Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, D-NY, introduced an approach to gun control that works — mandatory liability insurance (emphasis mine):
House Democrat Rep. Carolyn Maloney (N.Y.) has introduced a bill that would require gun owners to carry liability insurance.
The Firearm Risk Protection Act, unveiled Friday, would require gun buyers to have liability insurance coverage before being allowed to purchase a weapon, and would impose a fine of $10,000 if an owner is found not to have it. Service members and law enforcement officers, however, would be exempt from the requirement.
While I disagree with the exemption for service members and law enforcement officers, I think this approach is workable and addresses virtually all Second Amendment concerns that so often block effective gun control legislation. Even Forbes magazine (not exactly a liberal left-wing rag) likes it.
Massachusetts once again leads the way on this in a 2013 bill filed by David Linksky:
BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts gun owners would be required to purchase liability insurance in case their firearm was ever used to injure someone under a bill being filed at the Statehouse.
Not surprisingly, the insurance industry and the NRA oppose this — sounds like it’s a good idea.
This approach uses market mechanisms to influence the behavior of gun owners (and sellers). For example, parents of killers who effectively act as accessories to murder by providing them with weapons would face severe financial obstacles. Gun owners like the Tennessee family whose unlocked shotgun was used by their 11 year old to kill an 8 year old neighbor would face similarly severe penalties in addition to whatever criminal charges they face (the concept of charging the child instead of his father strikes me as utterly insane, but then again we’re talking about Tennessee).
We use mandatory liability insurance to manage malpractice, reckless driving, building maintenance, and a host of other ills that plague society. This approach will work for gun violence.
I hope that this gets more attention from our Democratic candidates as our election season develops.
My former Republican co-worker is on board with this, and he would even go as far as require sellers insurance. He and I still disagree about assault weapon bans and an Australia style buyback-but this would would be a proposal he could get behind. He really favors sellers insurance, as someone who used to work with the Cook County Prosecutors office, he thinks making the gun store seller liable would remove the middleman for a lot of bad deals behind Chicago’s gun violence. It would also prevent irresponsible owners like the mothers of the killers in Oregon and Sandy Hook.
Another idea is ending the media’s sensational wall to wall coverage whenever an event occurs. Unlike mental illness and video games, there is a strong corollary with mass media highlighting these killers and a copycat effect. We really should stop putting their names and faces in the public eye, or revealing so much detail about how they went about their dirty deed.
I enthusiastically agree about requiring liability insurance for sellers.
Law enforcement agencies should also be required to carry this insurance. While the underwriting standards and costs will be different for such entities, the same mechanisms will surely encourage much-needed increased vigilance on the part of those agencies.
Not sure what insurance would do
Officers are expected to have weapons at home and while off-duty. Would this be like car insurance? A specific car? But even then, insurance covers you if driving another car.
BTW – I think it ought to be a bond for a dollar amount rather than a policy.
I’m skeptical that this is universal state (or nation) wide. And, there’s no mention of whether or not the officers themselves or the department (read: local or state government) would pay. Also, no mention for the option of self-insurance.
Obviously, there are a number of details that matter…
is the most self-defeating thing progressives think.
Let’s talk about how we can start organizing towards a ban on everything but hunting rifles and guns for self-defense in distant places with no nearby police.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thinking-beyond-the-moment
Take two other movements for social change in the news. The gay rights and anti-abortion movement. The gay rights movement successfully followed an incrementalist approach, utilizing courts and legislative and electoral victories to steadily build out support from one state, viewed as a crazy outlier even by many sympathetic progressives at the time, to several and eventually to all 50 once the court basically validated shifting public opinion. In a ten year time we went from gay marriage bans passing overwhelmingly in blueish swing states like OH and PA, to Kim Davis and the Indiana RFPA being the extremist and anti-mainstream outliers.
In stark contrast, the anti-abortion movement is laser focused on one goal and one goal only-overturning Roe v Wade, that it often times shoots itself in the foot via overreach (Akin or Mourdock anyone?) and this misguided assault on Planned Parenthood and now birth control. They are moving their case backwards and further into the margins, and their refusal to compromise or celebrate astounding abortion reduction statistics in Colorado (because they relied on common sense…) is a great example.
