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.

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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.

Principles for requiring gun insurance that would protect everyone

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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 posting can be accessed at

https://youtu.be/mrxo3rjl-yc

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The Key is Payments to Victims

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.

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Uninsured Cars, Employers and Guns

There are three big categories of activities that result in deaths and injuries—vehicles, employment and gun ownership. In two of these there is general agreement that the at-risk public should be protected by insurance provided by those who engage in the activities. This results in both in financial benefits to offset some of the losses and in reduction of the harm. The harm reduction comes through insurer loss prevention strategies and in a societal commitment to a culture of responsibility.

Not so with guns. Gun violence produces a quantity of deaths about the same as those from vehicles and several times those from employment accidents. This is in spite of the fact that gun ownership is a much smaller part of the economy than employment or vehicle use.

Even more, most states recognize the need for public protection and provide for benefits to persons harmed when the responsible party cannot be identified or does not provide the required insurance. Contributions to an uninsured vehicle or employer fund in a state are generally required from insurers and ultimately paid by all drivers or employers. The uninsured tend to be less responsible and the cost is substantial when their numbers are significant. This provides an incentive for effective enforcement of the insurance requirement.

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Gun Insurance is Dead; Long live Gun Insurance

The agent Lockton and the underwriter Chubb have announced that they would cut dies with the NRA.  This may effectively end their Carry Guard insurance program, which is the insurance dubbed “murder insurance” by gun safety advocates.  This has happened less than two weeks after the tragic shooting in Parkland, Florida and illustrates the rate that changes can occur in a charged are such as gun safety.  Organizations Guns Down with Travon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton and Color of Change worked to bring this about.  When the time was ripe their efforts took effect.  Unfortunately, other organizations are currently selling insurance and quasi-insurance products of this type which are designed to protect gun users for legal responsibility for mistaken or over-zealous shootings claimed to be in self-defense.

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Insurance for Victims Not Shooters

The most important characteristic of the insurance needed for owning or carrying firearms is the basic structure of who is protected and paid by the insurance.  Voluntary insurance is always designed to protect the insurance buyer or owner first and pays third party victims only when necessary to protect the policy holder.  Required or mandatory insurance is intended to protect the public and persons other than the policy holder, and should promptly pay insured persons.

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Insuring 300,000,000 Existing Guns

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.

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A Straightforward Recommendation for Gun Insurance

FIVE REASONS TO MANDATE GUN INSURANCE

To require additional individual responsibility such as locking up firearms

To provide victims with needed funds for medical and other costs

To make those causing the deaths and injuries pay, rather than the public through Medicaid or the victims through private health insurance

To supplement public regulatory oversight with private insurance company oversight

To encourage new technologies such as “safe guns” that would reduce accidents

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CAR INSURANCE AS AN ILLUSTRATION Continue reading

HR-2546 Firearm Risk Protection with Suggested Personal Injury Clause

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). 

Suggested New Text for Bill Continue reading

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.

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