In the video below, Rashad Robinson declares that the NRA’s Carry Guard program is “murder insurance.” The Executive Director of Color of Change is aghast that gun owners can buy a policy that protects them against the financial burden of defending themselves after discharging their firearm. “It’s incentivizing people to shoot first and ask question later,” he opines. Is that true when . . .
Carry Guard only pays customers 20 percent of their policy’s value ($30k) in the immediate aftermath of a DGU, and the rest ($120k) after an eventual verdict if the gun owner’s found not guilty of a crime?
Do you have this type of policy, if so which one, and are you any more likely to shoot another human being — whether that’s a DGU or murder — because you have it?
For readers who don’t have a post-DGU policy but are considering buying one, here’s a chart from concealedcarry.com comparing coverage
Isn’t “liability insurance” one of the things gun controllers think people should have?
If they can shove it down your throat as a financial disincentive to gun ownership, yes.
If you actually want it, then there must be something wrong with you, so no guns for you.
^ This exactly
You don’t have to be crazy to pay for something that could save you from financial ruin by the legal system just because you defended yourself with a gun. A very anti-gun DA bringing a case against you demands the services of a competent attorney even if you are totally innocent and every witness knows it. You ARE crazy if you don’t have insurance or a LOT of money.
Yeah no kidding. They have demanded for years that we need to have liability insurance on the guns we OWN at home, but are vehemently against the idea of having insurance for yourself if you have to use it.
Basically the antis want us to all to have nothing.
I recently signed up for a new automotive insurance policy.
I didn’t suddenly develop a new urge to drive too fast, get drunk before getting behind the wheel, use sidewalks to go around traffic, ram pedestrians just to see them cry or any number of other illegal activities.
…getting kinda tired of bigots always assuming the worst about us…
🤠
Stop trying to establish a firm set of standards, let them have their moving target.
They aren’t called libtards for nothing. Carry guard is murder insurance if my auto insurance is actually just vehicular homicide insurance. Maybe my homeowner’s policy really just exists for a visitor to come to my home and get pushed down the stairs. They should stop watching Law & Order reruns.
So NRA is the only one where you have to shoot them with a projectile weapon to get coverage?
Use a knife? NRS can’t/won’t help you.
Apparently they’ll help if I believe that I am Robin Hood though.
Darn, John Matrix always talks me out of using my gun and switching to my knife. I should see one of those therapists to see why I do that.
Let off some steam Bennett
Anti-gunners want gun owners to carry insurrance, gun owners get insurrance, anti-gunners complain insurrance is racist.
It s like they just wanted to create financial hardship for gyn owners and not solve anything.
Until they dont. The cognitive dissonance/hypocrisy is strong with liberals.
IRT CalgunsMD
I am a member of the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network. In addition to their financial protection, they offer excellent training materials. I had no desire to shoot anyone before I joined them, and none at all afterwards.
The problem with the gun grabbers is not the idea of our having insurance, of course, but the fact that it is turned around to protect us rather than offer deep pockets for their false idea of our liability in ANY use of our guns.
I would go so far as to say that since I got my ACLDN membership and watched those videos, I’m far less likely to discharge my weapon when an evil criminal is about to kill me than I was before. This should please anti-gunners since they value the lives of criminals in the middle of doing evil far above the lives of law-abiding people doing good things. Valuing evil over good is a hallmark of anti-gunners and we should call that out every chance we get.
US Law Shield coverage also includes accidental and negligent discharges at no additional cost. These are the most common types of firearm related lawsuits.
That is actually a super cool bonus/feature. I thought the psychological support and clean up fees were a nice touch on some of them. Those are the little details that I wouldn’t have thought about.
I suspect the liability portion of your homeowner’s insurance would cover accidents with firearms but the limits won’t be very high. What they won’t cover is a suit for injuring an assailant in self defense because that’s a deliberate act rather than an unintentional accident. A separate umbrella liability policy is cheap and picks up where your other liability insurance reached its limit.
Aren’t these mostly the same people who worked so hard to get the feds to incentivise getting sick?
I see it as “Overzealous, uninformed, prosecutor and cops” insurance.
Exactly. The DA and the system has the financial resources of the entire .gov at their disposal.
Joe Sixpack has himself.
Even if it was murder insurance and marketed to criminals, my response is so what?