Or this silly notion that Larry Lessig is somehow a purer alternative to Bernie Sanders on the money question, since that’s the single issue he is discussing. So I don’t see how we get from point A to point B on this issue without first taking many incremental steps along the way.
Obviously the anti-abortion movement is horrible & wrong, but politically speaking, their record is VASTLY more successful than the gun safety movement. You’re right they haven’t moved the needle much at the national level, but good luck getting an abortion in a growing list of red states: http://gawker.com/the-gun-control-movement-needs-its-own-pro-life-fanatic-1734711064
Basically, it’s still legal for towns to zone out things they dislike from alcohol stores, to adult bookstores, to gun stores. And he suggests that big cities or suburbs zone out their gun stores, and this would enable certain localities to become gun free while rural places where guns actually serve a purpose won’t have to deal with that issue. It’s an interesting approach and one gun control advocates can look into, I know in my current city of Aurora, IL they unsuccessfully tried to zone Planned Parenthood out of my neighborhood and recently won on appeal. I disagree entirely with their ends, but their means sure are intriguing.
Obviously it will go nowhere in Congress.
Why aren’t we doing it in this state, though?
MA seems as good a state as any to test the limits of the second amendment and approaches like this and product safety are good places to start. And if we have to lose some manufacturing jobs in Gun Valley, we can create programs to reduce the fallout.
I admit, I haven’t read the links in the diary. I’m pressed for time.
I get NRA opposition, but why would the insurance industry oppose this legislation?
I was wondering about that as well. Maybe it’s an area that would have a high demand, but on the supply side, there wouldn’t be enough understanding to accurately price the offerings, so the potential for significant loses by the insurance companies would be very high.
I know, that’s a flippant response for a (somewhat) regulated industry, but if you think you’re going to be on the raw end of the actuarial arithmetic, raise prices, no?
According to links like this, the insurers fear “heavy government regulation” of their business (emphasis mine).
Sounds like typical right-wing horse manure to me.
This doesn’t need to be a done deal tomorrow. Figure out some coverage parameters, let the insurance industry come back with some thoughts on cost, and roll it out.
Insurance companies shouldn’t have to take a loss to cover gun ownership. Gun owners shouldn’t be gouged by coverage just as folks with auto insurance shouldn’t be gouged.
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The point is to put a financial burden on those who buy, sell, and promote guns that is commensurate with the enormous harm those guns cause.
Instead of meaningless platitudes about “prayers” (not to mention all the scapegoating), turn America’s pain into dollars.
Require the participants to have insurance, encourage the insurance companies to charge premiums that are large enough to maintain their profitability, and shift the burden of loss prevention into mechanisms that work reasonably well for other loss categories.
Each stolen guns can be traced to its last registered owner, the seller who last handled it, and the manufacturer who created it.
Once those players have to actually PAY the price for the current chaos, I am confident that they will find ways to solve it.
On every HO-3 and HO-5 policy (Homeowner and Renter) , firearms have automatic coverage up to $2,500 in value. A greater value would need an appraisal. Other items like boats are specifically excluded.
Hence, the automatic liability and medical coverage for others covers firearms accidents as they are not excluded from the policy.
If I were a gun owner, I would just use my homeowner coverage for any claim. That could include a valid private party sale.
not sure about this liability insurance solution though.
Not sure that it even is a solution. Not sure what it would accomplish.
Property and liability coverage for those who do not own a house. It covers only the contents of anew apartment but the liability provisions are identical to the homeowner policy. (And if you rent, you are an idiot if you don’the have this. The apartment building burns down, there is zero coverage for your stuff on the landlord’s policy so you are wiped out. It also covers a hotel or other rental, kind of like substitute transportation on an auto policy, so you don’the have to depend on Red Cross to find detailed you someplace to stay).
There is also the HO-6 policy for condo owners. Liability is the same.
Your home owner policy would cover you against the loss of your firearm but it wouldn’t cover you for the civil liability involved in the improper use of your stolen/misplaced/mishandled firearm. I believe that the point of this legislation is that firearm owners would need to carry coverage somewhat similar to malpractice insurance.
I just don’t think it will work as intended.
