San Jose, California becomes first U.S. city to require gun owner insurance

[Mister44]

@Mangochin

If there was a national mandate on gun owner insurance as there is for car owner insurance, it would drastically curtail much of the illegal gun trade in the US.

Given how many people are out there driving around with unregistered and uninsured cars, I am not sure that would be the case. It appears according to the article there is a registration with the city, so most likely those people will be paying the $25 tax to the city. People who have guns they never registered/aren’t supposed to have will not.

@Mangochin

If all guns purchased had to be insured, it creates electronic paper trails which get around the NRA inspired prohibition collection of national level gun ownership records.

If you buy a car outright, you don’t have to have insurance on it if you are just going to say keep it at home and work on it, or even just beat around your back 40. Load it up on a trailer and take it home. No one with private sales are checking if you have insurance for your car as you drive away. If you end up taking it on the road, then you have to get insured. But again, lots of people are not. Insurance isn’t required for ownership, but is for use.

@Mangochin

Also insurance requirements are useful for coercing safer behavior. More people will be willing to buy gun safes/locks for lower premiums.

You would think so, but they don’t. Or at least not all of them do. I have extra insurance against loss or theft. I asked if they offered a discount because I have a safe, and they said no.

You are right you have to have a record of everything (photos, serial numbers, any notable aftermarket parts that add to the value. Ironically, taxes can’t be considered part of the value), which would be useful if there is a theft in hopefully having it retrieved in the future.

I suppose if accused of a crime, they could get a warrant for that information. But I don’t see people who aren’t supposed to have guns or got them through the black or grey market are going to go through this process. It is also only really useful if someone left a gun at the scene of the crime. Otherwise, what magic is going to tie a shooting back to a specific gun because it was insured? They don’t have the gun to trace back to a person, so they will have to get a suspect through other means.

It isn’t clear to me if the $25 is the insurance, or if that is just an additional fee. For most Americans, you have some insurance for damages as part of your homeowners insurance. If someone fell and broke their leg on your property, or you were twirling your gun and shot someone in the leg on your property, homeowners insurance would pay for injuries. If you hurt yourself, you have your health insurance… hopefully.

If gun ownership was such a risk vector, the insurance companies already would require extra insurance for homeowners or life insurance. But they don’t, because it isn’t costing them too much in payouts in those two categories. Like any other valuables (jewlery, guns, comic books, Boba Fetts) if you want any special protection for higher end items, you have to pay a separate protection plan. People targeting and stealing valuable things DOES cost them money, so they require extra, separate insurance against theft for them.

@Mangochin

I have yet to see an argument against gun owner insurance that showed any knowledge as to how Property/Casualty insurance works or its effects.

The argument against this is this:

Like it or not, it is an enumerated right. You should not have to pay a fee to use a right.

The other practical argument is: It is just another legal hoop to jump through that most gun owners will do so. These people have never planned to nor have hurt anyone, and will continue to do so with or with out the new laws. People less concerned about hurting others will continue their actions either way. Some might even buy the insurance/pay the fee, but that isn’t going to change their behavior. Why would it?

If they do offer a discount for buying a safe, then that may promote more people buying and hopefully using one. But if insurance is supposed to create safer behavior, someone needs to tell all of these Dodge Challenger drivers I see whipping through traffic like an action movie.

$25 isn’t bad. It is about the cost of a box of good ammo. Clearly there are other licensing fees and taxes various states and the federal government require, such as the NFA tax. There are already unseen taxes in the price of both guns and ammo. There are excise taxes on imported guns and ammo. So clearly some fees and taxes have stood the test. But there have been other taxes implemented that have been rejected as unconstitutional.

So, good luck to San Jose! If it stands, then I will be curious how it effects any of the statistics in five years.

[Mangochin]

@Mister44

Given how many people are out there driving around with unregistered and uninsured cars, I am not sure that would be the case.

Not as many as you would think. Certainly not as many as there were before insurance was mandatory. The majority of people buy their guns and their cars from stores. Insurance mandates mean that the records of those store sales are recorded on a national level. Straw buying guns is done generally through stores in states with little to no paperwork requirements. Sure there are ways around it through person to person sales, but those are not the majority. It certainly makes the illegal gun trade more difficult.

@Mister44

If you end up taking it on the road, then you have to get insured. But again, lots of people are not. Insurance isn’t required for ownership, but is for use.

That was a point I was making. Sure you don’t have to insure a gun to own one. But if you choose not to, then it would be left on your property, presumably in storage. Good luck getting your homeowner’s insurance to cover accidents with it on your property.

@Mister44

You would think so, but they don’t. Or at least not all of them do. I have extra insurance against loss or theft. I asked if they offered a discount because I have a safe, and they said no.

Because Homeowner carriers don’t really like insuring firearms in general. The existence of the gun in the house gets their actuaries in “worry mode”. Because the potential damages are great and the likelihood of harm is high for what most people are willing to cover in their policies. Carriers will sell separate umbrella policies to cover such things.

@Mister44

But I don’t see people who aren’t supposed to have guns or got them through the black or grey market are going to go through this process.

Most guns enter the black or grey market from a point where they were sold in a store. The straw buying of the “iron pipeline” generally starts in a Red State gun shop. Once it becomes the norm for all new guns to be insured at the point of sale, paper trails form. Frequent buyers get identified, insurance underwriters start getting red flags. If the illegal gun trade can be limited to person to person sales, then the ability to operate drastically reduces.

@Mister44

Like it or not, it is an enumerated right. You should not have to pay a fee to use a right.