If it is a legal product and they think it is worth the money to have insurance pay for a lawyer then they can buy it
The way it is now, murderers are often represented by Public Defenders
Whose jobs seem to be to help the State to get plea bargain convictions
Career criminals would need “ murder insurance”
Gun owner = career criminal
Ed, take a firearm training course from one of the larger training outfits and talk with the other trainees. If you come away still believing that Gun Owner = Murderer you should immediately schedule some sessions with a mental health professional.
Get psychological help Ed. Seriously…..get help. You need it.
So then the Secret Service are criminals?
Maybe Rashad Robinson should work on helping fewer of his homies become violent criminals and then he wouldn’t have to worry so much.
Is not having that insurance negligence???
What an Fing load of invented problem cr_p.
I saw we let the NRA fight that battle, then draw straws to see who gets to kill the winner.
F em all.
You got it. Not having insurance is negligence.
Having insurance is malice aforethought.
You lose either way. That’s how the progressives want it.
Normal average people these days get all bent out of shape by guns.
I am taking Physical therapy for a shoulder injury, I wear a cap, jogging pants, socks, underwear and a T-shirt with sneakers, I have one pocket on me and it’s the T-shirt pocket.
I go to therapy and drop my wallet, car keys, cell phone in my cap and go to working the injury.
So recently one of the therapist brings me my cap and has spotted the Concealed weapons permit in my wallet and wonders if I know the hospital is a weapons free zone. Giving me scared suspicious looks the rest of the session.
D’oH! And in/up what body part am I concealing a weapon in baby my anus?
Just having a Carry conceal permit is frightening to some people even if your unarmed! I hope she also saw my VA card stating I am a veteran as does my Drivers license so she will know that I, humble fellow that I am obey the law to the point I have on my person three official forms of Identification with a picture that are accredited and vouched for by three government agencies one Federal, one State and one county permitting me to drive, carry and see the VA, any one of which allows me to vote or buy alcohol.
Yet just possessing a Carry permit distressed these people.
So I can see how carry insurance would frighten the feces out of folks.
We are quickly becoming a Wussy Nation.
“Becoming”?
We’re long past the “becoming” stage. Remember Jeff Snyder’s ‘A Nation of Cowards”? He described how we incentivize crime:
“Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back immediately, then and there, where it happens…The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.”
“Vote?” What kind of fascist state do you live in that requires a photo id to prove that you are a resident before casting a vote? Here in the great state of Colorado, you need only declare your intention to live within the area after the election to be able to register and cast a ballot on election day. I wish I was joking.
Delaware requires voter I’D. The dems have a 2 to 1 advantage so they don’t complain. If it was a swing state they would call it racist and import illegal aliens to steal elections.
I really can’t stand these people.
It would be extremely beneficial if there was a review process for this type of insurance.
People who have had to use it and giving honest reviews, or at least information to follow cases.
I know in my area that a DGU is not an automatic trip to jail If case is clear. Other places there is no question, you are going to get cuffed, stuffed, and charged.
Have considered getting insurance but don’t know which one would be best.
These insurance programs will cover the costs of defense of criminal or civil proceedings, but they don’t ensure a _successful_ result at trial. Nor do they cover criminal fines or restitution or civil damages. If unsuccessful, there is the potential for both loss of liberty and or financial ruin. Even if successful, there may be additional costs not covered, for example, lost income due to time away from work.
Most people* (I think) are sufficiently sensible and risk-averse enough to see that even if you win both a criminal and a civil case, you still lose, and if you lose either the civil or criminal case, you lose in a big, big way. Except in a legitimate self-defense scenario, there is nothing to be gained (at least for the non-criminal) from shooting someone, and much to be lost. There may be some people at the margins (nothing is idiot-proof) who might hold the thought that insurance equals impunity, but I don’t know any.
*Law-abiding citizens who carry concealed, whether under a permit system or a constitutional carry system, have one of the lowest rates of criminal activity of any demographic. Why would one expect a sudden rash of murders once there is insurance coverage.
Some of them cover civil liability.
USCCA gives you $2MM to be spread between civil defense and civil liability, according to the chart above.
I had not noticed that. Thanks for the correction. Even with that coverage, the consequences of an unsuccessful trial would be potentially disastrous — punitive damages for a wrongful death can be pretty substantial.
