Gun Control (Spray yourself down when entering and exiting the thread)

[Wheels Of Confusion]

i didnt read alot of the thread but i have to agree, there is no way to insure guns because instantly there will not be enough coverage nor any company that wants to take on the task.

Ridiculous. There are nearly a hundred million gun owners in the US and if drogin is to be believed then only a fraction of a percent of those gun owners are responsible for gun deaths and injuries. That means the pool of potential damages should be far smaller than the pool of potentially insured, right? This would provide more revenue for insurers, who already have to pick up a huge tab on firearm-caused claims every year.

People will be destructive and someone who has set their mind on violence is near impossible to stop.

What about reducing impulsivity? What about just making it more expensive to own a gun?

if guns are outlawed then people will just blow up things which is more scary to me, at least a gun has to have a person behind it, a bomb is faceless and hidden.

If you think it's so trivial to use a bomb instead of a gun purchased from Wal-Mart, build one yourself and try it.

 

[Deleted member 28951]

Proposing a system that seems somewhat counter to existing public policy and legal precedents

How is it counter? See car insurance and drunk driving, is it counter to that?

You're ridiculous. Not every little difference is "counter" to anything.

I already explained it. I'll try again.

In insurance, and only in insurance, the reason public policy says you can't sell a policy against intentional acts is because it encourages those acts.

It's why you can't walk into State Farm and buy a murder liability policy.

Now, in what Matisaro and the others that are pivoting to this "sin tax" or "use tax" concept are proposing none of that matters.

What they are saying is that since firearms create damages, that they can just use simple division of the total damages by the number of guns and/or other gun related necessities such as ammunition. That value would effectively be what each gun owner/purchaser of ammunition would "owe".

That's something, but that's not insurance.

I'm not in the US... Does US medical insurance not typically cover medical conditions resulting from really unhealthy diets? Or medical care following intentional acts like suicide attempts (say not via firearm)?

 

[Thank You and Best of Luck!]

if guns are outlawed then people will just blow up things which is more scary to me, at least a gun has to have a person behind it, a bomb is faceless and hidden.

This explains the carnage from IED incidents in school classrooms that plague the rest of the first world nations. Makes sense. The US is very fortunate that it stands apart alone from all the rest.

 

[flere-imsaho]

i didnt read alot of the thread but i have to agree, there is no way to insure guns because instantly there will not be enough coverage nor any company that wants to take on the task.

Ridiculous. There are nearly a hundred million gun owners in the US and if drogin is to be believed then only a fraction of a percent of those gun owners are responsible for gun deaths and injuries. That means the pool of potential damages should be far smaller than the pool of potentially insured, right? This would provide more revenue for insurers, who already have to pick up a huge tab on firearm-caused claims every year.

Exactly. drogin & killian113 are merely exposing their complete and utter lack of understanding of how actuarial science works.

Given the numbers at play, this particular insurance market would likely be far more profitable for insurance companies than property or health insurance, just for starters.

 

[Psychophant]

i didnt read alot of the thread but i have to agree, there is no way to insure guns because instantly there will not be enough coverage nor any company that wants to take on the task.

Ridiculous. There are nearly a hundred million gun owners in the US and if drogin is to be believed then only a fraction of a percent of those gun owners are responsible for gun deaths and injuries. That means the pool of potential damages should be far smaller than the pool of potentially insured, right? This would provide more revenue for insurers, who already have to pick up a huge tab on firearm-caused claims every year.

Exactly. drogin & killian113 are merely exposing their complete and utter lack of understanding of how actuarial science works.

Given the numbers at play, this particular insurance market would likely be far more profitable for insurance companies than property or health insurance, just for starters.

So if you are the insurance company, how do you calculate how many lawsuits will be filed, and what the average payout will be, now that there is a well-capitalized insurance company paying out instead of a single individual? None of this can be known with any degree of precision before it is implemented. There may be 5,000 lawsuits a year at $10 million per, or 1,000 at $500,000 per.

 

[Thank You and Best of Luck!]

i didnt read alot of the thread but i have to agree, there is no way to insure guns because instantly there will not be enough coverage nor any company that wants to take on the task.

Ridiculous. There are nearly a hundred million gun owners in the US and if drogin is to be believed then only a fraction of a percent of those gun owners are responsible for gun deaths and injuries. That means the pool of potential damages should be far smaller than the pool of potentially insured, right? This would provide more revenue for insurers, who already have to pick up a huge tab on firearm-caused claims every year.

Exactly. drogin & killian113 are merely exposing their complete and utter lack of understanding of how actuarial science works.

Given the numbers at play, this particular insurance market would likely be far more profitable for insurance companies than property or health insurance, just for starters.

drogin's position, insofar as I understand it, is that there are so many gun owners and comparatively so few claims to pay out that the insurance would be extremely cheap and thus fail at its primary purpose as described here. Which was deterring fashionable firearms ownership. Basically in the same way that paying D&O insurance has probably dissuaded somewhere near zero people from becoming a director or officer of a corporation.

The only artifact of this end of the conversation that I think could otherwise upend drogin's position is that the various harms from firearms fetishists probably haven't been duly priced, and thus the top-end of the curve is unknown, and as such might be so high as to make individual insurance prohibitively expensive despite there being such a massive insured pool to draw from.

