Lawmakers propose liability insurance for U.S. gun owners

[tangent4ronpaul]

http://news.yahoo.com/lawmakers-propose-liability-insurance-u-gun-owners-202947333.html

Summary:

Would turn gun owners into gun renters
Backdoor gun registration - records the gvmt is forbidden from keeping would be kept by private companies and accessable to the gvmt
Mandate safety training, where and how firearms and ammo are stored
Restrict who can use your firearms
Pathway to confiscation by hiking insurance rates
Make insurance companies rich
End run around the 2nd amendment


Lawmakers eager to reduce gun violence in their states are proposing mandatory liability insurance for American firearm owners as a new way to limit deaths and injuries.
Provoked by the December 14 massacre of 20 schoolchildren and six adults at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, the legislators hope to harness market forces as another tool for gun control.
Proponents argue that operators of vehicles, for example, must have liability insurance, so gun owners should as well. Those who take safety courses, have fewer and safer weapons, and store them securely could get lower rates than those who did not, they say.
"We may not be able to reduce intentional shootings as a result of liability insurance, but I do believe we can reduce accidental shootings," said David Linsky, a Democratic representative in Massachusetts who has proposed mandatory insurance for gun owners.
California on Tuesday became at least the fourth state to have a liability insurance bill introduced, following Massachusetts, Maryland and Connecticut.
No state has a gun liability insurance law. Since 2003, almost two dozen such bills have been rejected nationwide, 15 of them in New York, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The liability insurance proposals come as President Barack Obama is campaigning for stricter federal gun controls.
Efforts to control guns face an uphill climb politically in the face of a strong pro-gun lobby, including the National Rifle Association (NRA), and constitutional protection for firearms ownership.
"ACCIDENTS DO HAPPEN"
The NRA itself offers "excess personal liability" insurance of up to $250,000 for hunters and for shooters at competitions or private ranges, according to its website.
"Because accidents do happen no matter how careful you are," the website says.
A Maryland proposal would mandate that anyone possessing a firearm have liability insurance of at least $250,000. It requires anyone selling, renting out or transferring a gun to verify that the person getting it has liability insurance.
Mandating liability insurance would help pay for damage caused by guns, Linsky said. But the main reason "is to get the marketplace involved in making gun ownership safer," he said.
NRA spokeswoman Stephanie Samford said the organization opposed liability insurance for gun owners because it was "economically discriminatory."
"You don't have to carry insurance to exercise any other constitutional right," Samford said.
Robert Hartwig, the president of the Insurance Information Institute in New York, said that since no market now existed for gun liability insurance lawmakers would have to negotiate coverage criteria with insurers.
"A legislature could in theory mandate gun liability coverage, but you cannot require insurers to offer that coverage," Hartwig said.
If insurers declined to offer coverage, states themselves might have to set up insurance liability programs, Hartwig said.
Some homeowners' policies cover accidental gun discharges, but those cases are a small fraction of the millions of claims filed each year, he said.
The cost of U.S. injuries from firearms was about $174 billion in 2010, including lost work time, medical care and insurance, according to a breakdown of U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.
Of the 31,328 deaths by firearm in 2010, 1.9 percent were accidents and 0.8 percent were of undetermined intent, according to CDC and National Vital Statistics Report numbers on the institute's website. The rest were suicides and homicides.

-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

Own a Gun, Carry Insurance
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-diamond/own-a-gun-carry-insurance_b_2613303.html

The White House's nine-point Plan to Reduce Gun Violence, as it's called, offers a reasoned, reasonably centrist reaction to the aching pain resulting from December's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a wound that in passing weeks seems to be visited by the salt of even more outrages, one painful grain at a time. Reasonableness, of course, is no guarantee of success as the President's plan winds its way through the legislative and policy apparatus. And so while the conversation is still in its formative stage, I'd like to encourage discussion of a tenth way.