I talked with a paralegal about these a few months ago. Keep in mid that for every lawyers opinion there is an equal and opposite lawyers opinion. Her take;
1. Could be considered proof of intent (me, but so is a gun)
2. All have a common flaw. It’s illegal to insure a criminal act.
3. If you are found guilty of a crime, you owe everything they spent on you back to them.
4. These considered, the insurance company makes out better if your found guilty!
Maybe you should discuss with your paralegal the Sixth amendment and right to counsel.
Group legal insurance (which many companies offer) is just a way to finance the cost of legal representation. It would be no different if I put a criminal lawyer on retainer. WIthout a lawyer, I am still guaranteed a public defender. The only difference between NRA carry guard and group legal insurance is that NRA carry guard offers specialty legal services (and is therefore cheaper than group legal). Group legal often includes access to a network of lawyers that will do estate planning, debt settlement, landlord-tenant disputes, and, yes, criminal legal work.
Who pays for the counsel was my point. Insurance if you’re found innocent of a crime, you if found guilty.
Who pays for counsel is irrelevant. Outside groups defend people and file appeals pro-bono all the time. People have a right to counsel, period. Even for known drug dealers or other defendants, the government cannot seize assets needed to pay for counsel.
Insurance is merely a way to prepay and finance counsel and spread the cost among willing policy holders.
A paralegal is not a lawyer, so you take legal advice from one at your peril. The advice you got is incomplete and in part just plain wrong. (Yes, I am a lawyer, but not your lawyer, so this is not legal advice specific to your or any other case.)
Not insuring against liability for a criminal act is not a “flaw.” These policies are not intended to insure against the consequences of a crime, they are intended to insure against being unable to defend yourself if wrongly accused of a crime or if sued civilly for negligence (or perhaps, depending on the policy and your state’s law, recklessness). Generally, you cannot insure deliberate, intentional acts. That’s why it is not “murder insurance.”
Having insurance is not proof of intent. In most cases, evidence of insurance is inadmissible at trial because it may tend to prejudice the jury when determining damages. Certainly, in any civil case, mention of insurance would be grounds for a mistrial. For example, under Federal Rule of Evidence 411, “Evidence that a person was or was not insured against liability is not admissible to prove whether the person acted negligently or otherwise wrongfully. But the court may admit this evidence for another purpose, such as proving a witness’s bias or prejudice or proving agency, ownership, or control.”* I suppose that opposing counsel might try to sneak in under bias or prejudice, but that does not go to the question of guilt or innocence or of liability — it is only admissible to impeach a witness, presumably the defendant, but only if the defendant testifies, which is unusual, but not unheard of, in a criminal case.
I have not read these policies, so I can’t speak to their contents, but in most other cases, at least on the civil side, losing a case does not mean that the insured has to reimburse the insurance company for defense costs. In fact, if the paralegal was right, then the insurers would be committing fraud — the policies state that they cover civil damages, but if there was a claw-back provision if the case was lost, civil damages would never be covered. The paralegal’s interpretation is that the insurance company is saying, “We will cover civil damages, unless there are civil damages, and then you have to pay them yourself.” That’s not the way liability insurance works.
Now, if there is a criminal trial first (usually the case), and there is a guilty verdict for a crime like murder, voluntary manslaughter, or assault, then civil damages would not be covered, because there has been a determination of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt of a crime involving a culpable state of mind. There is no denying that finding in a subsequent civil trial — a crime was committed, and that is uninsurable. The only issue in a civil trial would be damages (unless there are extrinsic defenses). As to insurance coverage, there might still be coverage for damages if the crime was, say, criminally negligent manslaughter, because you can insure against liability for negligent acts — that is going to depend on the terms of the policy.
*State court rules of evidence vary, but the rule against mentioning insurance in front of a jury is very longstanding and almost universal.
As Andrew Branca, author of The Law of Self Defense, points out repeatedly, very few lawyers know anything about this subject. Most only have experience defending criminals not innocent people who have had to defend themselves against criminals. The legal strategies are almost opposite. When defending a criminal, the lawyer tries to suppress or discredit facts because they show his client is guilty. An innocent person needs the facts to come out because they will prove his innocence.
I think we should get rid of public defenders because it is incentivizing people to commit crimes and ask question later.
/snark
Guess Rashad Robinson is not familiar with the Sixth Amendment.
Since most if not all of the firearms insurers out there will only cover you if you were legally carrying and legally fired, then hell no they’re not. Way to gin up clicks with a headline tho.
