Costs put on gun owners are not Poll Taxes

When a proposal for requiring insurance for guns is put into a blog discussion, many of the strong pro-gun advocates reacting to the post base their objection on rights as they assume they have them from the second amendment to the US Constitution. These assumptions can be very broad. And I see statements such as “what other rights do you have to pay for?” and “paying for gun insurance is like a Poll Tax.”

Well, I see us paying taxes on the means necessary to exercise a right all the time. Look at your phone bill, it’s full of taxes on a means to communicate. You have a right to travel, but pay taxes on cars and on air and rail tickets.

Poll taxes are really obnoxious, especially the way they were historically used, but they were not found to be unconstitutional until a specific amendment (The 24th Amendment to the US Constitution) was adopted. There is no similar amendment for gun rights. It’s interesting that rather heavy taxes for automatic weapons have never been found to be unconstitutional.

District of Columbia v. Heller is a very narrow decision in itself. It only overturns an extremely restrictive law that totally prohibits gun ownership. Later the court extended it to state laws in another case, McDonald v. Chicago. Since then lots of restrictions on gun use and ownership have been upheld by state courts. Whether the Supreme Court will strike a broader range of gun restrictions in the future is unknown. While lots has been written by legal scholars about the subject, the future path of this law will probably be determined by political considerations. Heller was supported by 5 justices with a strong dissent by 4 justices. It’s possible that it could be rolled back to the old view that any right to bear arms did not apply to individuals or it’s possible that it could be broadened.

As far as insurance is concerned, the system supported by this blog only requires regulations applied to the manufacturer of guns. Any requirement that the insurance be transferred to the subsequent owner, as would be needed to let the manufacturer’s insurer relinquish responsibility, would be a private contract.

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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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

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

Gun Insurance Would Not Be Expensive

                Getting an approximate estimate of the cost of Gun Insurance that would protect everyone is important even though the parameters of an insurance system have not been developed.  In many ways, the wide experience with automobile insurance will serve as a model for the system to come.  There are available sources for the numbers needed to make an estimate if one assumes a certain level of coverage and benefits.

The Insurance Information Institute publishes overall numbers for automobile insurance.  The particular items that interest us are for private passenger automobile insurance (excludes commercial):

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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.

 

Mandatory vs. Topdown Requirements for Gun Insurance

This is a quick post to remind readers that there are at least two ways to require gun owners to have insurance.

Mandatory Gun Insurance

The regulation or law could simply require every gun owner to have insurance in place on a gun.  This would be simple to mandate but it would require enforcement for every owner with all of the practical and political problems that brings.  There would be no automatic procedure to guarantee complience on transfer (legal or not) of the gun.  The probable result would be a large number of uninsured guns in circulation.

Topdown Gun Insurance

The requirement for insurance could have as part of its terms that an insurer remains responsible for injuries from a gun until responsibility is taken up by another insurer.  In that case, it would not be necessary to have enforcement measures taken for subsiquent owners.  Insurance coverage could remain in place for lost, stolen or diverted firearms greatly expanding the protection of potential injured persons.

 

Fine Article on Gun Insurance by Megan McArdle in The Daily Beast

Megan McArdle has written a long piece in The Daily Beast entitled “Should People Be Forced to Buy Liability Insurance for their Guns?” It is by far the most detailed and thought out analysis of the suggestion that I have seen since Newtown. While I don’t agree with her conclusion that the problems make insurance as a solution unworkable, she gives logical reasons that need to be addressed.

She starts with three reasons that we would want insurance. The first is to Continue reading