I actually principally agree with drogin on this, so far as it goes. As it stands right now the priced harm vs. the rate of incidents vs. the potential size of the payer pool probably favors any individual policy being fairly cheap. If I had to ballpark it based on the scale of numbers in play that we know of, I'd suspect somewhere in the less than a few hundred $$$ per year. Which frankly isn't much of a deterrent as far as I'm concerned especially when the only practical edifice of enforcement I can imagine ever happening is one that's going to discover that you're uninsured after it's too late. Sort of like how there are definitely uninsured drivers driving around all the time just running their luck against the odds. Then of course, for the people who buy a gun to commit suicide and/or to commit suicide after going on a killing spree, there's practically no deterrent effect.

This is why I think that if any scheme like this is going to have any chance of working it needs to come with codification of multiple parties that have strict liability and that the bulk of the liability burden needs to be pushed up the supply chain.

 

[Lt_Storm]

i didnt read alot of the thread but i have to agree, there is no way to insure guns because instantly there will not be enough coverage nor any company that wants to take on the task.

Ridiculous. There are nearly a hundred million gun owners in the US and if drogin is to be believed then only a fraction of a percent of those gun owners are responsible for gun deaths and injuries. That means the pool of potential damages should be far smaller than the pool of potentially insured, right? This would provide more revenue for insurers, who already have to pick up a huge tab on firearm-caused claims every year.

Exactly. drogin & killian113 are merely exposing their complete and utter lack of understanding of how actuarial science works.

Given the numbers at play, this particular insurance market would likely be far more profitable for insurance companies than property or health insurance, just for starters.

So if you are the insurance company, how do you calculate how many lawsuits will be filed, and what the average payout will be, now that there is a well-capitalized insurance company paying out instead of a single individual? None of this can be known with any degree of precision before it is implemented. There may be 5,000 lawsuits a year at $10 million per, or 1,000 at $500,000 per.

Now that is bullshit. After all, we know very much how many people are killed by guns and we know very well what kinds of rewards juries return for wrongful deaths. We also know very well what the medical costs of shootings are and what juries tend to return for damages for injuries. So, no, all that information is readily available, you only need to set the actuaries loose to figure out what the likely payouts will be and what kind of premiums would be needed to cover them.

drogin's position, insofar as I understand it, is that there are so many gun owners and comparatively so few claims to pay out that the insurance would be extremely cheap and thus fail at its primary purpose as described here. Which was deterring fashionable firearms ownership. Basically in the same way that paying D&O insurance has probably dissuaded somewhere near zero people from becoming a director or officer of a corporation.

One nice thing about this proposal: even if it doesn't deter anyone (and I suspect that it would be sufficient to deter teenagers), it still makes things better for the victims of shootings. After all, at least they won't be trying to extract blood from turnips anymore. Furthermore, it also means that there will be actuaries involved in gun purchases, meaning that it guarantees moderately thorough background checks, insurance contracts will likely include storage requirements, etc.

 

[TenaciousB]

So if you are the insurance company, how do you calculate how many lawsuits will be filed, and what the average payout will be, now that there is a well-capitalized insurance company paying out instead of a single individual? None of this can be known with any degree of precision before it is implemented. There may be 5,000 lawsuits a year at $10 million per, or 1,000 at $500,000 per.

Not to handwave it away, but addressing this is pretty much the entire focus of actuarial science.

drogin's position, insofar as I understand it, is that there are so many gun owners and comparatively so few claims to pay out that the insurance would be extremely cheap and thus fail at its primary purpose as described here. Which was deterring fashionable firearms ownership. Basically in the same way that paying D&O insurance has probably dissuaded somewhere near zero people from becoming a director or officer of a corporation.

The only artifact of this end of the conversation that I think could otherwise upend drogin's position is that the various harms from firearms fetishists probably haven't been duly priced, and thus the top-end of the curve is unknown, and as such might be so high as to make individual insurance prohibitively expensive despite there being such a massive insured pool to draw from.

I actually principally agree with drogin on this, so far as it goes. As it stands right now the priced harm vs. the rate of incidents vs. the potential size of the payer pool probably favors any individual policy being fairly cheap. If I had to ballpark it based on the scale of numbers in play that we know of, I'd suspect somewhere in the less than a few hundred $$$ per year. Which frankly isn't much of a deterrent as far as I'm concerned especially when the only practical edifice of enforcement I can imagine ever happening is one that's going to discover that you're uninsured after it's too late. Sort of like how there are definitely uninsured drivers driving around all the time just running their luck against the odds. Then of course, for the people who buy a gun to commit suicide and/or to commit suicide after going on a killing spree, there's practically no deterrent effect.

This is why I think that if any scheme like this is going to have any chance of working it needs to come with codification of multiple parties that have strict liability and that the bulk of the liability burden needs to be pushed up the supply chain.

Whether it is a side effect or intentional, putting up even small roadblocks in front of gun ownership may significantly impact gun ownership rates (see research on "nudges"). In addition, it puts an ongoing cost to gun ownership, which both has the effect of making the social cost of owning guns more salient as well as causing you to decide whether it's worth it to keep paying for guns you may not be using very often (if at all).

Plus, we're probably not talking about a flat rate for gun ownership here; just like with other kinds of insurance, the cost for your insurance will be based on your personal demographics (how high risk of an owner you are). Plus, this evaluation of insurability will be a built-in waiting period to own guns, since you presumably would need to be pre-approved to purchase a gun before buying one. Not just that, the type of gun you own will affect the cost; insuring a bolt-action .22LR versus an AR-15 will be like insuring a F-150 versus a Mustang (guns/cars that cost similar amounts may nonetheless carry different risk profiles).

Anecdote: I own several guns that have been in locked storage (primarily because there are no indoor shooting ranges near where I live, but even when there were some nearby, I didn't use them often). Since guns have resale value, there's no point for me to sell them unless I need the cash. Start making me pay annual insurance on them (even in the tens of dollars per year) and that cost calculation starts shifting.