A few years back the fire insurance on my mom’s house got upgraded. Funny how we didn’t suddenly stop taking precautions against grease fires in the kitchen or start leaving the wood stove in the basement open while in use.
This is not “murder insurance”. This is insurance that helps pay for legal defense after you defend yourself, family or property from some scumbag that wants to hurt you and/or yours. It should be obvious, but since people that are forced to defend themselves from these scumbags have something, the law wants to try them and take what they have. The law doesn’t do this against a poor person that defends himself, but if he has a home and car and family, they will go after him every time, so the creep might be able to justify suing for his “civil rights”, even when he was in the wrong. Legal defense to get a justified homicide can cost $100k and up.
This is insurance, just like any other insurance that will help you in case of a loss.
Murder insurance is the gun on my hip. It insures that I may have a chance not to get murdered.
Carry Guard is asshole insurance. It insures that I will have help if I’m charged with a crime by some state or federal asshole in a cheap suit.
“Asshole insurance” nice tag. That is why I bought the US Law Shield version. Not even really for when I am home since our local prosecutor and cops don’t have head-up-ass syndrome, but when I am out of town, or out of state. Fifty state coverage is a must. USCCA was my other choice, and I don’t like the back loaded nature of Carry Guard.
I’m old enough to remember when the anti-gun cult DEMANDED that ALL gun owners have insurance.
It’s almost as if the ’90s never happened…
Gun insurancee is the start of gun registration. It’s not good. Years ago car insurance wass optional, now it’s mandatory. NRA helping you after the fact,ha, good luck with that. Already played that game with them on a promise they made, and all NRA did was run me in circles.
The gun insurance the gun-control jerks wanted had nothing to do with helping the innocent gun owner, and everything to do with giving money to the criminal who attacked them.
Nonsense. Concealed carry didn’t turn me into a road raging lunatic; I actually drive much more sensibly in the years since I started carrying. Likewise, my Texas Law Shield firearms legal defense membership didn’t turn me into a murderer. If anything, I shoot far fewer people nowadays since purchasing the coverage.
Great article, Robert. Especially the chart. Thanks.
Agree.
Like the chart and info.
Sounds similar to malpractice insurance of doctors. Does it incentive doctors to screw up?
In the sense that it protects the holder from anti-gun lawyers & prosecutors who would rather see you get murdered than defend yourself, sure, it’s murder insurance.
I’ve been a member of USCCA for almost three years and haven’t yet had the urge to murder someone. It hasn’t made me think “gee, I hope that I happen upon some psycho today so that I can shoot them” a single time since I started my policy. However, if something happens and I do have to draw my weapon and defend my life, I have some piece of mind that I will not go bankrupt if some anti-gun, anti self defense DA decides that he wants to make an example out of me. Do leftards think that if you buy home owners insurance, you’ll automatically want to burn your house down? Liberals are nutjobs…..that’s just all there is to it!
I would not call it ‘murder’ insurance–more like ‘suicide’ insurance
AKA you come into my home and that is suicide, if you want to cause me harm!
But since I have home insurance or car insurance—I don’t have the intention to burn the house down or drive on sidewalks mowing down people=lib logic===’s none
Well we carry legal ease coverage because it covers things other than just DGU’s. Look post shoot coverage is great but the odds of me ever having to fire any round(s) in anger is pretty slim but that’s covered… however for examples:
1. When dealing with standard legal stuff (wills, power of attorney, contracts etc).
2. when I’m dealing with the fact my in-laws died and all the associated crap (lots of legal paperwork).
The fact is it’s really nice to have lawyers on call and to know I can pickup the phone any time and actually talk to an attorney licensed in whatever State I might be in… for like $.50 a day, it’s worth it!
It seems they want us to have nothing and nothing. 🙂
My concern with the NRA Carry Guard is not that it provides legal assistance , which is everyone’s right.
My major concern is that it is a conflict of interest. If a mandatory insurance rider comes up as part of national reciprocity, is the NRA going to oppose it, or favor it (because mandatory insurance helps their business)?
Once companies get into a business, they tend to lobby for regulations to protect their revenue stream. There is a huge risk here that the NRA is not our friend when mandatory insurance comes up. These bills mandating insurance for gun owners came up in 2013, and they will again.
The ads always crack me up. Of course you guys have them. You are paid to!
“Is NRA Carry Guard (and Similar Programs) “Murder Insurance”?”
That’s what the left wants you to believe…