(Reuters) – 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 $174 billion in 2010, including lost work time, medical care and insurance, according to a breakdown of U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.
Of the 31,328 deaths by firearm in 2010, 1.9 percent were accidents and 0.8 percent were of undetermined intent, according to CDC and National Vital Statistics Report numbers on the institute’s website. The rest were suicides and homicides.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Grant McCool)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/06/us-usa-guns-insurance-idUSBRE91516920130206
Guns are a hand held “insurance policy” no mention of the 4TRILLION$ pissed away in iraq/afghani fiasco.
Steve
Again, how does this prevent the criminals from owning and acquiring guns? They keep completely missing the point. Like a bunch of Communist rhetoric. Rather than solving the root of the problem, we only solve the symptoms.
Hey, let’s talk car insurance for a moment, seeing as how the proponents bring that up. Most of the people in Texas (mostly Mexicans or Illegal Mexicans) DO NOT have auto insurance or liability insurance for their cars. Yet, they are still driving and do hit and runs on a daily basis. So how is your “liability” insurance on guns going to protect us from criminals with guns if it can’t even protect us when it comes to cars, which is the very argument that the proponents are trying to make. Their argument is invalid and unsound and I just proved it. Ask anyone in Texas on the car insurance thing. It’s true!
Hey NC, I lived in houston in early 90s,got hit 2 diff. times by 2 diff. mescans with no insurance my policy(state farm) paid out twice then I got a speeding ticket on my bike and they CANCELLED me a man who had paid premiums for 15 yrs and I was cancelled
Isn’t it something…the way isurance companies go after bike riders as being such a “high risk”. With the exception of “green” kids on “crotch rockets”, bike riders are some of the safest drivers on the road. (I say “some” because semi drivers are, as well). The majority of bike riders are killed by car drivers pulling out in front of them or changing lanes into them, as if they were invisable.
It’s absolutely true, NC.
The 2nd amendment is a right not a privilege that can be denied
if you can’t pay.. This if it passed will be ignored the same way
registration will be ignored..
The purpose of required insurance is to ensure the loss of 2nd Amendment rights.
A gun registration scheme they can profit from.
Anything for a buck. Another scam just like health insurance.
Car Accidents during the same time cost 2,584,800,000,000. According to Government Statistics.
Nearly 1500 percent higher cost than guns.
If this should get traction we as gun owners should insist NRA carry the policies and we allow the profits to accrue to fight the anti gun politicians!
And every professionlly licensed executive, CEO, COO, CTO, Hedge Fund manager, Banker, Fed Reserve Boardmember, and every member of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches must all carry liability insurance to include malpractice, omissions and negligence coverage. Where will it end. Weapons keep the world free from tyranny – you can’t insure ALL firearms ownership.
Anyone who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan (or NYC, for that matter) will probably admit that firearms, by themselves, don’t necessarily keep folks free from tyranny. It is the adequate organization of moral people with guns that turns chaos into defensible peace , safety, and freedom from Draconian governments and other threats. Luckily, our constitution’s Second Amendment provides for exactly the solution in the form of “a well regulated militia”. I’m not talking about standing armies, dudes in camo waiting for the zombie apocalypse, or even the National Guard, but real, state-sanctioned militia for all able-bodied men, as in colonial times. Participation would be obligatory, but anyone unwilling or unable to do so could pay a small fee, which would help cover “regulation”, by which the Founders did not mean red tape, but organization. It could also help pay for weapons, ammo, etc for those unable to afford it. Imagine these militia organized on a county or state level, to counter balance federal encroachment, and you get an idea of how our forefathers meant for us to watch each other’s backs right here at home, not in some god forsaken hell hole overseas. Guns are simply tools. They become effective checks against oppression within a constitutional militia.
Any state currently considering legislation to fight federal encroachment of any sort, should include provisions to organize state or county militia. Make it mandatory (with wide exemptions where appropriate), and be prepared should Washington get uppity. Retired military and LEO should all be required to become militia members as well, given they took an oath to defend the constitution in the first place. This has worked in the past, against superior forces. It will work again if we follow the proper constitutional format.
What part of leaderless resistance do you not understand? The governments in the US are corrupt from the bottom to the top, from the local municipality to the county, to the state, to the federal level, from the meter maid to the president.
If you form your militia into a collective, run by the government at any level, it will be immediately taken over by the Zionist money and your so called state defense forces will become human shields for the foreign troops.
Our Constitution and Bill of Rights, both state and federal, have been usurped.
THERE IS NO GOVERNMENT TO GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS!!!
You are going to have to be men and rely on your balls to tell you what to do, rather than your nanny government.
The state defense bullshit line of thinking is what has got us into this mess. Our rights are individual rights and we must defend them as individuals. The government at no level is going to save your ass.
Form 5 man fire teams, 10 man squads. Arm, equip, and train. We are an army of 40 million individuals, sporting 40 million individual strategies. And THIS is what has them shaking in their boots as they know that they cannot defeat such an army as they would have to pacify each and every one of us rather than corrupt a few to lead us to our doom.
Reject the state defense force bullshit.
“A system of licensing and registration, is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.”
- Vladimir Lenin, “The Beginning of the Revolution in Russia”, Selected Works, Vol. I, International Publishers, New York, 1967.
“The power to tax the exercise of a privilege is the power to control and suppress its enjoyment…. A State may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a Right granted by the federal constitution…. Thus it may not exact a license tax for the privilege of carrying on interstate commerce…. This tax is not a charge for the enjoyment of a privilege or benefit bestowed by the State. The privilege in question exists apart from State authority. It is guaranteed the People by the federal constitution.”
- Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105 (1943).
I wonder if I’ll need liability insurance for my steak knives and baseball bats?
Seems like something DICK Cheney should have purchased.