Gun Liability Insurance: A Coming Idea?

[SecularMotion]

A friend sent me a story concerning a new movement to have owners of guns being required to carry liability insurance on those guns. This has always seemed like a no brainer to me.

Guns do major damage in this country much as automobiles do. It just seems to make sense that if you have a piece of machinery that can inflict personal and property damage that you should be insured to cover that damage. To be honest I do not know if damage done by your gun is covered under another policy such as homeowner’s insurance, but if it is it is purely woeful inadequate.

Last year Mother Jones magazine did a special investigation on the cost of gun violence in this country. They had a hard time tracking down numbers in this area because the study of the effects of gun violence has been squelched by the US congress and various state legislatures. Even with that trouble MJ was able to come up with an estimate that the cost of gun violence is about a quarter of a trillion dollars per year or about $700 for every man, woman and child in this country.

We require every vehicle that is sold to be covered by insurance before the keys to the ignition are handed over whether it be a showroom sale or a private sale. We do this as a society so that if the driver of the vehicle causes property or bodily damage with that vehicle then the person driving is accountable and responsible for their damage. This concept of responsibility and accountability also extends to machinery used in businesses and also to products produced by a business.

http://www.blogforiowa.com/2016/02/13/gun-liability-insurance-a-coming-idea/

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

1. Some folks seem entirely unable...

...to just leave a dead horse alone and dispose of the remains. Some folks need to continue flogging.

[krispos42]

2. So explain to the readers, SecMo, how an insurance company...

..will pay for the damages from crimes committed with a gun.

Tell me how, if the Sandy Hook shooter had a liability policy on the gun he used, how the insurance company would be paying out to the families of the victims.

Explain this to me.

[Duckhunter935]

4. crickets, like normal

[krispos42]

6. I'm honestly curious

Like many Americans I'm forced to buy liability insurance without really understanding what I'm buying and not ever using it (at least so far).

I don't really know in general what it's for, so I'd like some education by the people advocating to impose it on me.

[ManiacJoe]

3. All the knowledgeable people say "no, it is not coming".

Unfortunately, there are lots of ignorant people pushing the idea.

[pablo_marmol]

5. No. Never. Not gonna happen. NT

[Lizzie Poppet]

7. Oh jeez, not THIS idiotic idea again.

It's simple: the vast majority of the costs associated with harm caused with firearms result from actions which are not (and never will be) covered by insurance. All this idea does is create another wealth gate for (legal) firearms ownership, a profoundly anti-progressive notion.

[DonP]

8. It's never been about "covering costs"

Even the dim bulbs among the control minded know it's another way to put up a barrier to gun ownership, mainly by poor minorities.

They don't really care about getting the hospitals paid for emergency rooms treatments, just make it a little harder for people to own a firearm.

It will never go anywhere and then they'll shift back to calling guns a health care crisis or one of their other desperate and ineffective memes.