Serious consideration should be given to reviving a plan first floated in Illinois that called for all gun owners to carry liability insurance. Such a plan could address three long-standing obstacles to the passage of legislation to mitigate the harm caused by firearms: from the right, the two primary concerns have been infringement of 2nd Amendment rights and the expansion of government into private affairs; from the left, the tide toward unfettered access to owning and carrying weapons.

The state's interest in requiring insurance as a condition for exercising variety of privileges is long established, the clearest being the requirement that drivers carry auto insurance. The primary purpose of a motor vehicle is not to inflict damage or personal injury, but property damage and death are costly consequences of their use. Accepting the gun lobby's argument that a firearm is simply a tool and that the gun user is responsible for its misuse, the correlation to auto insurance stands up. Indeed, the NRA already offers limited liability coverage to its members. Yes, there is the distinction that gun ownership is a right, not a privilege. But free speech is also a right we both hold dear and on which we have come to accept some limits.

The state's interest is clear: in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that in 2000, the most recent period for which data are available, total medical costs from gunshot injuries were $822 million, with total productivity losses topping $16.6 billion. It is by no means irresponsible to insure against such costs. Requiring owners of firearms to carry, say, $1 million in liability insurance as proposed in the Illinois legislation, would serve two purposes: It would offer recourse to those affected by gun violence, and it would raise the bar of responsibility for gun owners. (The Affordable Care Act expressly protects gun owners from having to disclose the presence or use of legal weapons in applications for health insurance.)

Might it chill ownership? Perhaps. But it would certainly encourage, through the private sector, an increase in safe handling practices, shift some of the enforcement burden from government to insurance companies and gun owners and reduce the costs associated with emergency room visits currently borne by hospitals and the government.

Gun-owner insurance policies should be renewable annually, and any change to the factors that figure into the initial premium calculations ought to be taken into account.

I'm no actuary, but if an algorithm can be built to account for both behavioral risk and responsibility when applying for medical and auto insurance, it ought to be an easy task to do the same for firearms. It's numbers: the more responsible the gun owner, the lower the premium. The greater the risk factors associated with the applicant, the higher the premium.

Consider the following questions that might be asked before someone qualified for firearm insurance, a necessity for all existing permit holders as well as for the purchase any any new firearm:

Will the weapon/s be kept in you home? Do you have a gun safe? Have you ever had a gun stolen? Do you live with children under the age of 18? Does anyone under the age of 25 live in your house (auto premiums ratchet down as drivers age, there is no reason, given the profiles of recent mass killers that these premiums should not reflect the risks posed by this age group)? How many guns do you own? Have you ever had a gun stolen? Have you purchased Teflon-coated ammunition? Have you ever discharged a weapon outside a shooting range or without a hunting license? Are you licensed to carry a concealed weapon?

There is debate now about screening for mental illness in applying for a gun license, but it seems fair to ask whether the applicant or anyone residing with the applicant has ever been treated for mental illness, has ever used narcotics, how frequently they consume alcohol, etc.

Getting into the nitty-gritty, of course, such a plan poses a number of problems, both in what questions can be asked to feed the actuarial tables and in assessing the consequences of requiring insurance. Where are the lines to be drawn for the actuaries? Is it OK to ask an applicant about race or ZIP code? (The latter is a component of auto insurance applications, and a matter of some debate.)

Another factor to consider: if premiums are high, only the wealthy will be able to afford insurance, yet the poor - the predominant victims of crime - would arguably be those who most need a weapon for self-defense. The cost of insurance might price the poor out of gun ownership, and if those who use guns in to commit crimes are predominantly poor this might be a desirous effect. But most guns used in crimes are not owned legally by those using them, and so insurance would have little bearing on the use of the gun in the crime itself. However, if lack of insurance were criminalized or opened the violator to civil liability, it would add a further cost - in addition to incarceration - to the illegal use of a firearm.

There have been objections raised that an insurance plan might open legitimate gun owners to intrusive checks by the authorities, but the police don't have random checks for auto insurance. The question only arises when there is a triggering event.

