That’s what happens if you leave them out in the rain.
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From a law enforcement and public safety perspective insurance is prudent. The law enforcement part I have already discussed. (Nation-wide documentation to combat straw buying and gun hoarding)
Accidental gun injuries/deaths or those from guns taken by those in one’s household are rather heavy liabilities. Ones which your average gun owner can’t shoulder themselves. Without insurance, it is up to the community to bear the burdens of the gun owner’s irresponsible/unsafe behavior.
“There are 6 million car accidents per year with 222 million drivers”
But incidents of car accidents has been dropping year after year. Car accidents in general are having far less probability of grave injury and death as well. The same is not true of firearms. Injuries with firearms are far likely to be severe/mortal.
The need for liability insurance is even greater than firearms.
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A person killed or injured in an intentional attack has no less need for compensation than a person killed or injured in an accident.
I’m not entirely convinced that positioning private insurers as the gatekeepers for gun ownership is the right solution, but if those insurers had to pay out millions of dollars for everyone killed or maimed by a gun then they’d probably start being careful about who they sold gun insurance to.
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The vast difference in the rates, even when you add in suicides in murders, suggest not.
There are a ton of things that you and I do every day that increase our rates for death or injury. Falls are a huge one that people don’t think about, but no one is suggesting we have extra insurance if your house has stairs or you own a ladder. Poisoning is actually the cause of the most accidental deaths, but no one is suggesting we mandate locked cabinets or extra insurance because you have Tide Pods in the house.
Like I said, looking at this from an insurance standpoint, if they saw the vector of owning a firearm started to eat too much of their payouts due to injury or damage, then they would be charging people already extra. They do it for protection against theft already.
So we all should pay out insurance for assault and rape insurance in case one of us assaults or rapes someone? I mean, really. I get it, y’all don’t like firearms, but the idea that gun owners in general are responsible for the people hurting others is rather thin on reason.
Again, like 75% of the guns criminals are caught with aren’t theirs. So you’re asking people who shouldn’t have guns to buy insurance for something they aren’t supposed to have?
And my point about the private insurers is, if this was actually a huge risk vector, statistically, it would already be extra for the insurance coverage we have. Just like non-smokers get a health insurance discount. If this was even going to be a thing, it would be 20 years ago when the murder rate was literally nearly 2x as high.
If I was insured and licensed to use explosives and I left a big pile of TNT unguarded overnight on a construction site, then that TNT was stolen and used to commit an act of terrorism, I’d probably get my pants sued off for negligence. Certainly it would be hard for me to find anyone else to ensure my demolitions business after such an incident. Because explosives are really dangerous and there needs to be a certain level of accountability for the people we entrust with them.
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This is simple and was mentioned earlier: The original purchasers of the guns should need to buy insurance that covers liability for any crimes committed with the guns, whether the guns are stolen or illegally sold to someone who doesn’t get their own insurance. So you can get cheaper insurance if you can convince the insurance company that you’re storing your weapons securely and have no intention of illegally passing them on to people who should not have them. If they are later legally transferred to a new buyer who passes a background check and gets their own insurance, then there would be a release of liability from the original owner.
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Hardly, when you consider the potential liabilities involved and the general of lack ability of owners to shoulder them. Accidental gun injuries are more likely to be serious or fatal than most other forms of personal property.
“Falls are a huge one that people don’t think about, but no one is suggesting we have extra insurance if your house has stairs or you own a ladder. Poisoning is actually the cause of the most accidental deaths, but no one is suggesting we mandate locked cabinets or extra insurance because you have Tide Pods in the house.”
Your homeowners insurance covers liability to others caused by your negligent care with such things.
“Like I said, looking at this from an insurance standpoint, if they saw the vector of owning a firearm started to eat too much of their payouts due to injury or damage, then they would be charging people already extra. They do it for protection against theft already.”
You are speaking hypothetically, really out of your posterior here, Such insurance already exists for gun owners and is peddled by the NRA
https://mynrainsurance.com/home
The major difference would be a much larger insured pool. Which actually makes such insurance cheaper and creates market incentives to keep prices low among competitors.
You seem to avoid the whole law enforcement aspect of mandatory insurance as well. I accept your capitulation on the issue. That mandatory liability insurance is a good market based way to approach the issues of gun smuggling and gun hoarding.
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The link you showed has insurance against theft or damage - which I already said insurance companies charge extra for. I own such insurance. It has extra liability insurance for people who own firearms related businesses, such as stores, ranges, and trainers - just like every other business has. The only other insurance I saw skimming that site that would relate to private gun owners, is optional liability insurance. Depending what you do and how often, they may or not be a prudent insurance to get. And even then, possibly not necessary depending on your other insurance you already have i.e. homeowners and health insurance.
Insurance companies will always sell you extra stuff, no problem. But if it was such a risk vector to be REQUIRED, then it would be so. Like my example of smoking adding to your health insurance.
It isn’t capitulation , it’s me trying to stay on target of my initial complaint about this whole insurance scheme. I am sure this thread will close soon, and I am sure people are tired of me defending against the idea of registration. When you have cops not harassing people with weapons drawn who are just picking up trash in their yard, maybe I will entertain the value of registration.
You guys are trying to piece together some sort of lovely, logical bureaucracy that will some how make all the bad guys stop doing bad stuff. Yet despite all the gun laws, all the drug laws, all the booze law, all the prostitution laws, etc people are still shit we don’t want them to do. But I am sure we are just a few good laws to finally get ahead of the issue
I’m obviously being a bit dim here but I don’t see how this is relevant?
Unarmed black man is treated as if he has a deadly weapon = registration of firearms would make this worse?
Can you unpack that a little?
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Nobody but you is making that claim. We’re trying to come up with workable, practical solutions to mitigate the substantial harms that are facilitated by the current way-too-easy access to firearms in this country. And you’ve failed to explain why a well designed insurance requirement would not mitigate those harms. As stated earlier, even if the insurance requirement somehow did absolutely nothing to reduce the number of guns getting stolen or people getting shot, at least it would provide a financial recourse for those that were injured or lost loved ones by these dangerous machines. The gist of your response seems to be “it won’t stop all gun violence, so why bother?”
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The link also had a section for Personal Firearms liability Insurance
https://mynrainsurance.com/insurance-products/liability-personal-firearms
Which means your prior argument about it being hypothetically infeasible are garbage. You are trying to shift goalposts here and change the argument given. You don’t really have a grasp on how property/casualty insurance works. People buy it because the personal financial peril of an event far exceeds their ability to handle the liability and the ability of the community to shoulder the costs.
That is complete irrelevant garbage. I am sure you thought that made sense in your head.
When we have effective means of preventing the illegal gun trade and a way to discourage gun hoarding, then we can shelf the idea of mandatory liability insurance for firearms. As of now, it is the best solution for gun owners and law enforcement.
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Right—one of the reasons cops get away with shooting so many people is that “I thought he had a gun” is a plausible defense in a society that has few barriers for anyone who wants to get their hands on a gun.
You almost never hear about a cop shooting an unarmed suspect claiming “I thought he had a grenade” because grenades are hard to come by, even for would-be criminals.
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