John Dingell III writes:
Insurance is one of the most regulated industries in America, but its regulation is almost entirely at the state level. That regulation extends to the risk profiling of insureds, due to the various mechanisms to buy and sell risk amongst insurers.
The most important mechanism governing the risk profiling of insureds is the acceptance of policies by risk pools. Thus, insurance companies don’t revise risk profiling standards at will; it’s a glacial process unless state regulators issue a diktat. This is probably why insurance companies haven’t already hit gun owners.
But the idea for assessing the risk of gun ownership when pricing insurance policies is gaining traction.
From michiganradio.org:
Kristen Moore is an associate professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan. She co-authored a piece for The Actuary Magazine exploring how the insurance industry treats the risk of firearms.
“Actuaries use math, statistics, and finance to figure out the cost today of uncertain risky things in the future,” explained Moore.
So, if you apply for health insurance, an actuary will assess your behaviors – like whether you exercise, are overweight, or engage in risky sports like rock climbing – to determine the likelihood and cost of you getting sick.
Yet, despite the potential risks of injury and death from firearms, Moore found very little evidence that insurance companies consider gun ownership when determining the cost of coverage.
She obviously thinks that needs to change.
According to Moore’s research, death rates are higher for gun owners than they are for scuba divers. In fact, Moore found that gun owners would see changes in several kinds of insurance policies, including life, health, homeowners, commercial liability, and disability, if actuaries calculated gun ownership risk.
So why don’t they?
The answer may come down to two things: research and politics.
Not only have the effects of gun ownership on death rates not been studied, but Moore speculates including gun ownership as a factor could alienate a significant portion of an insurer’s market. For decades, insurance companies neglected to ask whether individuals smoked in order to not limit policy holders.
The most influential state insurance regulator is the New York Department of Financial Services. Other state insurance regulators tend to defer to New York’s lead, except when unique policies such as no-fault auto insurance are being regulated. This is both a matter of tradition and practicality. New York is the largest insurance market, most of the really large insurers are headquartered there, and all of the insurance exchanges used to lay off risk are there.
Governor Andrew Cuomo is no friend of gun owners and has already used the New York Department of Financial Services to directly attack the NRA.
Just how long will it take Governor Cuomo to the DFS to revise risk profiling standards to screw gun owners? If and when he does, every other state will be under intense pressure to follow. If that happens, New York-based insurance companies will pressure the other 49 states to fall into line with New York. That could make life more difficult and significantly more expensive for gun owners nationwide.
One of the companies will dissent and offer protections to gun owners and the rest will lose out. It’s not like the percentage of gun owners is going down.
That depends on the level of government “oversite” they are required to adhere too.
And who would that Company be!/? Even Insurance Companies have Shareholders. Just follow the Top Three Shareholder for Ruger Firearms, pulling Ruger’s “Nose Ring” to lead the Company in a Different Direction for selling the Ruger’s Product Line (i.e. Firearms)…
USAA. I suspect they would be the last company to go down this route, being owned by their (military or military family) policyholders. Sadly, I can’t say I know of another company that would do this, but I’d be shocked if they did anything to the umpteen enlisted types who keep the gun stores and ranges around her going.
USAA subcontracts their insurance products. Likely if USAA drew a line in the sand over gun ownership/storage they would be fighting internally.
But before anyone gets their panties in a knot, think of all the other things that are ahead of guns in this line. Like helmets (for everything), snowboarding, bicycling (especially commuting), chainsaws, swimming, personal nutrition, etc.
One of those top stockholders is a healthcare conglomerate. If THEY want to play hardball they should start to address the QUARTER of a MILLION accidental deaths in America every year due to Preventable Medical Errors. The Washington Post reported to number of Americans accidentally… ACCIDENTALLY…killed EVERY year by the medical industrial complex as 280,000.
That’s a LOT more than are killed by gunshot wounds, intentional or otherwise.
100% correct. 1995 study published in JAMA by Dr. Lucien Leape estimated 1/4 million deaths per years, but that only about10% are reported in such a way which relates to “death by medicine”!!! He says more than 1 million deaths per year is more realistic number. Keep in mind, this was 1995, much more now. People need to wake up.
“One of the companies will dissent and offer protections to gun owners and the rest will lose out. It’s not like the percentage of gun owners is going down.”
