Voluntary Insurance and Strict Liability as Good First Steps

Much of this blog is about how insurance should be designed and how it would work if an ideal insurance mandate was in place.  Opponents of such a mandate point out real and imagined problems that would prevent such insurance from working.  When the possibilities are examined the problems turn out only to apply to particular models of insurance and can be avoided by designing the insurance for the particular nature of guns and gun violence.

But there are also transitional problems that could block adoption of an insurance mandate that would work well once it was in place.  The most important of these problems is the fact that gun insurance that would protect victims does not exist currently.  The insurance that is designed to protect gun owners from accidental or self-defense incidents is very narrow and is not adapted to the need to protect victims even to the extent that existing liability laws could allow the redress in the courts.

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Gun Insurance for Willful, Intentional & Criminal Acts.

One of the things that opponents of gun insurance or insurance trade representatives often say is that insurance cannot cover intentional or criminal acts.  This is simply false.

There are many kinds of insurance that cover such acts.  The key is that the insurance pays to the victim and not the wrongdoer.  It doesn’t have to matter if the deed is done by the purchaser of the insurance or another insured person.  It is important the the policy be written to make this clear; policies that exist at least partially for the benefit of third parties typically work that way.  Insurance that is compelled by law for an activity often applies in these cases even if it’s not spelled out in the policy, but courts differ on this point and an explicit requirement in the legislation and in policy language is a good idea.

Insurance textbooks teach that whether an act is accidental or willful is determined from the viewpoint of the insured.  Mandatory insurance should treat a victim as an also insured party. This is necessary because the purpose of many kinds of insurance is to protect the insured against the willful acts of outsiders. An example would be a day care center that is negligent in screening visitors who might commit an abuse against a child.  From that viewpoint, a act that is deliberate on the part of the abuser is an accident to the victim.

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