 

[Matisaro]

i didnt read alot of the thread but i have to agree, there is no way to insure guns because instantly there will not be enough coverage nor any company that wants to take on the task.

Then do not participate, You need to read the room here, your cheap trolling wont work.

 

[Shavano]

i didnt read alot of the thread but i have to agree, there is no way to insure guns because instantly there will not be enough coverage nor any company that wants to take on the task.

Ridiculous. There are nearly a hundred million gun owners in the US and if drogin is to be believed then only a fraction of a percent of those gun owners are responsible for gun deaths and injuries. That means the pool of potential damages should be far smaller than the pool of potentially insured, right? This would provide more revenue for insurers, who already have to pick up a huge tab on firearm-caused claims every year.

People will be destructive and someone who has set their mind on violence is near impossible to stop.

What about reducing impulsivity? What about just making it more expensive to own a gun?

if guns are outlawed then people will just blow up things which is more scary to me, at least a gun has to have a person behind it, a bomb is faceless and hidden.

If you think it's so trivial to use a bomb instead of a gun purchased from Wal-Mart, build one yourself and try it.

Really, don't. People get in pretty big trouble for making homemade bombs.

 

[Shavano]

Proposing a system that seems somewhat counter to existing public policy and legal precedents

How is it counter? See car insurance and drunk driving, is it counter to that?

You're ridiculous. Not every little difference is "counter" to anything.

I already explained it. I'll try again.

In insurance, and only in insurance, the reason public policy says you can't sell a policy against intentional acts is because it encourages those acts.

It's why you can't walk into State Farm and buy a murder liability policy.

Now, in what Matisaro and the others that are pivoting to this "sin tax" or "use tax" concept are proposing none of that matters.

What they are saying is that since firearms create damages, that they can just use simple division of the total damages by the number of guns and/or other gun related necessities such as ammunition. That value would effectively be what each gun owner/purchaser of ammunition would "owe".

That's something, but that's not insurance.

I'm not in the US... Does US medical insurance not typically cover medical conditions resulting from really unhealthy diets? Or medical care following intentional acts like suicide attempts (say not via firearm)?

Closer would be medical *malpractice* insurance. Does the insurance company get out of paying by showing the doctor intentionally cut off the wrong leg?

 

[Shavano]

i didnt read alot of the thread but i have to agree, there is no way to insure guns because instantly there will not be enough coverage nor any company that wants to take on the task.

Ridiculous. There are nearly a hundred million gun owners in the US and if drogin is to be believed then only a fraction of a percent of those gun owners are responsible for gun deaths and injuries. That means the pool of potential damages should be far smaller than the pool of potentially insured, right? This would provide more revenue for insurers, who already have to pick up a huge tab on firearm-caused claims every year.

Exactly. drogin & killian113 are merely exposing their complete and utter lack of understanding of how actuarial science works.

Given the numbers at play, this particular insurance market would likely be far more profitable for insurance companies than property or health insurance, just for starters.

It wouldn't have to be. The profits could be regulated.

edit - and they should be, because we're talking about government-mandated insurance. The law would have to make provisions for what happens when and uninsured shooter shoots somebody because that's definitely going to happen. The best provision I can think of is pooling of the risk of that across all insurers in the market. Since as drogin assures us almost all gun owners are law abiding, there will be plenty of premium payers to cover any possible costs, even if it turns out all the actual shooters come from the uninsured pool.

We haven't talked in this thread about police shootings, but those amount to about 1/17th of all shootings (in 2021). Police forces should have to carry that insurance too for officers that carry guns and their rates would be much higher than those for the general populace because of the sheer amount of deaths per capita they cause.

 

[Dmytry]

Proposing a system that seems somewhat counter to existing public policy and legal precedents

How is it counter? See car insurance and drunk driving, is it counter to that?

You're ridiculous. Not every little difference is "counter" to anything.

I already explained it. I'll try again.

In insurance, and only in insurance, the reason public policy says you can't sell a policy against intentional acts is because it encourages those acts.

It's why you can't walk into State Farm and buy a murder liability policy.

Now, in what Matisaro and the others that are pivoting to this "sin tax" or "use tax" concept are proposing none of that matters.

What they are saying is that since firearms create damages, that they can just use simple division of the total damages by the number of guns and/or other gun related necessities such as ammunition. That value would effectively be what each gun owner/purchaser of ammunition would "owe".

That's something, but that's not insurance.

I'm not in the US... Does US medical insurance not typically cover medical conditions resulting from really unhealthy diets? Or medical care following intentional acts like suicide attempts (say not via firearm)?

Of course it covers those.

Drogin's Fundamental Insurance Law Of Impossibility Of Any Payout To Anyone If The Act Is Intentional is just something he made up because he probably got a gun or two and doesn't like the idea of several thousands per year insurance cost for compensating victims of intentional shootings. That's all. He instead wants a $100/year insurance covering only gun accidents. (There's ~50x more intentional gun homicides than unintentional fatal accidents, so it really is a $100 vs $5 000 issue pretty much).

The basic argument is that there exists an (unwritten) Habeas Corpus of Insurance which prohibits any payout to anyone for intentional acts regardless of context. I'm kind of glad it doesn't really exist or we'd have insurance companies bribing judges and juries and proving every act to be intentional.

 

[m0nckywrench]

If you think it's so trivial to use a bomb instead of a gun purchased from Wal-Mart, build one yourself and try it.