Didn’t notice that made much difference to, uuuhhhhmmm, like, Dick’s, Under Armour, Intuit, Bank of America (was it?), Delta, United, and a host of other business that decided there were not enough gun owners to cause significant business loss.
“Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.”
– – Mao
I am an actuary for a major insurer. Households of legal gun owners are safer than the average home. What we look for is criminal history, which is the true risk factor, not gun ownership.
Didn’t notice that made much difference to, uuuhhhhmmm, like, Dick’s, Under Armour, Intuit, Bank of America (was it?), Delta, United, and a host of other business that decided there were not enough gun owners to cause significant business loss.
I’d fail you in Stats 101. They were not gauging number of gun owners but rather participation in boycotts which already a minority of any group where a boycott is sought.
There are failed boycott attempts by gun control advocates right now against both Dicks and Amazon for selling any firearms related goods. Does that mean Dicks and Amazon think there are not enough non-gun owners?
Did the scores of companies that did not cut their ties with the NRA, or the hundreds of companies that did not get out of participating in firearms related business even when threatened, show there are not enough supporters of gun control to cause “a significant business loss?”
Thanks. Also, I was wondering how insurance companies plan to find out who owns guns and who doesn’t. If you ask me, I’ll happily tell you to FOAD.
“According to Moore’s research, death rates are higher for gun owners than scuba divers”
Then…
“the effects of gun ownership on death rates not been studied”. Huh?
And as Larry in TX says, FOAD. How are they going to know who owns guns & who doesn’t? By asking? I know how to lie. It’s none of your GD business.
“One of the companies will dissent and offer protections to gun owners and the rest will lose out. It’s not like the percentage of gun owners is going down.”
LOL. The sooner we get over our “we are legion” mentality we might start acting in our own best interests. We gun owners are a minority and we would be foolish to forget that.
We gun owners are a minority and we would be foolish to forget that.
It is likely about 60% of Americans have firearms. That is not a minority.
http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2015/04/FT_15.04.01_guns_Safer-260×367.png
Amen
After Rottweilers got to be unpopular with insurance companies we just found an insurance policy that doesn’t cover rottweilers. We still have homeowners insurance, and we still have our Rottweiler, it just doesn’t cover us if the Rottweiler bites someone. I would imagine that that is the solution. There would just be an exclusion if somebody shoots someone in your home and you get sued.
Then typically you can pick up a separate small policy that covers that.
These guys really can’t think two steps ahead, can they? If I can’t get homeowners insurance because of my guns, I had better be prepared to end someone breaking in; I won’t be able to fall back on insurance to cover my losses or injuries (I also had better make sure the perp won’t be around to sue me, either)
Do you have a mortgage? Homeowner’s insurance is a condition of the mortgage or deed or trust, just as is paying property taxes. Lose your HO coverage and you lose your home. If no insurer will issue to people who own guns, gun owners will find themselves unable to obtain financing for a purchase. I would think that the financial services industry that relies heavily on mortgage business would find themselves in a world of hurt if half of their mortgages suddenly went into default, and half their new business fell through. The impact on the national economy would be direct, immediate, and nearly catastrophic.
The only thing that could happen is that insurance for gun owners would increase dramatically.
I think they’ll be skating on thin constitutional ice if they tried it.
Refusing to insure or charging more for insurance for exercising a specifically enumerated civil right?
Danger, Will Robinson!
It’ll be interesting watching how it plays out, and how a (hopefully) newly-conservative SCOTUS views it, if it comes to pass…
yeah, that’s basically what that case about banning guns in public housing was.
A bank/insurer could refuse (which is there right) but another would fill its place. Banning that place via regulation amd/or monopoly is where the problem comes in.
This would not be an issue if we hadn’t politicized banks via regulation (stick) and bailouts (carrot)
But, you are charged more by exercising your right to smoke. Smoking is legal, but you pay more. Some insurance companies won’t insure hang-gliders. There was a time when it was illegal to have a handgun in Chicago. Did the insurers drop people if they found out that they had one? Does anyone have an answer to that one? I never lived in Chicago.
Comment still stands, no, I haven’t had a mortgage (or any other debt) for over 25 years now.
