[Vision2020] Buying a Gun? States Consider Insurance Rule

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

------------------------------
February 21, 2013
Buying a Gun? States Consider Insurance Rule By MICHAEL
COOPER<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/michael_cooper/index.html>and
MARY
WILLIAMS WALSH<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/mary_williams_walsh/index.html>

Both sides in a nation sharply divided over guns seem to agree on at least
one thing: a bigger role for the insurance industry in a heavily armed
society. But just what that role should be, and whether insurers will
choose to accept it, are much in dispute.

Lawmakers in at least half a dozen states, including California,
Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania, have
proposed legislation this year that would require gun owners to buy
liability insurance — much as car owners are required to buy auto
insurance<http://topics.nytimes.com/your-money/insurance/auto-insurance/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.
Doing so would give a financial incentive for safe behavior, they hope, as
people with less dangerous weapons or safety locks could qualify for lower
rates.

“I believe that if we get the private sector and insurance companies
involved in gun safety, we can help prevent a number of gun tragedies every
year,” said David P. Linsky, a Democratic state representative in
Massachusetts who wants to require gun owners to buy insurance. He believes
it will encourage more responsible behavior and therefore reduce accidental
shootings. “Insurance companies are very good at evaluating risk factors
and setting their premiums appropriately,” he added.

Groups representing gun owners oppose efforts to make insurance mandatory,
arguing that law-abiding people should not be forced to buy insurance to
exercise their constitutional right to bear arms. But some groups,
including the National Rifle Association <http://home.nra.org/>, endorse
voluntary liability policies for their members. And as several states pass
laws making it easier for people to carry concealed weapons and use them
for self-defense, some gun groups are now selling policies to cover some of
the legal costs stemming from self-defense shootings.

The United States Concealed Carry Association recently began selling what
it calls Self-Defense Shield. “If you’re forced to justifiably use your gun
in self-defense,” its Web
site<https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/membership/#customer_service>says,
“Self-Defense Shield will help pay for your expert pro-2nd Amendment
lawyer by reimbursing your legal-defense expenses following your acquittal
— an ingenious system critical to the arsenal of any responsibly armed
citizen.”

Premiums for such insurance range from around $200 to $300 per year; in
general, the coverage is narrowly written and excludes cases where a gun is
used to commit a crime.

Some specialized underwriters are reviewing what their policies cover when
it comes to shootings, and weighing whether they should offer new types of
coverage for gun owners. And as more states pass laws allowing people to
bring guns to public venues — including restaurants, bars, churches and the
parking lots of their workplaces — some business groups have expressed
concerns that they could be held liable for shootings on their properties,
which could drive up their insurance costs.

On Thursday, when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut outlined his
proposals<http://www.governor.ct.gov/malloy/lib/malloy/2013.02.21_Gun_Safety_Summary.pdf>to
reduce gun violence — which included universal background checks, a
ban
on large-capacity ammunition magazines and a stronger assault weapons ban —
he called for officials to study “whether owners of firearms should be
required to carry additional insurance.”

The insurance industry is wary of some of the proposals to require gun
owners to buy liability coverage — and particularly of bills, like one that
was filed in New York
that<http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&bn=A03908&term=2013&Summary=Y&Memo=Y&Text=Y>would
require coverage for damages resulting not only from negligence but
also from “willful acts.”

Robert P. Hartwig, the president of the Insurance Information Institute,
said that insurance generally covered accidents and unintentional acts —
not intentional or illegal ones. “Insurance will cover you if your home
burns down in an electrical fire, but it will not cover you if you burn
down your own house, and you cannot insure yourself for arson,” he said.

Some claims stemming from shootings have been covered by homeowners’
insurance<http://topics.nytimes.com/your-money/insurance/home-insurance/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>—
even by policies that said they did not cover illegal acts.

The families of the two students responsible for the 1999 killings at
Columbine High School in Colorado were able to use money from their
homeowners’ policies to settle a
lawsuit<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/20/us/2.53-million-deal-ends-some-columbine-lawsuits.html>brought
by families of most of the victims. In 2001, a California court
ordered an insurance company to defend a policyholder whose 16-year-old son
shot and killed a friend with a Beretta handgun that he had found in his
mother’s coat. But the year before, a North Carolina court ruled that an
insurance company did not have to cover the expenses of a policyholder who
had shot and wounded a prowler on his property.

Christopher J. Monge, an insurance agent and gun owner in Verona, Wis.,
recently wrote a book, “The Gun Owner’s Guide to Insurance for Concealed
Carry and Self-Defense,” which he sells at gun shows. Mr. Monge said that
the problem with most liability insurance is that it promises coverage only
in cases of a gun owner’s negligence, or an accidental shooting — and not
if the gun owner shoots someone intentionally in self-defense. “A negligent
act is covered by your liability policy, but if you intentionally shoot
somebody, it could be excluded,” he said.

So as more states pass self-defense laws, Mr. Monge said that he found
several insurance companies that would specifically offer liability
coverage in cases of self-defense, usually in the form of an “umbrella”
policy that added a higher level of coverage than the routine coverage for
negligence in a homeowners’ policy. An umbrella policy adds coverage for
unusual, but potentially expensive, incidents.

But he opposes proposals to make liability insurance mandatory. “They’re
barking up the wrong tree, if you ask me,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of
gun owners are going to be safe and not go crazy.”

States have been considering mandatory gun insurance bills for years, but
no state has passed one yet, said Jon Griffin, a policy associate at the
National Conference of State Legislatures. When Illinois considered a bill
in 2009, the National Rifle Association
wrote<http://www.nraila.org/legislation/state-legislation/2009/2/outrageous-anti-gun-bill-proposed-in-th.aspx?s=illinois+and+insurance+and+liability&st=&ps=>that
it would “put firearms ownership out of reach for many law-abiding
Illinoisans.” The N.R.A. endorses a
policy<http://www.locktonrisk.com/nrains/about.htm>that offers excess
liability coverage — “because accidents do happen no
matter how careful you are” — and another that offers “self-defense
insurance <http://www.locktonrisk.com/nrains/defense.htm>.”

The recent trend of allowing guns in more public places has alarmed some
business groups. When Ohio enacted a law allowing guns in bars in 2011, the
Ohio Restaurant Association opposed it, writing officials that restaurant
owners “expect that this law would be perceived by insurance companies as
increasing the risk of injury in establishments that sell alcohol, which of
course would result in increased liability insurance costs.” Owners have
not reported higher premiums because of the new law, said a spokesman for
the association, Jarrod A. Clabaugh, but some worry that a shooting could
drive up their insurance costs.

The current debate over mandatory liability laws is being watched with
interest by Nelson Lund, the Patrick Henry professor of Constitutional Law
and the Second Amendment at George Mason University School of Law.
Professor Lund proposed the idea of mandatory insurance in a 1987 article
in the Alabama Law Review, seeing it as a form of gun control that could be
consistent with the constitutional right to bear arms. But he said that he
had not studied any of the current proposals, and noted that it made a
great deal of difference how they are written.

“If this were done, the private insurance market would quickly and
efficiently make it prohibitively expensive for people with a record of
irresponsible ownership of guns to possess them legally,” he wrote in the
1987 article, “but would not impose unreasonable burdens on those who have
the self-discipline to exercise their liberty in a responsible fashion.”

Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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