That's easy and safety videos are instructive. An ordinary LP BBQ jug or a plumbers acetylene cylinder (smaller but impressively powerful) can easily destroy most homes. Safety video showing what a little cylinder can do and why they should not be left in your vehicle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Qp2Lvrliw

A classic arson method uses a lit cigarette slid into a book of matches but a candle will do. Crack valve, place ignition source at opposite end of room (like a basement) and walk away. The largest school mass murder was done with explosives but modern industrial society is full of potential weapons and those are not at all obscure. Bombs are simple. So is arson a la Happy Land Social Club. Be glad more defectives aren't exploiting the ease of arson in target rich environments. Have some club fires:

https://www.firerescue1.com/fatal-fires ... Gt97QnWIT/

Fortunately those methods don't get much publicity or more lunatics would use them. The root problems are American popular culture and eighth grade reading (therefore intellectual) level population. American culture is savagely anti-intellectual. Americans are so easy to radicalize because they're unintelligent angry brutes too ignorant to deal with their problems in a healthy way. They blame society for their personal failing and for whatever reason feel entitled to unearned success at life and lust.

Consider the toxic variety of incel who are violently anti-female. They should blame themselves for their personal faults and failure at self-mastery but blame innocent others instead. They feel entitled to females despite being loathsome. They feel entitled to respect despite being horrible people. They feel entitled to economic and social success they're unworthy of but do not own their defects then fix them. Our society no longer instills self-discipline. A functioning primary school education system fostered stability back when high school rifle clubs were normal. That's been generally abandoned with what resources remain focused on passing tests and job training not healthy socialization. It will not be fixed other than locally because our public are too stupid to understand that and too cheap to pay for effective education.

I predict core problems will not be dealt with because the public are incapable of understanding them.

 

[Dmytry]

Closer would be medical *malpractice* insurance. Does the insurance company get out of paying by showing the doctor intentionally cut off the wrong leg?

I think they could, theoretically. Risks shooting their own foot though if they do it too much, nobody wants to get an insurance that will not pay but instead will get you prosecuted (and possibly bribe some expert witnesses and whoever). In a sufficiently corrupt society, e.g. fire insurance is impossible because after you have a fire they'll just bribe some arson investigator to get you convicted. That is not actually good for insurance industry as a whole but good for one specific claim.

In that case insurance originally exists to protect the doctor from financial ruin after making a mistake, rather than to allow patients to get compensation even if the doctor is dirt poor.

Ideally you would want the malpractice insurance to cover the part of intentional liability after the doctor's assets are used up for covering their liability. You don't want to shield the doctor from liability for intentional acts, but you do want to shield the patient from doctor's inability to compensate.

Medical insurance and car insurance are more relevant here. Keep in mind that another role of medical insurance is compensating the hospital where our bad diet patient is getting charged a million dollars. The patient is going to get treated either way even if they are unable to pay. Of course, medical insurance doesn't get out of paying hospital bills by claiming that the patient's diet was very bad and it was basically a suicide attempt.

For most gun owners, keeping a gun at home is an intentional and idiotic act akin to a really bad diet, drunk driving, and so on. A lot of firearm homicides occur while drunk, by the way.

Normally things like drunk driving are prohibited but due to 2nd amendment plus large revenues of gun industry, having guns at home is perfectly fine.

 

[Deleted member 28951]

Proposing a system that seems somewhat counter to existing public policy and legal precedents

How is it counter? See car insurance and drunk driving, is it counter to that?

You're ridiculous. Not every little difference is "counter" to anything.

I already explained it. I'll try again.

In insurance, and only in insurance, the reason public policy says you can't sell a policy against intentional acts is because it encourages those acts.

It's why you can't walk into State Farm and buy a murder liability policy.

Now, in what Matisaro and the others that are pivoting to this "sin tax" or "use tax" concept are proposing none of that matters.

What they are saying is that since firearms create damages, that they can just use simple division of the total damages by the number of guns and/or other gun related necessities such as ammunition. That value would effectively be what each gun owner/purchaser of ammunition would "owe".

That's something, but that's not insurance.

I'm not in the US... Does US medical insurance not typically cover medical conditions resulting from really unhealthy diets? Or medical care following intentional acts like suicide attempts (say not via firearm)?

Closer would be medical *malpractice* insurance. Does the insurance company get out of paying by showing the doctor intentionally cut off the wrong leg?

Not quite what I was asking about. drogin claimed, several times, that there was no existing area of insurance that covered intentional acts, and it seemed to me that medical insurance might be a counter-example (not familiar with US medical insurance, so I asked for a clarification).
drogin and others did raise the point that many/most types of insurance didn't cover acts of intentional crime by the insured person (the justification being that the ability to purchase such insurance promotes crime), so I explicitly chose as one of the examples one that wasn't a crime; presumably a physician's intentionally chopping off the wrong leg would be a crime, so not a good litmus test.
Incidentally, over here, our mandatory liability car insurance (medical only) doesn't cover criminal acts (car thief getting into an accident, a person driving without a license or without the insurance (jailworthy offense)). Anyone else hurt in such an accident is covered, even if there was no insurance policy, by a state-owned compensation fund for that purpose only.

 

[Shavano]

In America, in many/most states that aren't "no fault", you're require to buy "uninsured motorist" insurance so if you are in a collision caused by another driver and the other person does not have insurance (because they're breaking the law) or their insurance is insufficient to cover your damages, that pays your damages up to the limit. Also many collisions result from somebody breaking traffic laws. (Failure to stop, failure to yield, making an illegal turn, speeding, etc.) Their insurance still pays.