Attaching a particular gun to a crime would rely on other policy changes facing strong opposition from the gun-rights lobby. As Prof. Mark A.R. Kleiman of UCLA's Luskin School of Public Policy points out, unless weapons are required to imprint a mark on bullets fired from it, it is well nigh impossible to track a gun used, for example, in a drive-by shooting.

The state has a long history of requiring liability insurance for those it licenses, from drivers to building contractors to medical doctors. To not carry insurance carries sanctions. The nation now seems primed to have a reasoned conversation about how we deal with our bloody history of gun violence, and requiring liability insurance for those who own deadly weapons seems a fitting piece of a broader approach.

-t

[satchelmcqueen]

bs!

[tangent4ronpaul]

A Financial Solution to Our Gun Problem
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-wexler/a-financial-solution-to-o_b_2612553.html

In the wake of Newtown, I kept asking myself one question. What would have prevented Nancy Lanza from giving her son Adam a gun? Nancy Lanza was a law abiding citizen. She bought guns legally, shot guns legally, had no criminal record at all. Even if we make it harder for some people to buy certain guns and ammunition, chances are Nancy Lanza would still have been allowed to buy those guns. She would have taught Adam to shoot, practiced targets with him, and permitted him access to those guns. The laws being proposed right now would not make that very behavior illegal. So what changes if we pass them? Nothing.

But what if Nancy Lanza had to buy insurance for her firearms? Let's imagine that. The insurance company would want to know who else in the household would be permitted to use them. They would attach a questionnaire about permitted users- asking about their criminal background and mental health history. There it was- my "aha!" moment.

No way would Nancy Lanza have broken the law. I didn't know Nancy, but I don't believe she would have lied on her application. If Nancy's insurance company forbade those with a mental health condition access to guns, Nancy Lanza would have kept those guns elsewhere.

An insurance company would want to know where the guns were stored, who had access to them, if the ammunition was kept separately from the weapon. They might ask about permits, gun safety courses and how many guns were on premises. Perhaps the insurance company would offer a discounted premium for certain safety mechanisms, similar to discounts for burglar alarms in homeowner's policies.

Gun safety is a public health issue, and we are in crisis. By 2015, firearm fatalities are predicted to exceed auto fatalities for the very first time. While shooting deaths in 2015 are estimated to rise to almost 33,000, those related to car accidents will decline to about 32,000, based on the 10 year average trend.

Like guns, cars are lethal weapons too, if placed in the wrong hands. Anyone can own or drive a car, as long as they insure and drive it safely. But we decided long ago that all of us are better protected when we individually carry insurance, take driver's ed, and equip our cars with seat belts and airbags. Due to our efforts, traffic fatalities in 2011 were the lowest in 63 years. Nor was it a coincidence that the movement to increase the legal drinking age was led by insurance companies. Once they saw how many 18-20 year olds were responsible for fatalities, they lobbied to change the law. Insurance companies are on the front lines of efforts to reduce risk, because the fewer the accidents, the less they have to pay out in damages. I'm betting the same will be true for gun incidents.

There are 88.1 guns for every 100 Americans in civilian hands. The vast majority use guns safely. The vast majority of drivers aren't reckless either, but they still cannot drive without a license or insurance. We don't forbid all people from driving because some people get drunk and get behind the wheel. Nor should we forbid all people from owning guns because a few are criminals. Insurance companies will do what the government can neither afford nor accomplish- they will reduce the risk of harm to the rest of us by forcing individual gun owners to act responsibly.

As far as the Constitution is concerned, nothing I am suggesting takes away anyone's right to bear arms. The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that this right, like our others, is subject to reasonable limitations.

Massachusetts has recently proposed requiring firearms insurance. The NRA advertises firearms insurance on its website. Pro- gun guests on my radio show have been disarmed (you should excuse the expression) by this idea, agreeing that a private, capitalist solution is an intelligent way to approach a public health crisis.

