Cars and Guns

There are many similarities between motor vehicles and guns, because they both have a built in danger but are present in our society. There are also important differences in the way they are used and the situation surrounding that use. The specific top down, no-fault system of insurance being analyzed in this blog is intended to deal with these differences.

1. The vast majority of car deaths and injuries are accidents; intentional injury with a car is rare. The majority of shootings are intentional whether or not they constitute crimes.

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Gun Research Limits are an Affront to Me and I Take It Personally

I’ve been writing for a short while about my ideas on how to deal with guns and the deaths and injuries they cause through insurance.  I am thinking about how we could have a solution that would eliminate most of the carnage, but still allow people to have what they want in a less dangerous way.  I do appreciate the fun that people have as a valuable thing no matter where it comes from.  Life seems to be double peaked about that, fun when you’re young, then several decades of being serious and then you realize that life is about the experiences you have. 

So, when I see the most vocal of the pro-gun people go purple with rage if they think someone is going to take their guns away, I know how they feel.  And that just how I feel about having my access to the knowledge of my world being blocked.  My first amendment rights are being infringed and the first amendment is first and before the second amendment. 

What need to be done about guns is not simple and needs great thought.  It’s just that they cause great pain and suffering and that must stop.  People who have an investment of their time and interest in guns are entitled to have their views taken into consideration. The NRA, on the other hand, is an organization that is willing to destroy any of the great traditions of our country for its narrow purpose.  They would trade all of America’s freedoms for some tiny increase in gun sales.

Insurance Companies and Guns: What Would It Be Like?

Many people who can see the need to protect persons injured by guns and can see the parallels for responsibility to motor vehicles have a problem with involving insurance companies.  Writing recently in a diary about possible system for requiring insurance on guns, one of the most common concerns was a distrust or even hatred of insurers.  This is understandable because insurance companies often deny claims or access to insurance; and denial is likely to be harmful and very upsetting to the person denied.  In so many areas, insurance coverage is required in one way or another and is a barrier to people getting on with their lives.  Nevertheless, insurance is necessary and it matters greatly how it is implemented.

So the question is how would the insurance experience for gun owners work out?

The system I am envisioning in my writing requires insurance to be purchased by manufacturers or importers in such a way that, to relieve an insurer of responsibility, each successive owner must take over or provide new insurance.  If the gun is lost, stolen or diverted the responsibility stays with the current insurer.  This is critical because the primary danger lawful owners make to the public is they may lose control of a gun.  An important advantage of this system is that the government only has to regulate or even know about manufacturers, importers and insurers.  There is no need to register privately owned guns for this to work.

The legislation needed to mandate insurance would prescribe the types of incidents that would be covered and the requirements for payment.  It is very important that it be a no-fault system for two reasons, the situation in many shootings is so unclear that, even if it’s obvious there must be some kind of fault, proving it can be very difficult and protecting the privacy of gun owners is very important.  This gives insurers much less room is denying claims than in other kinds of insurance.  No-fault insurance for automobiles works well in many states, but the comparison of cars to guns is to the Personal Injury Protection (PIP) coverage that’s part of many state systems as it applies to pedestrians, who often don’t have their own insurance.  For examples, see Florida and New York.

For the purchasers of gun insurance, it’s likely that there would be substantial competition about rates.  Gun selling businesses would work hard to make good and economical carriers available to their customers.  Because the rates would probably vary significantly for customers in different situations, with different styles of storage and use and for different types of firearms, the insurers would be competing on convenience and privacy as well as price.

The big costs for automobile liability insurance claims are injuries and property damage rather than fatalities.  Because guns are involved in only about 2.5% as many injuries as motor vehicles, the average cost would be low.  Very generous benefits would have an average annual cost to insurers of less than $40 per gun.  Limits similar to a less generous plan such as Florida’s PIP would be less than one quarter of that.  These are averages; and particular situations would have higher or lower costs.  In particular, guns that have been in the possession of owners for substantial periods have a much smaller chance of turning up in shootings later.

Article on this blog crossposted to Daily Kos

I posted the last article “How to Seriously Approach Gun Insurance That Protects Everyone” on this blog to Daily Kos.  I’ve been getting quite a few comments.  Half or so are positive and the rest are very interesting.  The three things I need to study so far from the problems pointed out are:  It’s hard to explain the point of my approach so a quick reader working from scratch will get it, a lot of people think it won’t slow down the rate of injuries and deaths and a lot of people think insurance companies are just a rip off.  The last two problems are strongly affected by the way the system is implemented and I need to give that a lot of thought.  Good to get informative feedback.  Not much general negative feed back but some think that guns shouldn’t be touched at all.