You can set up a system to the insurance company pays up to the limit of coverage, and has the right to sue the insured to recover what they can if they are found to be at fault in a shooting, or where the insurance company pays whatever awarded damage is left to be paid after the shooter (or their estate) is tapped out.

 

[ramases]

In America, in many/most states that aren't "no fault", you're require to buy "uninsured motorist" insurance so if you are in a collision caused by another driver and the other person does not have insurance (because they're breaking the law) or their insurance is insufficient to cover your damages, that pays your damages up to the limit. Also many collisions result from somebody breaking traffic laws. (Failure to stop, failure to yield, making an illegal turn, speeding, etc.) Their insurance still pays.

You can set up a system to the insurance company pays up to the limit of coverage, and has the right to sue the insured to recover what they can if they are found to be at fault in a shooting, or where the insurance company pays whatever awarded damage is left to be paid after the shooter (or their estate) is tapped out.

In Austria (and much of Europe) all licensed insurance car providers must pay into a pool that is used to pay claims against uninsured motorists, up to the minimum coverage every driver is legally required to obtain. At the time of this writing this is 8 million EUR. Additionally, insurance is tied to the vehicle, not to the driver, and the commercial risk of the driver not upholding their insurance contract lies with the insurance company. For example, if you have an insurance contract that says "no drivers under 25", and you let your 18 year old kid drive who then proceeds to crash into another car, your insurance company must first pay the claimant, and then may recoup the costs of your breach of contract from you. Note how the claimant is completely insulated from the consequences of a breach of contract on part of the insurance holder.

This creates a strong commercial motive for the insurance company not to underwrite badly scoped out limits on the insurance, because they carry the risk of the insured person not holding up their side of the bargain.

License plates are not issued by our DMV, but instead by insurance companies in name of the state. From the point of issuance of a plate the issuing insurance company is liable for damages caused by the plated car -- even if the insurance holder stops paying the insurance premium. In this case the only way the insurance company can escape strict liability is by reporting this fact, and the fact that they are withdrawing the insurance to police.

This creates a strong commercial motive for the insurance company to report persons who do not meet their legal requirements to properly insure their motor vehicle to the police.

But even after the police report, the insurance company is still indirectly liable through the 'uninsured motorists' funds they are legally required to contribute to.

This creates a strong commercial motive for the insurance company to exert pressure on the police that 'reported as uninsured' plates are collected, and that unplated cars on the roads are pursued and impounded.

Note that all liability incurred by the insurance company also exists against illegal acts: If you rob a bank and crash the getaway vehicle, the car's insurance still needs to pay for the victims of the crash, even though it happened in pursuit of a blatantly illegal and indeed criminal act.

 

[Dmytry]

In America, in many/most states that aren't "no fault", you're require to buy "uninsured motorist" insurance so if you are in a collision caused by another driver and the other person does not have insurance (because they're breaking the law) or their insurance is insufficient to cover your damages, that pays your damages up to the limit. Also many collisions result from somebody breaking traffic laws. (Failure to stop, failure to yield, making an illegal turn, speeding, etc.) Their insurance still pays.

You can set up a system to the insurance company pays up to the limit of coverage, and has the right to sue the insured to recover what they can if they are found to be at fault in a shooting, or where the insurance company pays whatever awarded damage is left to be paid after the shooter (or their estate) is tapped out.

In Austria (and much of Europe) all licensed insurance car providers must pay into a pool that is used to pay claims against uninsured motorists, up to the minimum coverage every driver is legally required to obtain. At the time of this writing this is 8 million EUR. Additionally, insurance is tied to the vehicle, not to the driver, and the commercial risk of the driver not upholding their insurance contract lies with the insurance company. For example, if you have an insurance contract that says "no drivers under 25", and you let your 18 year old kid drive who then proceeds to crash into another car, your insurance company must first pay the claimant, and then may recoup the costs of your breach of contract from you. Note how the claimant is completely insulated from the consequences of a breach of contract on part of the insurance holder.

This creates a strong commercial motive for the insurance company not to underwrite badly scoped out limits on the insurance, because they carry the risk of the insured person not holding up their side of the bargain.

License plates are not issued by our DMV, but instead by insurance companies in name of the state. From the point of issuance of a plate the issuing insurance company is liable for damages caused by the plated car -- even if the insurance holder stops paying the insurance premium. In this case the only way the insurance company can escape strict liability is by reporting this fact, and the fact that they are withdrawing the insurance to police.

This creates a strong commercial motive for the insurance company to report persons who do not meet their legal requirements to properly insure their motor vehicle to the police.

But even after the police report, the insurance company is still indirectly liable through the 'uninsured motorists' funds they are legally required to contribute to.

This creates a strong commercial motive for the insurance company to exert pressure on the police that 'reported as uninsured' plates are collected, and that unplated cars on the roads are pursued and impounded.

Note that all liability incurred by the insurance company also exists against illegal acts: If you rob a bank and crash the getaway vehicle, the car's insurance still needs to pay for the victims of the crash, even though it happened in pursuit of a blatantly illegal and indeed criminal act.

That sounds almost 1 to 1 transferable to guns. The contract would say that they get to recover the costs from the insured (or their estate) if the act was criminal, and that's it.

As a bonus point people with more assets may be able to get lower rates. Which is another element that helps make it palatable for Americans. It has to make a lot of money for some industry, and it has to have at least a perception of screwing the poor (no real screwing would take place in this case since most people's murder risk comes from other household members and is raised by presence of a gun). Win win, the rich get to feel that they're getting one over everyone, and the poor are somewhat protected from a harmful product sold using deceptive advertising.