Hey guys guess what. Insurance companies also sell annuities and invest that money. I have several and moved money out of one because the company, a Big Company split it’s annuity section away from it’s insurance section. I put the money into another annuity. Pensions are annuities. Just get firearms owners not to purchase annuity products from non-firearms friendly companies and put the damn money into income producing mutual funds and not “mutual of Omaha.”
I suspect the same application could also be applied to “Gun Friendly” Insurance Companies too. A real great way of telling to opposition to change the of doing business with Pro-Gun Businesses. Thanks!
Seatbelts= insurance companies. That NRA CYA insurance is a snowball rolling down hill. It won’t be long before 4473 form has a liability insurance tacked on. It’s all about money, honey.
If you willing to pay for a rider in your insurance that provides for you coverage if you are not wearing a belt, then all the more power to you. As for firearms, I don’t think it is ownership that is the risk as much as criminal activity and suicide, both which the insurance companies are not going to allow you to profit from if they can help it, much less insure you for.
actions like this invite non-compliance…home “wellness” visits, and intrusive questions invite you to lie to them…
God I’d love to see the actuarial numbers on that insurance. I suspect they pull in an obscene amount that (thankfully) never has to go to defense funds, and largely serves as an NRA slush fund for lack of anything better to do.
maybe i’m naive, but i assume if insurance companies thought that they were losing a significant amount of money at the margins by not specifically accounting for gun ownership, their lobbying arm would have already had their government cronies make whatever changes they asked for
“maybe i’m naive, but i assume if insurance companies thought that they were losing a significant amount of money at the margins by not specifically accounting for gun ownership…”
Virtue signalling generally presumes negligible business impact. Remember, those doing the signaling believe they are appealing to the mainstream, the majority of the population.
Guns are big politics right now kinda like health coverage. Insurance companies and politicians sold the mandatory insurance line to the American people for cars and healthcare and the comapnies and pols made billions on the back end from mandatory tax payer funded programs throwing money at private insurance companies, which the pols (D and R) conveniently owned stock in.. Firearms insurance is an easy sell for the insurance/political machine because of the politics, precedent, the number of good little tax paying law abiding people it would effect, and more importantly it would (again) line their pockets with billions.
So what are you recommending, that the hospitals can turn you out if you don’t have insurance or a personal bond? Or are you for Universal Heath care. Because the way I see it is the there are only 3 ways it will work, those first two or mandatory private heath insurance.
I will always carry uninsured motorist rider on my policy even if I am liability only, but how expensive is that going to be if anyone can drive uninsured? Why should I pay for people who are not insured?
The costs of non-criminal, non-suicide firearm use are so low for insurance companies, that it is not an issue. Auto and heath, that’s another story.
Easy…. garnished wages. Just because its mandated doesn’t mean people buy in to it. I had healthcare insurance for decades before the governent ordered me to buy their insurance and I would have vehicle insurance even if it wasn’t mandated. There are still tons of people who drive (unlawfully) uninsured. There are still tons of people who (unlawfully) don’t have healthcare insurance and don’t pay the government mandated “penalty” but still get mandatory emergency care.. You’re still covering uninsured people, the only thing the mandate does is drive up YOUR costs due to government mandates and spread liability over more law abiding tax payers with no discernable benefit to the law abiding tax payer….. As a matter of fact, real life has shown that YOU pay more for insurance and healthcare when its government mandated.
Government subsidies always drive up cost, i.e., education, student loans, healthcare, and until the Fed pulled the plug, was real estate costs going up or down?A subsidy is another word for theft. Theft makes one person richer and another person poorer.
In a former life I sold insurance. Underwriter’s determine “risk”. And LOTS of people lie or conveniently forget vital facts. As stated someone will stepup to insure you. And your 2nd amendment RIGHTS are not up for debate. Should you lie? Up to you. Your guns are often more important than theoretical loss…
Did anyone read the “web exclusive”
First line “Disclaimer: The Society of Actuaries makes no endorsement, representation or guarantee with regard to any content, and disclaims any liability in connection with the use or misuse of any information provided in this series of articles. Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the authors and are not those of the Society of Actuaries or the respective authors’ employers.”
I don’t think the The Society of Actuaries is willing to put it into print. And better yet, the primary source for this is “an unpublished student thesis”
Moore knows this is a high school level analysis “We, along with the authors cited previously in this article, emphasize that none of the studies prove causation”
If we do actual numbers on “gun owners” and insurance claims, want to know what we’re going to find out?