How To Seriously Approach Gun Insurance That Protects Everyone

There are lots of posts, comments, OpEds and media articles about requiring liability insurance for guns since Newtown.  In fact, you can find a dozen (or many more) less than 24 hours old by searching “gun insurance” on your favorite search engine.  They tend to fall into three categories—advocating that we have it, denouncing it as an assault on gun rights or regretfully explaining the impossibility of making it work.  All of these categories are based on conventional liability insurance mandated in various amounts up to about $1 Million.  The purpose of the insurance advocates often seems to be to punish gun owners for the danger they give to society and is seen as a back handed way to ban guns by the gun advocates.  I think insurance, if differently structured, can be a way to deal with the deaths and injuries associated with guns without unduly burdening people who want to own and use guns.

 There are two major goals that are served by a good system of insurance here, first to provide compensation for persons injured and, secondly, to allow the costs of gun violence to fall on those who can do something about it.  In addition to the deaths, approximately 75,000 persons per year are non-fatally injured by guns according to the CDC.  Continue reading

Stray Guns and Stray Animals–Strict Liability

No-Fault Insurance is quite similar to the legal doctrine of strict liability.  When strict liability applies it is not necessary for the injured person to prove negligence or fault to hold a person responsible for damage from a certain cause.  It is often applied in Product Liability cases where it usually holds if the injured person can prove the product is defective, the product proximately caused the injury and the product was unreasonably dangerous.  After years of attempts to apply this to gun manufacturers where it generally did not apply because product was not found to be defective, Congress passed a law (Public Law 109-92), which among other Continue reading

ER Shootings Show Need for No-Fault Insurance for Guns

An OP-ED  in the New York Times on Jan 1, 2013 by David Newman titled “At the E.R., Bearing Witness to Gun Violence” does not mention insurance but shows the wide variety of cases which arrive.  The author linking to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine states that household members are 18 times more likely than intruders to be the victim.  NRA insurance excludes members of the gun owners family from coverage even if the gun owner is sued by them.    The author also states a quarter of gun crimes in American E.R.’s were committed with guns wrested from armed guards citing an article in The Annals of Emergency Medicine.  Assuming the shooter is indigent and uninsured (a good bet) the victim would have to sue the hospital who’s insurance company has deep pockets for defending the lawsuit.  Perhaps there will be some free immediate treatment in such cases; but how about follow up.  Fortunately, the article states that “Case fatality inside the hospital was much lower in the ED setting (19%) than other sites.”  Low fatality makes insurance more important because of the need to take care of the injured both immediately and over time.

This blog is dedicated to advocating for developing an insurance plan which covers all situations and all shooters, at fault or not, legal or not, known or unknown.  Other posts will analyze what is necessary to reach that goal.

NRA Liability Insurance vs. Complete No-Fault Insurance Costs

The NRA offers liability insurance for gun owners.  With the $100,000 limit and self-defence coverage the cost is $180.00 per year.  It only covers liability after the injured person wins a law suit and has many exclusions.  The self-defense part is by a separate endorsement.  It is excess liability so if the gun owners homeowners insurance pay NRA insurance will not.  It does, however, cover the individual owner and any number of guns owned or used by that person.

The calculation in the post on this Blog Gun Insurance Would Not Be Expensive shows Continue reading

Comments flood Eugene Robinson Washington Post Opinion

Eugene Robinson has an article “Stop the gun madness” in the Washington Post opinion section.  It calls for regulation but does not mention regulation.  It’s of interest to this blog because of the flood of comments.  There are over 2000 comments in about 24 hours as of 4:45 EST on Jan 1, 2013 and it is getting several comments a minute.  A rough scan of the comments shows a mixture with more in favor of increased regulation.  I think this reflects Robinson’s usual readership but is different than the bulk of comments in other places which are typically hostle and opposed to all gun regulation.  It raises the question of whether the dialog will permenently change after Newtown.

Useful Post by Ben Achtenberg on treating Guns like Cars for Insurance.

Ben Achtenberg has an article in the Caring for Survivors of Torture blog titled “We Already Have a Way to Cut Gun Deaths.”  It makes the case for treating gun ownership with the same standards of responsibility as cars in detail and with strength.  He points out our willingness to accept driving tests, licensing, training and mandatory insurance for automobiles.  He shows that these are support the use and ownership of cars and that the “the insurance industry has a vested interest in developing regulations and price points that will not unduly discourage car ownership and use.”  He then rhetorically asks if there any chance of that happening and answers “In the United States of today, not a snowball’s chance in hell.” 

He then goes on to talk about how an insurance system would work on a conventional liability model.  He discusses licensing, regulation, market price differences based on risks and insurance prices being affected by safe practices and good records.  He supports insurance as a part of universal regulation. 

He does not discuss the other models of insurance other than to say that one reader suggested that a surety bond for paying injured parties could replace or supplement insurance.  This is a well thought out article and gives a valuable list of links for Related Reading.