Connecticut is in a unique position to lead. We are both the insurance capital of the world and the former home to Remington and Smith & Wesson. We are even home to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, based in Newtown, CT, an irony too rich to be a coincidence. Requiring firearms insurance may receive some resistance from those who want no changes at all. But in a showdown between the insurance industry and the NRA, my money is on the insurance companies. We lost a terrible battle in Newtown. Let's win the war in Hartford.

-t

[Lucille]

Summary:

Would turn gun owners into gun renters
Backdoor gun registration - records the gvmt is forbidden from keeping would be kept by private companies and accessible to the gvmt
Mandate safety training, where and how firearms and ammo are stored
Restrict who can use your firearms
Pathway to confiscation by hiking insurance rates
Make insurance companies rich
End run around the 2nd amendment

Well aren't they clever...

[Henry Rogue]

Well aren't they clever... Tyranny never sleeps.

[Anti Federalist]

And I'd be the bad guy to suggest that insurance companies be forced to write these policies.

Of course, there should not be any government tom fuckery involved, but see how handy that is.

So, no insurance company will write the policies...

Ban, with no 2nd Amendment violation.

The corporation can and will tyrannize you just as fast as the government can.

[Anti Federalist]

but they still cannot drive without a license or insurance

Sure they can.

[Danke]

I don't plan on using my weapons in commerce.

[Anti Federalist]

I don't plan on using my weapons in commerce.

LOL - Good one...let me know what the FedCoats think of that.

[Henry Rogue]

Danke, I bet you're just full of joy that you got your avatar back.

[Anti Federalist]

Danke, I bet you're just full of joy that you got your avatar back.

I was happy to see it.

[TonySutton]

Since the pen is mightier than the sword, maybe we should have liability insurance for speech before we consider it for guns.

[tangent4ronpaul]

Since the pen is mightier than the sword, maybe we should have liability insurance for speech before we consider it for guns.

Don't give them any ideas...

-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

//

[Danke]

LOL - Good one...let me know what the FedCoats think of that.

I'm not allowed to communicate with you anymore.

[Danke]

Danke, I bet you're just full of joy that you got your avatar back.

You want a visit too?

[ClydeCoulter]

Hell yea, let's learn from the thugs that required insurance from the shop keeper so that their shop didn't get busted up, you fucks!

edit: "you" as in controlling assholes in power.

[Anti Federalist]

I'm not allowed to communicate with you anymore.

Tired of writing 100 "contact reports" every day?

[Henry Rogue]

You want a visit too? No, I'm happy for you. :)

[presence]

I'm in favor of mandatory insurance for the unarmed.

"KENNESAW, Ga - Several Kennesaw officials attribute
a drop in crime in the city over the past two decades
to a law that requires residents to have a gun in the house. "

[jbauer]

How assnine is this?? Hell I propose all those who voted for tyranny have to purchase insurance policies. What a great world!!! Don't like it make those you don't like purchase insurance priced by those who don't like it.

Hell what other moronic things can we come up with? Food Stamp Insurance, Global Warming insurance, war insurance, Keynesian Insurance. F U CK THEM!!!

[coastie]

I'm in favor of mandatory insurance for the unarmed.

"KENNESAW, Ga - Several Kennesaw officials attribute
a drop in crime in the city over the past two decades
to a law that requires residents to have a gun in the house. "


Dont tell the ins company you own guns...

My counter proposal is that EVERYONE get liability insurance. Seeing as how guns a used for far less murders in this country than knives, and clearly EVERYONE has some sort of knife in their homes...yeah, we need knife insurance. And screwdriver insurance. And hammer insurance.

I wonder when these fucks are gonna stop. They dont give a rats ass about murders in this country, just murders that are committed with guns. Why is that?

LEGAL prescribed drugs kill 100's of thousands every year-when taken as prescribed. Silence.