Inner city neighborhoods, especially those with high population densities of black gangs (and the political machines that tolerate same) are insurance payout disasters – for health, auto, fire, disability, guns, you name it.
We’ve seen this before, folks. History might not repeat note-for-note, but there’s often an underlying riff that sounds the same. Back in the 80’s, auto insurance in California was “red-lined” up the ying-yang. If you lived in places like Compton, you were going to pay through the nose for comp and theft insurance on your car – because the neighborhood had high rates of theft. If you lived in nice, wonder-bread suburbs of LA, your insurance was much lower in cost.
Liberals, of course, got on their high horses and complained about this. If insurance companies want to force the gun ownership insurance issue, then gun owners should force an per-owner, honest accounting of actual payouts and costs.
Liberals will want to look away from any honest statistical accounting of insurance payouts surrounding guns – because then they’ll see that (eg) the south side of Chicago is a smoking hole in their balance sheets, while some places that are armed to the teeth (eg, Wyoming) have low costs and payouts. A little more math will expose the back-tested variables with high effect in the statistical models, and then the greasy dissembling will commence.
H’mmm.
“Gun insurance is RACIST!”
*snicker* 😉
I don’t think we are talking about “firearms” insurance per se, i.e., a requirement of liability coverage for injuries caused by firearms, but instead adjusting the rates charged to people who own firearms. The fact is that HO coverage, in most instances, does not cover “intentional” injuries, such as when you shoot the guy coming through the window, but only injuries caused by “accident.” Your HO coverage will cover for injuries caused by NDs. However, the person who wrote this analysis, being an actuary (risk analyst) not a coverage analyst, probably didn’t know that this, and was instead only looking at the annualized cost of firearms injuries (most of which are intentional either because it is murder or suicide) and applying those costs to “gun owners” as somehow being responsible for those costs. (The fact of the matter is that most politicians calling for mandatory firearms liability coverage don’t understand this either. They see insurance as a way of spreading the cost of medical treatment of people wounded by gun fire, not recognizing that it will be the rare case where the insurance applies, and when it does, it already pays out under existing insurance product.)
Maybe we could encourage them to look at firearms not only as a risk, but also as a loss-prevention tool. Think of how many insurance claims are made unnecessary because someone used a gun to prevent injury, death, or property loss.
^^^^ This might be the decider — a neighborhood protected by MSRs is less likely to be burned to the ground during a peaceful expression of “rights” by an angry mob. A neighborhood of liberal unarmed smurffs with GUN FREE HOME signs on the houses will be torched before the Police can get to the scene.
Once the democrats get control of Congress and SCOTUS again, they will probably give insurance companies enough anti-gun legislation and regs to make firearm ownership expensive and onerous. They will likely confiscate all those 4473s from FFLs and put them into a big database for LEO and insurance company use.
“Mandatory 1st Amendment insurance for Liberal Politicians, Maybe….”
Libertarians Liberals and the Left got up set when homosexual activity was considered an insurance risk back in the early 1980s, because of the high risk of AIDS. They didn’t like being held accountable for promiscuity, by a private insurance company, that made private business decisions, when gay men made a private contract with that insurance company.
True risk is based on real risk assessment. Not external biased influence. The white three L’s used external influence ( government) to force insurance companies to change their policy.
But those same white Libertarians said it was ok to racially discriminate against black people in private businesses.
White Libertarians are as inconsistent as Liberals and the Left.
I don’t think libertarian means or represents what you think it does. No political label for an individual is an absolute unless that person is particularly obtuse in thought and morals.
Libertarian does not equal democrat flavored liberalism by any stretch.
Senator Rand Paul would be an example of libertarian leaning, how do you feel in general about the job that he is doing representing Kentucky?
I’m very proud to have had my picture taken with Senator Paul. He is a great man. I wish the rest of the Libertarian Party was more like him. But they are not. He and Senator Mitch McConnell are working to legalize industrial hemp in Kentucky. It was a major crop for the commonwealth 100 years ago. That crop was what made many farmers very wealthy a very long time ago.
But Libertarians are not very enthusiastic because you can’t get intoxicated on Industrial Hemp also known as marijuana.
