The weapon was of an especially dangerous variety.
The shooter had a record of instability that an insurer could have questioned or uncovered.
Insurers would be likely to insist on additional delays and investigation. The shootings were less than a week after the gun purchase, so delay could have been important.
Parts of Colorado had restrictions on assault weapons which were not overturned until after the purchase.
So, there is a good chance that a gun insurance requirement would have prevented this tragic incident.
There are other benefits
Good gun insurance pays victims directly. While money is a poor recompense for loss of loved ones, the survivors are likely to have serious needs in the future. Had there been more injuries payment for medical care could have been very important.
Insurance can reduce gun deaths and injuries indirectly
The current gun culture expects each individual gun owner to be responsible for safety and for not using weapons inappropriately. The results in some dangerous and irresponsible gun owners mixed into a very large number of others. Insurance is a symbol of responsibility and can change the overall view of society around guns. Insurers, if they remain responsible for stolen guns under the gun insurance requirement, can reduce substantially the number of guns that get into the most dangerous hands.
Insurance to protect persons from gun violence should make payments directly available to the victims or to doctors and hospitals who care for them. This would not only put the benefits where they are needed but would bypass most of the problems of providing coverage for intentional acts and stolen guns.
Liability Insurance
Liability insurance, on the other hand, is designed to protect gun owners and shooters. It pays for legal defense where the deep pockets of insurance companies create a barrier to victims ever being paid–even in egregious cases. insurers of cars, who collectively cover both sides of most cases, have over years worked out agreements between themselves to make liability insurance work. Not so for guns, where insurers would stonewall to the victims last cent.
The laws and regulations we use for gun safety in our country have provided only limited relief from the high level of gun injury and death. While they need to be extended and improved, other ways of protecting people are also important. One that would be extremely helpful is to require insurance that protects victims of gun violence.
Laws and Regulations
For decades there has been a war between those who want reasonable regulation of gun ownership and use and those who feel that any restrictions applied to guns are the start of a slippery slope leading to total gun confiscation. The result has been a patchwork that provides substantial impediments to responsible gun ownership as the pool of irresponsible owners and dangerous guns has increased exponentially.
If gun owners are mandated to have insurance, new guns can be monitored. But what about the 300,000,000 guns currently held by individuals, including illegal guns? Clearly, no system of insurance, gun regulation, or police activity can deal completely with problems arising from such massive numbers. The system of chaining insurance responsibility “Top Down” works to retain guns in the system one there, and stolen or otherwise illegally acquired guns will retain the insurer of the last legal owner. But the outstanding guns in the hands of criminals and a good proportion of those owned by otherwise law abiding owners will not be enrolled in insurance without good reason.
Although it might be assumed that political considerations will mean guns currently owned will be grandfathered in, that does not have to be the case. Legislators could establish a policy whereby all guns must be insured. When state or national laws are adopted to require insurance for guns sold by manufacturers or passing through the hands of legal gun dealers, the laws can require that persons owning guns acquire insurance.
In spite of declarations in the media from some gun proponents that they will not comply with various proposed measures regulating firearms, most gun owners are legal and responsible citizens and will comply with a requirement after a reasonable period of time. They will be able to purchase insurance and have their gun’s serial number added to the database without revealing their names to anyone other than their insurer. Much of the insurance now sold to gun owners is now provided to them in association with the NRA, and there is no reason that this cannot continue for those who have concerns about insurers protecting their privacy. Of course, any insurer, even the NRA, would have to comply with financial regulation as an insurer and provide the mandated insurance compensations for victims.
The database suggested as a part of the “Top Down” system would provide a quick way for a law enforcement officer to check if a particular gun is insured. The database is designed to provide a quick way to find the insurer responsible for a particular gun, but contains no information about the gun’s location or owner. An officer finding the gun as part of an action for some investigation or arrest can check if the gun is properly covered. Guns are routinely and legally declared when they are shipped in luggage on airlines and may have to be declared when brought into controlled places depending on local laws. Insurance can be checked in these situations as well.
Many people, when asked about the possibility of requiring insurance that would protect victims of gun violence, compare guns to automobiles; and, knowing that we require drivers to have insurance, think that it’s a reasonable thing to do with guns. It is a reasonable thing; but there are both similarities and differences.
Gun proponents, who often view compulsory insurance as simply an interference with rights they consider to be absolute, tend to offer a number of relatively unimportant differences by asserting things such as “car insurance isn’t required on private property or unless the car is being driven.” This isn’t always true; but, more importantly, it has little to do with how to handle a reasonable requirement for gun insurance.
The big difference is the way that we treat responsibility about the two classes of possessions and the politics of that responsibility. People are used to car owners being responsible for their cars and expressing that responsibility through liability and insurance. Gun proponents have worked to deflect responsibility away from owners and suppliers of guns and onto gun users; and then from gun users onto victims who can be perceived as responsible for their own injuries when the gun user thinks, rightly or wrongly, that shooting is justified.
The purpose of this post is to point out the similarities and differences that have substantial consequences in the design of appropriate insurance.
It’s hard to get thoughtful responses to the ideas published on this blog. Most comments are from people who simply assert their, usually negative, conclusions. When I get a response such as The Truth About Maryland’s recent post “Mandatory gun insurance: an interesting smart idea that won’t really work. A primer, from a finance and insurance geek,” I welcome the chance to look for new information or approaches to the problem of dealing with gun deaths and injuries. Insurance is a tool and gun injuries are a problem that to be addressed by that tool require that it be specifically adapted to the problem. For example, the parallels between automobiles and guns are striking because both are widely used instrumentalities that result in a substantial amount of death and injury; but this blog outlines differences in the best implementations of insurance.