The current president is presuming dictatorial powers, declaring he can assisinate Americans whenever, wherever he wants, and has even done so. Silence.


Maybe we should get insurance to cover drone strikes, I mean, your neighbors family is gonna be pretty pissed when the strike that was meant for you takes out your neighbors? It was your fault, after all...you mustve done something bad to have them come after you. MANDATORY DRONE INSURANCE!!!

[Acala]

Oh NOOOO!!!!! We are screwed! Oh, wait . . . most people already HAVE liability insurance for their guns. Typical homeowner's policies cover liability for guns. If you have homeowner's insurance, you already have the coverage this ignoramus is yammering about. And if you didn't have such insurance and it were required, the policy would cost you next to nothing.

Real insurance is a risk pool. The cost of the insurance depends on the size of the pool and the probability of a covered casualty event. While it varies by region, approximately HALF of all homes have a gun, so the risk pool is huge. And the number of accidents is VERY low, so the risk being covered is very small. The result is very cheap insurance. This is why it is thrown into your homeowner's policy without any additional charge. Guns really are a VERY low risk item. The risk of owning a trampoline is at least a hundred times greater.

Any questions?

So I suggest ignoring this non-event and instead focus on the Senators trying to cut a deal on background checks.

[Acala]

Dont tell the ins company you own guns...

PLEASE!!!! Liability insurance for guns is a NON-ISSUE!!!

[coastie]

PLEASE!!!! Liability insurance for guns is a NON-ISSUE!!!




OK!!!!!!!!! <passes joint to Acala>… I read your previous post, and I agree with you.<reaches for joint back, quit bogarting>

[jtap]

I think everyone on this forum is being dangerous with their words. If you are on the internet you need internet insurance for all the damage you could cause to other people by making posts that require them to think or all the hacking and websites your computer could be taking down by the malware you didn't even know was on there.

[Acala]

OK!!!!!!!!! <passes joint to Acala>… I read your previous post, and I agree with you.<reaches for joint back, quit bogarting>

Hehehehe. Thanks.

[Tax the Fed]

Tyranny never sleeps.

I heard California was the first to suggest this . . .
told it to a co-worker back from Afghanistan.

Uhmmm, not to happy with the prospect of needing to buy insurance for a 30-ought-six caliber (or thereabouts). . .
. . . if ya' get our drift.

[satchelmcqueen]

so what happens if you get laid off, or money gets extremely tight, like it is becoming now, and you "law abiding citizen" cant afford the gun insurance anymore?? its either gun insurance or food for the family. which do you pick to pay?

if you choose food, youll then loose your right to own your gun or use it to protect yourself. does gun insurance make you innocent in all situations of self protection? what if the police do a no knock search warrant and you shoot them (and survive the coming bullet storm) in self defense since they dont identify themselves in an appropriate amount of time before kicking in your door?

what would gun insurance really do FOR YOU other than lining the pockets of the insurance companies?? i really dont understand this proposal.

[Anti Federalist]

Debtors prison Mundane.

And don't give me any lip.



so what happens if you get laid off, or money gets extremely tight, like it is becoming now, and you "law abiding citizen" cant afford the gun insurance anymore?? its either gun insurance or food for the family. which do you pick to pay?

if you choose food, youll then loose your right to own your gun or use it to protect yourself. does gun insurance make you innocent in all situations of self protection? what if the police do a no knock search warrant and you shoot them (and survive the coming bullet storm) in self defense since they dont identify themselves in an appropriate amount of time before kicking in your door?

what would gun insurance really do FOR YOU other than lining the pockets of the insurance companies?? i really dont understand this proposal.

[GunnyFreedom]

These lawmakers need to legislate themselves into a deep dark hole.

[Carson]

Don't all insurance policies still carry an act of war clause that voids any pay off?

Well except for the ones hastily written up for the World Trade Center buildings.

I wonder how often they could weasel out under it or would it make a difference since they'll probably weasel out anyway.