Rand Paul needs to be much more forceful in public statements. That’s why Trump got elected. Trump is a “street fighter” when it comes to politics and business. I want a rough tough strong leader. And based on the election I would say the general public also wants the same thing. If a Libertarians want to be successful they need to man up if that’s possible.
This is a legit thing to fear. Most states as in the vast majority default to ny state regulating the insurance industry. NY state insurance dept employs many actuaries to audit and enforce regulations on insurance while most states employ 1-2. There is no federal oversight, so by default most states defer and let NY state do the oversight. It is mostly a financial compliance audit much like the banks have to do stress testing now, but basically the regulations specify how much reserves and how those reserves are invested in order for an insurance company to remain solvent. It is by no means a stretch to expand it to include compliance by requiring gun ownership to be part of the risk assessment, and if NY state requires it, there will be problems. NY state has this power since there was never a need to duplicate the work done by NY state. It really should be done on the federal level but it is not.
I really think the less the federal government has oversight on guns, the better. The ‘standard model’ of national politics has the balance go one way, than the other as people get fed up with what the party in control is doing…
How can they compile accurate actuary statistics unless they know who owns guns and who doesn’t? Where would they get that information to start? Even in NY, the only registered guns are pistols (statewide), all guns in NYC, and a small percentage of the rifles and shotguns defined as “assault weapons” (most AWs have not been registered).
They would ask for that information on the application for coverage, of course. And if you lie and there is a claim, they will rescind your policy.
That doesn’t answer my question about the actuarials. Are gun owners to be assigned a higher risk or a lower risk? Gun owners, as a demographic, tend to be law-abiding, responsible and conscientious. They tend toward preparedness for life’s casualties like storms, natural disasters, social tumult, crime and mayhem. Is there anybody here who doesn’t have smoke / CO detectors and own fire extinguishers? Get my meaning?
Even if they know you are a gun owner, don’t presume that gun owners would be assigned a higher risk until there is actuarial data. That doesn’t exist yet. The disarmers assume that gun owners are a higher risk simply because they own guns. I that one attribute a risk factor? I don’t think so. None of us thinks so.
I’m pretty sure an insurance company doesn’t have the capability to force someone to honestly say they have guns. If I’m stuck with a certain company, I’ll just leave the box blank or outright lie. I also fail to see how it would affect any sort of liability. If I’m careful with my guns, I won’t have an accident. If someone steals my gun and commits a crime with it, it’s not my fault. I also would have reported the gun as stolen. If I have to use it in self defense, there are specific insurance companies for just that situation.
But IF “Theft” includes a Police Report for Stolen Items! Insurance Company is going to find out about, by the Submission of the Police Report…
Maybe, but I wouldn’t seek them out for money to replace the stolen gun. However, I do see where a price hike would then follow the report. I suppose some interesting discussions would then follow over the phone.
A democrat Congress and SCOTUS will mandate that the insurance companies become firearm auditors.
I am truly glad my insurance company is headquartered in San Antonio.
“I am truly glad my insurance company is headquartered in San Antonio.”
And was started to service US military personnel.
(If you were referring to my insurance company, USAA.)
Yeah, I do believe the members would have something to say about that…
<I?was started to service US military officers. Was wildly expanded during the Clinton drawdown in the idiotic pursuit of “growth”. I predict this will bite all concern in the ass some day.
Imagine NRA insurance. The left thinks they’re overpowered now. What happens if they gain the power of an insurance co.
That’s all AARP is. A giant insurance racket.
I have AMAC. A “conservative pro-gun” alternative to the leftard AARP. EFF AARP…
I’m still a member of AARP, but not paid for by me. Five years ago, my self-paid membership was expiring and I had no intention of renewing it despite the continual badgering from AARP. One day, I received new membership cards, for my wife and myself, from AARP. They were paid up, by an anonymous party, for five years. Never could find out who the paying party was. Now, I’m getting badgered again to pay for renewal of our membership, since expiration is coming up. They are also reminding me that someone else paid for the previous five years. I won’t renew, and will return any paid-up membership cards, should any be received.
In the past corporate media would refer to this talk as “conspiracy theories” from wannabe/unqualified internet blog journalists. I wonder what they would think now that they created their own Russian Communist conspiracy theories.