Homeowner liability isn’the just for accidents in the home but for all kinds of situations. And I question if gun liability IS excluded. Boat liability is specifically excluded, for instance, as is auto. But since the physical gun is included automatically, I think gun liability li m Ely is as well. The rule of thumb is that there IS coverage unless specifically excluded.
Instead of more posturing about NRA talking-points, I’d rather talk about the following people, their weapons, and their liability:
– Christopher Harper-Mercer — the Oregon shooter (and his mother)
– Adam Lanza — the Sandy Hook shooter (and his mother)
– The father of the 11 year old shooter of Maykayla Dyer
These people weren’t using stolen guns. The first two are ardent gun-rights proponents. The 11 year old used a loaded shotgun kept by his father in an unlocked cabinet.
Perhaps we can start by solving the problems we can solve.
I don’t know about C H-M, but Adam Lanza didn’t own those guns; his stole them from his mother.
It seems to me that the insurance for the gun owner ought to cover use by others. If I own a gun, I pay the insurance. If someone else uses it to commit a crime, there are a few possibilities:
1. I had already reported it stolen, and I was in no way negligent (it was stolen from a locked safe)
2. I had already reported it stolen, but I was in some way negligent (it was stolen from the front seat of my unlocked auto, parked at a shopping mall)
3. I had not reported it stolen because (1) or (2) happened very recently — and either I was storing it properly, or I wasn’t.
In the case of a firearm that was being stored properly and was reported missing in reasonable time, the owner (and hence, insurance) isn’t on the hook. But, if you were storing your weapon improperly, or if it had been missing for a significant amount of time and you never reported it missing, then yes Martha, you (your insurance policy) is on the hook.
For how much? Dunno. What’s the line between proper storage and negligence? Dunno. How long do you have to report your weapon missing? No idea.
Is the added expense of insurance intended to deter the purchase of weapons? Also, doesn’t insurance actually shield the responsible party a bit? In other words, if I get sued because my gun caused a death rather than the penalty coming out of my pocket my insurance takes care of it. Please forgive my lack of comprehension here.
It will not prevent gun deaths. It will create compensation for survivors though.
Malpractice insurance improves health care because the insurer insists that practitioners maintain acceptable standards of care, and because the high cost of malpractice insurance creates peer pressure among practitioners to avoid malpractice claims.
This will work in a similar way.
In a more general sense, today the cost of gun violence is absorbed by society. We should, instead, focus the cost of gun violence on those who manufacture, sell, and possess guns. It’s all well and good for some to demand that people be allowed to own assault weapons. Let those who manufacture, sell, and possess those weapons be collectively responsible for the consequences of that.
We have many analogous examples. People who want to live near the ocean have to pay higher insurance rates, because they are at greater risk of loss. It costs more to insure an automobile that is used for commercial purposes, because those vehicles are more likely to be involved in crashes. Smokers pay higher insurance rates than non-smokers.
If you have no money in your pocket, then it doesn’t matter whether you get sued for $10,000 or $100,000,000 — you’re not going to pay.
If, on the other hand, you must buy a compulsory liability policy in order to buy a gun, then:
a) You have to want the weapon enough to pay even more for it.
b) The insurance company is likely to offer discounts for weapons training, finger locks, and so on.
c) The insurance company is likely to demand higher premiums or refuse to accept the policy altogether if you have a prior record, can’t pass a mental health exam, and so on.
One of the ways to reduce problem behavior is monetize the impact and use market mechanisms to reinforce desired behavior and discourage undesired behavior.
For many Americans, the decision to acquire a gun was in a (brief) period of his life, and now it’s in the house, not harming anyone but no longer particularly useful.
Paying an insurance bill every quarter forces the owner to reassess: is it still worth owning this gun? Is this an ongoing expense I want? My sense (and I have NO data or analysis) is that these no-longer or rarely-used guns are ripe for being found by toddlers or teenagers, or being stolen and not noticed missing for months at a time. And, as s’tom mentioned, if insurance comes with helping to make these kinds of gun owners store their weapons more safely, bonus!
But I don’t think it would cover you if someone used one of your guns to murder someone else, as happens on a daily basis in this country.
https://www.locktonaffinity.com/nrains/excess.htm