No rights are absolute. Nor has the right to bear arms ever been without paying fees or one kind or another. Its no difference than sales taxes on a gun. Moreover its a service for the gun owner to protect their assets from liability associated with their weapons.

@Mister44

But if insurance is supposed to create safer behavior, someone needs to tell all of these Dodge Challenger drivers I see whipping through traffic like an action movie.

One of the great motivators for wearing seatbelts is that insurers won’t fully cover injuries in accidents where you weren’t wearing them.

Ultimately your arguments are the “Its not a 100% foolproof solution, so its no good” fallacy I previously discussed.

[kthejoker]

America is a deeply weird country.

Ultimately gun laws are part of the long game - the decline of white male gun ownership is steady, hunting is basically dead, within the next 20 years household gun ownership will plummet below 25% as all the Boomer vets die off and their kids don’t pick up their weird hobby (hi, Dad!)

This law seems suburban mom friendly so we’ll see. Walls are crumbling …

[jaded]

“The responsibilities of the people exercising their right to bear arms shall not be enforced.”

It’s right there in the Constitution.

[KathyPartdeux]

People will break every law. That’s literally why you have a law - to delineate what actions are legal and which are not that people are already doing.

Additionally- free speech is an enumerated right. Property rights are enumerated in the 5th amendment.

You still need a license to open a broadcast teevee station, you still have zoning laws.

[lava]

then perhaps there should be a national mandate prohibiting liability coverage for gun owner related claims or injury. You accidentally shoot somebody - no protection. Shoot yourself - no health insurance. Tie this liablity to gun ownership, and the insurance cost is taken by the gun owners and not the rest of society.

[ejeffrey]

@Mangochin

I have yet to see an argument against gun owner insurance that showed any knowledge as to how Property/Casualty insurance works or its effects.

The main opposition to gun insurance is that it will result in less guns. It’s not like the gun nuts don’t understand that, but they have to come up with other excuses why it’s a bad idea.

[mr_raccoon]

This is gonna hit folks like this who have more weapons at their summer home than I do in my overfilled vault in D2.

Can’t blame the city government there seeing how much gun crime costs that city each year fiscally.

[Mangochin]

Hoarding disorder - Symptoms and causes

[ejeffrey]

@lava

then perhaps there should be a national mandate prohibiting liability coverage for gun owner related claims or injury. You accidentally shoot somebody - no protection. Shoot yourself - no health insurance. Tie this liablity to gun ownership, and the insurance cost is taken by the gun owners and not the rest of society.

The problem with this approach is that it uses a big cost with a small probability after the harm is done. People aren’t able to rationally asses the risk of low probability events so they often ignore it. It’s the same problem with denying people medical care because they didn’t get vaccinated. It may feel like “justice” but it is terrible at preventing people from owning guns or convincing them to get vaccinated.

It’s much more effective at actually changing behavior to make them pay for risky behaviors up front, and that is what insurance does. It’s not perfect, but a lot of casual anti-vaxxers, when confronted with $1000/year higher insurance cost will decide they don’t really care that much. We’ve already seen this with existing mandates. The people who will loudly announce they are willing to die for their “freedom” won’t quit their job for it.

It’s not perfect of course, and the wealthy and powerful will be able to pay for the insurance without a burden, but it will be effective if it holds.

[lava]

The intention was not to remove the mandate for insurance for gun owners, but to remove the redundancy with coverage from other policies. Not trying to punish people who go uninsured, but trying to coordinate coverage to put the insurance expense and risks where they belong –– with the gun owners.

[ejeffrey]

Thanks for the clarification, sorry for the misunderstanding.

[deltaecho]

Faux sympathy for PoC. Thats a good one.

My entry was: “What’s next? Mandating liability insurance for my hunting knife?”

[KathyPartdeux]

The differences by age are fairly immaterial.

[kthejoker]

It’s hard to tease out in that chart, but non-whites and women have held their gun ownership rates steady for 50 years across age brackets, as have the same cohort of white men through the ages (currently in the 50+ bracket)

https://www.vpc.org/studies/ownership.pdf

But white men under 50 account for the entire gap between the 33% of 50+ who personally own guns in your chart and the ~28% below 50.

And at the end of the day, older white male ownership is the main thing propping up 2A battles. Most gun owners want more gun safety and responsibility laws.

[KathyPartdeux]

I can see that it’s white guys of any age. And that being a guy of any race matters.

[knoxblox]

@Mister44

The argument against this is this:

Like it or not, it is an enumerated right. You should not have to pay a fee to use a right.

Mainly because opinions. Several democracies in the world have an anti-gun stance, and it seems to be working fine.

The problem I have with the 2A argument is why aren’t things like a free education (past K-12) or health care enumerated rights in the USA? If guns, then these also.

[Bobo]

I currently work in insurance and read a briefing on this law this morning.

The issue is going to be that it’s going to require a very specific type of insurance that currently doesn’t really exist.

I’m sure as gets held up in court, if it looks like it’s going to pass through, some insurance companies will get their actuaries and product departments in a tizzy to build something for this market, but currently there are only a couple of products out there (the NRA has one), and they’re not really an exact match to the proposed law requirements.

[Mangochin]

Your homeowners policy can cover that. The peril/cost ratio isn’t high enough to warrant its own policy.

[Mangochin]

I work in insurance as well. Its something many carriers have been planning for. Not difficult to set up. Plus given the public costs savings, it can probably get some subsidy at least at a federal level.