 

[flere-imsaho]

So if you are the insurance company, how do you calculate how many lawsuits will be filed, and what the average payout will be, now that there is a well-capitalized insurance company paying out instead of a single individual? None of this can be known with any degree of precision before it is implemented. There may be 5,000 lawsuits a year at $10 million per, or 1,000 at $500,000 per.

Not to handwave it away, but addressing this is pretty much the entire focus of actuarial science.

Exactly. Actuarial science + fine print that allows premium changes + a capital reserve or buying insurance yourself should your actuaries get Year One incorrect.

 

[ramases]

Ack, that is why I posted it

You can also start charging different rates depending on the nature of the weapon, which may not even be based on functional atrribures but instead on demographic appeal. For example if you just enjoy shooting an AR-15 at the range, and for whatever reason it has to be such a rifle and everything else just does not tickle your fancy, you can get a discount if you get a neon-pink one:

A neon-pink AR-15 shoots just fine, but it'll never be tacticool, and suddenly there's an extra cost for the fetishists that isn't transferred to the more reasonable folks.

Of course you could just recolour it, just like you can run most diesel cars on heating oil extra light (which is just diesel with less sulphur and fewer additives. It isn't great for the engine, but it'll run on it), and save money because the tax rate on diesel fuel is higher than on fuel oil. We solve this by adding a colouring agent to the fuel oil that is detectable even in miniscule amounts.

Get caught with that colour in your tank and kiss your car good bye. Repaint your AR-15 in tacticool and get slapped with the penalties for posessing an unlicensed firearm.

 

[papadage]

Or, you allow a black AR, but discount for safe storage at the range, with the range having a contact giving them custody that would require informing the. Insurance carrier when it’s cancelled.

 

[Dmytry]

Yeah. I also can see it being reasonably cheap for reasonable people with a reasonable motive for having a specific gun (e.g. hunters). After all the homicides are highest with handguns and tacticool garbage.

The problem with urban / suburban gun owners in particular, is that they are getting a specialized tool for killing people. Yes, the tool has been toy-ified and apparel-ified and so on, but it is still a specialized tool for killing people - it is like a fully functioning electric chair or a guillotine.

The best case scenario here is that they are a simple person who sincerely believed the better parts of the deceptive advertising, something about rapists with aids within N feet of their daughter maybe, or something about being the good guy with a gun. Hopefully not the one about clearing the room.

This is still a much higher risk than a reasonable individual with a dangerous tool they got for some reasonable purpose. People get all sorts of very dangerous tools to solve all sorts of practical needs (other than murder), and then they just not murder anyone with them, except in some rare "wow that's really weird" cases you see on the news once in a while.

The American gun situation is as if 30% of people got real guillotines for Halloween, and the country had a fairly normal non guillotine homicide rate, plus a huge guillotine homicide and suicide rate.

 

[ahmerali]

I'm not sure if this was asked before - do property insurance companies take the presence or absence of a gun on said property into account, when computing premiums?

If not, maybe they should?

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

I'm not sure if this was asked before - do property insurance companies take the presence or absence of a gun on said property into account, when computing premiums?

If not, maybe they should?

Or life insurance.

 

[Shavano]

I believe they do, yes, but they don't cover anything but accidents.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

I believe they do, yes, but they don't cover anything but accidents.

I mean for determining a customer's premium. "Got guns? Makes you literally dozens of times more likely for someone covered under this policy to snuff it. That's a price bump."

 

[StarSeeker]

I'm not sure if this was asked before - do property insurance companies take the presence or absence of a gun on said property into account, when computing premiums?

If not, maybe they should?

Depends on the company. When I bought my house a year ago, there were no questions about firearms in the house for the insurance or the extra supplemental policy I took out on myself in case something happened to me my family would be covered and could pay off the house.

I live in rural Kansas so maybe they just assume everybody out here is armed in a "Fudd" kind of way.

Add on: Speaking of "Fudd" it's a reference to Elmer Fudd, and after looking around it seems it's a much bigger insult in the Gun Community now then it was in the past. In the past it sort of meant a hunter who owned older style of guns, now it seems to be used as an insult in that "Fudd's" only care about protecting guns for hunting purposes and don't care about tactical guns or handguns and are willing to accept restrictions on those as long as they can continue to hunt with their lever, bolt action, wheel and shot guns. Sites even call them "traitors" to "real" gun owners.

 

[Visigoth]

I believe they do, yes, but they don't cover anything but accidents.

I mean for determining a customer's premium. "Got guns? Makes you literally dozens of times more likely for someone covered under this policy to snuff it. That's a price bump."

If you mean for home insurance I'd think that would be unlikely. Also not even sure that would be something they'd ask unless brought up by the person buying the insurance. I know with State Farm they have an amount limit (I think it was around $2,500) for firearms that would be covered under the normal home insurance, but they also offer additional insurance coverage if the value of the firearms are above that amount. Pretty much no different than covering any other high value personal objects as the insurance you are buying is there to replace and make whole for any losses covered by the policy.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

I believe they do, yes, but they don't cover anything but accidents.

I mean for determining a customer's premium. "Got guns? Makes you literally dozens of times more likely for someone covered under this policy to snuff it. That's a price bump."

If you mean for home insurance I'd think that would be unlikely.

I'm not sure if this was asked before - do property insurance companies take the presence or absence of a gun on said property into account, when computing premiums?

If not, maybe they should?

Or life insurance.

 

[ahmerali]

I was thinking more along the lines of liability...homeowner's insurance covers you if you get sued for slip and fall, stuff like that. Some companies don't insure damage from pitbulls...couldn't the companies disclaim any damage caused by your gun, based on some combination of the two? There is generally a category causing "bodily injury", right?