Oh, the Russian thing is far more than a theory; personally I believe there is little doubt about what the Russians were up to, as they have done it all over the world to others–the problem for the press and the left alike is that there is zero evidence that the Trump campaign was in any way shape or form complicit in the hacking and “interference’ (trolling) that was done by the GRU and related entities, or that it profited from it in any way.
In Ms. Moore’s mind firearms are only a risk and never a benefit. With respect to gangbangers/criminals, she is probably right. With respect to good people she is absolutely WRONG.
I can show, with simple math, how an average person in the United States of America has roughly a 1 in 4 chance of being the victim of a violent crime over the course of their adult life. And it is a FACT that unarmed victims suffer significantly greater injuries and deaths than armed victims who resist their attacker. Finally, good people accidentally harm someone at a minuscule rate. All told, insurance companies would see a SIGNIFICANTLY greater payout to unarmed versus armed good people.
To summarize, with respect to good people: insurance companies will pay out more to unarmed people than armed people.
Keep your mouth shut about what you own. OPSEC people learn to cache or store on a boat.😉
Easier said then done, especially if you have Talkative Teenagers…
Which is why Moore’s number on gun owners is simply false.
I used to work in the insurance industry. Personally, I’m just not that worried about this. Actuaries will just use math to confirm what everybody already basically knows, owning guns is just not really a factor for the increased risk of anything. Any more than all the otehr dangerous things a typical American household downs.
The concern I would have with this is that they’ll treat it like the ACA.
In other words a “compliant” policy will be outrageously expensive and an affordable policy won’t cover owning guns. Just like a non-ACA compliant policy lying to get said policy will constitute felony insurance fraud.
Good way to stick all but the rich in an untenable position vis-a-vis gun ownership.
“Good way to stick all but the rich in an untenable position …”
Isn’t that the objective of most and perhaps all laws?
“The concern I would have with this is that they’ll treat it like the ACA.”
Do they really want to go there?
Remember, the Roberts court found the ACA mandate was a *tax*, and legal.
A tax to simply exercise a civil right?
(Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know a permit is required to hold a rally in DC…)
Basically all this article indicated is that the entire insurance industry is a giant shame. Criminal and corrupt to the core like most of America’s politicians!
Insurance for homeowners is organized and regulated by the individual states. It’s true that NY could bring pressure to bear on the insurance companies doing business in that particular state to offer some sort of discount to non gunowners and further screw the law abiding citizens of that wretched state. However, those insurance companies wishing to continue doing profitable business in the other states like Texas will have to play by Texas rules. This insurance department of that state will decide what the companies can and can’t charge for what. In my state the insurance commissioner is an elected position and he will do what it takes to get re-elected.
If you are forced to register your guns with the state or local.government then insurance companies can pry a list out of them they can use to identify gun owners. NJ, CA and N.Y. would gleefully turn over a list. So would mass and CT. And Illinois.
So if your state has registration this is probably one of many ways your rights are being swept away.
The rest of us can’t really help you. Onlt a SCOTUS decision has any chance and that’s going to be a while.
For a mathematician, I am disappointed in her example of spurious correlation. Scuba divers tend to be in better health than the average populace. Also, the age distribution is on the younger side.
Yes more gun owners die… Of old age. More relevant would be a comparison of deaths caused pursuing either hobby. Even then, most insurance policies do not ask if you scuba dive (a professional may have, of course, insurance for precisely his scuba diving)
In 2006 I asked my insurance agent about protection for my firearm and guitar collection. His quote did not encourage me, so I have not mentioned it since. But I did buy a safe or two. And bolt them to the wall. 🙂
The safe cost much less than their quote for a one year policy. And my motive is not monetary reimbursement. I don’t want to get my possessions stolen!
Charlie
It’s already being done. A small upstate dealer American Trading Lodge in Broadalbin NY was forced to close it’s doors when they were unable to get property insurance because they ran their FFL out of their garage behind their residence.
The property is zoned mixed use but they were left with the option of having no homeowners insurance or closing the shop.
They closed the shop.
Wait a second? First paragraph to Owner/Operator is “Forced” and in the Second Paragraph he had an “Option”! He always had the Option, he choose not to Insure. That’s not being Forced.