 

[drogin]

Please go research why it isn't typically allowed for insurance companies to provide liability insurance for intentional acts.

"Fuck it. Paid my premiums this month, so might as well go pull that trigger."

And then the insurance company would settle with the victim and sue you for the payout. If you can't afford it, well, you can owe it to them until you die and they discover that you are a turnip and have no blood. Again, there is nothing saying that they have to indemnify you for your intentional acts to ensure that the victim gets recompense. They just have to provide you with the equivalent of a loan.

OK, they don't "have to".

What typically happens is they refuse to pay anyone. Then the victim files suit against both the insurance company and the policy holder. The victim gets the shaft up until they can convince a judge and/or jury that the insurance company should pay out the (likely capped) liability.

The contract is between the policy holder and the company that underwrote it. Not between the insurance company and the victim. Why else do you think they are able to cap liability? Or are you also claiming that in an auto-accident the insurance companies pay more than their cap and then take on the burden of going after the policy holder so the victim doesn't have to?

You're just making shit up at this point. Go get me a citation that the world work the way you claim.

You know what's nice when writing a new kind of contract for a new kind of insurance? You get to just make shit up. That's sort of how contract law works. You put shit in the contract, and then that shit gets enforced. In this case, the stuff in the contract is a pot of money to ensure that people who get shot are guaranteed to get recompense, even if the person who shot them is broke, and gun owners hold the policy because they are required to by law. Nice and simple. No new precedents, just basic contract law.

You seem to have this idea that the point in forcing gun owners to hold insurance would be to indemnify them for damages they cause; this is incorrect, this isn't about their losses; the point would be to indemnify people who end up suffering damage caused by having been shot by the insured weapon. This is done by ensuring that there is guaranteed to be money for those people to collect in order to make them whole from their losses regardless of how poor the shooter is. The beneficiary of these policies wouldn't be the holder of the gun, at least, not in the case of intentional shootings, it would be the person who gets shot.

If someone shoots someone else intentionally, then the victim transfers their right to sue the shooter to the insurance company when the insurance company makes the payout. Then the insurance company can decide if the shooter is worth actually suing to recover the cost of that payout.

Your "side" can't even do the simplest things, but you keep proposing completely bizarre things that would be even harder to do...

This has got to be the richest bit of bullshit I have ever read in regards to this topic. To be clear here: the 'simplest things' have all been found illegal or politically unacceptable because your "side" insists that there be no gun control or any response to gun violence in this country of any fucking sort whatsofuckingever. So, no, you don't get to complain about people suggesting less than simple solutions (not that such an insurance scheme is particularly complex or strange), you know, because they are doing so to try and work around you and people like you.

Well, I am kind of past you in particular telling me how the law works or doesn't work, frankly.

What you're describing is a Trust. This isn't that hard. You don't need to invent new, whole classes of law here...seeing as you know so much about how it works or doesn't work...

In fact, a Trust-like structure would probably work quite well if your intention was truly just taking care of the survivors and/or victim's estates.

While we are at it, there are more trusts like this (or maybe just one big societal one) that we should form:

1. All Christians of any sect should pay into a trust simply for being Christian seeing how they can't seem to keep their hands off of children, espouse racist ideologies that incite violence, bomb/harass abortion clinics.
2. All social media tech companies, and the people that work for them, should pay into the trust because the platforms they create are design and/or allow for the radicalization of dim whits that carry out such violence.

I realize this likely comes off as whataboutism, but I don't intend it that way. I think the Trust here is setting a pretty good precedent. After all, I've been informed repeatedly that because I own certain property and take part in certain activities, I am responsible for gun violence even if I take no direct part in it. I would think the underlying vectors for radicalization should also pay into that, seeing as the inanimate objects too dangerous to own don't operate of their own accord.

I mean, after all, what a world we could inhabit if we make it too expensive to own firearms and simultaneously too expensive to practice the beliefs that radicalize many of the worst violent acts.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

How about we have the Muslims establish a trust for victims of future terrorist attacks?

 

[drogin]

i didnt read alot of the thread but i have to agree, there is no way to insure guns because instantly there will not be enough coverage nor any company that wants to take on the task.

Ridiculous. There are nearly a hundred million gun owners in the US and if drogin is to be believed then only a fraction of a percent of those gun owners are responsible for gun deaths and injuries. That means the pool of potential damages should be far smaller than the pool of potentially insured, right? This would provide more revenue for insurers, who already have to pick up a huge tab on firearm-caused claims every year.

Exactly. drogin & killian113 are merely exposing their complete and utter lack of understanding of how actuarial science works.

Given the numbers at play, this particular insurance market would likely be far more profitable for insurance companies than property or health insurance, just for starters.

So if you are the insurance company, how do you calculate how many lawsuits will be filed, and what the average payout will be, now that there is a well-capitalized insurance company paying out instead of a single individual? None of this can be known with any degree of precision before it is implemented. There may be 5,000 lawsuits a year at $10 million per, or 1,000 at $500,000 per.

Now that is bullshit. After all, we know very much how many people are killed by guns and we know very well what kinds of rewards juries return for wrongful deaths. We also know very well what the medical costs of shootings are and what juries tend to return for damages for injuries. So, no, all that information is readily available, you only need to set the actuaries loose to figure out what the likely payouts will be and what kind of premiums would be needed to cover them.

drogin's position, insofar as I understand it, is that there are so many gun owners and comparatively so few claims to pay out that the insurance would be extremely cheap and thus fail at its primary purpose as described here. Which was deterring fashionable firearms ownership. Basically in the same way that paying D&O insurance has probably dissuaded somewhere near zero people from becoming a director or officer of a corporation.

One nice thing about this proposal: even if it doesn't deter anyone (and I suspect that it would be sufficient to deter teenagers), it still makes things better for the victims of shootings. After all, at least they won't be trying to extract blood from turnips anymore. Furthermore, it also means that there will be actuaries involved in gun purchases, meaning that it guarantees moderately thorough background checks, insurance contracts will likely include storage requirements, etc.

We know those things, but please, what liability insurance covers "unknown and unlimited damages".

None. Zero. Doesn't exist.

That's one my chief complaints/reason for not looking at it like insurance that you think some private party in the industry is going to pick up and sell...

Any private party insurance is going to limit the liability they cover for a given contract. States regulate minimums for some types of insurance, like car insurance. Some people opt to buy a minimum liability policy, other's pay more to get greater liability coverage.

I don't know of any insurance/legal vehicle for "unlimited unspecified damages".

Case in point, look at what happened to Remington. They had to have a multi-tier liability structure through several different firms. Each firm in the tier only paid out once the lower tier coverage had been exhausted.

 

[drogin]

How about we have the Muslims establish a trust for victims of future terrorist attacks?

That's fine. All falls into the same concept. I just didn't want to use that example because my life-long Democrat voting ass is already Number One Kentucky Hillbilly GRA Supreme Commander for having one odd-ball belief. I don't want to become Chief Soapbox Racist by using the M-word.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

So just to be clear, you're on the record twice now saying that lumping all people of X religion into a category of criminal offenders is fine.

 

[drogin]

i didnt read alot of the thread but i have to agree, there is no way to insure guns because instantly there will not be enough coverage nor any company that wants to take on the task.

Ridiculous. There are nearly a hundred million gun owners in the US and if drogin is to be believed then only a fraction of a percent of those gun owners are responsible for gun deaths and injuries. That means the pool of potential damages should be far smaller than the pool of potentially insured, right? This would provide more revenue for insurers, who already have to pick up a huge tab on firearm-caused claims every year.

Exactly. drogin & killian113 are merely exposing their complete and utter lack of understanding of how actuarial science works.

Given the numbers at play, this particular insurance market would likely be far more profitable for insurance companies than property or health insurance, just for starters.

drogin's position, insofar as I understand it, is that there are so many gun owners and comparatively so few claims to pay out that the insurance would be extremely cheap and thus fail at its primary purpose as described here. Which was deterring fashionable firearms ownership. Basically in the same way that paying D&O insurance has probably dissuaded somewhere near zero people from becoming a director or officer of a corporation.

The only artifact of this end of the conversation that I think could otherwise upend drogin's position is that the various harms from firearms fetishists probably haven't been duly priced, and thus the top-end of the curve is unknown, and as such might be so high as to make individual insurance prohibitively expensive despite there being such a massive insured pool to draw from.

I actually principally agree with drogin on this, so far as it goes. As it stands right now the priced harm vs. the rate of incidents vs. the potential size of the payer pool probably favors any individual policy being fairly cheap. If I had to ballpark it based on the scale of numbers in play that we know of, I'd suspect somewhere in the less than a few hundred $$$ per year. Which frankly isn't much of a deterrent as far as I'm concerned especially when the only practical edifice of enforcement I can imagine ever happening is one that's going to discover that you're uninsured after it's too late. Sort of like how there are definitely uninsured drivers driving around all the time just running their luck against the odds. Then of course, for the people who buy a gun to commit suicide and/or to commit suicide after going on a killing spree, there's practically no deterrent effect.

This is why I think that if any scheme like this is going to have any chance of working it needs to come with codification of multiple parties that have strict liability and that the bulk of the liability burden needs to be pushed up the supply chain.

Right, or you structure it like a Trust, but have it be administered by the Federal Government like Social Security.

You can't make an impossible market and then expect Private Insurance companies to somehow eat it.

 

[drogin]

So just to be clear, you're on the record twice now saying that lumping all people of X religion into a category of criminal offenders is fine.

No. I'm following the line of reasoning that "any one that owns certain property or participates in certain activities is responsible for the actions of anyone else that owns the same kind of property and participates in the same kinds of activities".

That's you all's argument, not mine.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

So just to be clear, you're on the record twice now saying that lumping all people of X religion into a category of criminal offenders is fine.

No. I'm following the line of reasoning that "any one that owns certain property or participates in certain activities is responsible for the actions of anyone else that owns the same kind of property and participates in the same kinds of activities".

I mean it's kind of hard to shoot someone if you don't have a gun, but having a crucifix around your neck isn't a requirement to be a sex offender so it's not actually the same fucking thing at all.

 

[Ecmaster76]

How about we have the Muslims establish a trust for victims of future terrorist attacks?

For a sufficiently generalized disaster the trust is just the government and we are already paying in

This particular digression is especially pointless because if there was enough political capital to try and shift the liability to gunowners as a class then there would be enough political capital pass actual gun laws

Unfortunately its not practical for politicians to take a principled position on gun control; this is illustrated by the lack of serious constitutional proposals:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... st_century
ctrl+f "arms": 0 results found
ctrl+f "gun": 0 results found


This particular dilemma is two fold:
1. Proposing an amendment concedes that one is needed for gun control, and that Heller and other precedent as more or less correctly decided
2. Proposing an amendment is probably political suicide and congress isn't willing to stick their neck out on a proposal that can't yet be passed

The "yet" will be never without political capital but its hard to build support without a principled position. Thus the eternal dilemma, for this issue and others

edit: "gin control"