And there are real risks to ensuring businesses in general, and FFLs specifically. Theft being a major one – and I can see an insurance company legitimately not wanting to insure a house with an FFL in it due to heightened worries of theft and other liability. I could see the same issues with another heightened risk business – and look, there’s a reason the employees of most gun shops and ranges I’ve been to are armed.
In a sane world….TThe US Attorney General would put a stop to all this crap by sueing the states and these businesses for premption under the constitution.
It is waaaayyyy past time for a competent attorney general to sue every state that presumes to violate the 2A. Add to that the president should / could execute an executive order prohibiting discrimination based on gun ownership.
This is the time……if not now when………we have never had a better president and WE are clearly a group that has his back. The conditions will never be better.
Now is the time…..he owes us………..SUE CA, NY, CT, MA and every state and every business that infringes on 2A.
We have a supposedly overwhelming majority in both houses. THEY OWE US. DEMAND IT NOW!
Interesting that non fatal as well as fatal GSW injuries were counted verses only fatal auto accidents.
Also interesting is that GSW deaths attributed to police were presumed to be neglible compared to total homicides. Using FBI stats that severely undercount killings by police because of a reliance on self reporting, this is true. However; police departments have been notorious for under reporting for decades. The “suicide by cop” has become the favorite excuse to justify shootings that were unneccessary. Independant records compiled by the Killed by Police website reveals that over one-tenth of gun homicides are committed by police officers.
Also, the majority of all gun deaths are suicides. The correllation between gun ownership and suicide is dubious given the fact that the US suicide rate is very low compared to Japan and most of Europe.
Of course the death rate is higher among gun owners than scuba divers you morons. How many gun owners are there compared to scuba divers. Must mean that all the scuba divers that have died were also gun owners.
So Moore is a professor and does not actually work in the insurance business, yet she is “surprised” insurers don’t charge more to gun owners.
If she worked in the insurance business (and I do) she would know we don’t charge higher rates for gun owners because we have huge internal data sets and already know gun owners are less prone to violence than the general population.
What we would really like to know, and we can use this in some states, but not others, is if you have an arrest record or if anyone in your home does. That is the actual variable that correlates with risk of violence and violent crime loss.
You car insurance would be about 20% lower if we were allowed to charge proper higher rates for drivers with criminal arrest records.
.
It , in my opinion, just shows how much this country is heading toward communism every day!!! I think O’Bama sold us out to the Russians during his terms and all this bull-hit is Russian and demortatically planned!!!
There are some problems with this. Michigan has the highest car insurance rates in the nation because of a high percentage of uninsured drivers. That means those that follow the law end up paying for those that don’t by directly paying the insurance companies more. In terms of guns, legally obtained and possessed guns account for somewhere around 2% of all crimes. Because “gun insurance” necessarily means those that are not the problem pay for the actions of others, and the fact that illegal activities are not covered by insurance, the insurance industry in the past has stated they are not interested in, nor is it appropriate to create, gun insurance. Owning a gun does not increase any risk factors either, the only way to make this claim is to use false “studies” that use lazy methodology to push an agenda.
The greatest problem with this is that the risk is not evenly distributed. Some “studies” claim gun ownership increases the risk of suicide and death, but these studies use simple correlations that are obviously false. For example, people that commit suicide with a gun may seek out guns to do so (based on myths of it quick and painless), not that having a gun necessarily makes you more suicidal. Other methods of coming to this conclusion involve aggregating all data together, which is obviously misleading. They take the astronomically high chance that gang members possess and carry a gun (without identifying whether it is legal or illegal) and the risk of violence and take a simple average with your typical suburban housewife with a gun or two in a safe with an infinitesimally small risk of violence.
Activities like scuba or skydiving have inherent risk. Keeping a gun securely in your house does not. Even carrying a gun does not increase your risk of violence. Failing to distinguish between legal and illegal activity is as misleading as you can get, but they rely on that in order to make an argument in the first place.
It won’t be because you’re a gun owner that you get screwed. You’ll get screwed because that’s what insurance companies do best, screw people. They don’t need an excuse, when they see an opening they’ll do it.
Sounds like one of those CDC type reports where the outcome is known and ‘facts’ are filled in to, more or less, support the conclusion.
I will bet drug dealers and suicides were included in this ‘research’. What a load.
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