Forsooth - few fellows feel faintly facetious for fulminating farcically following firearm follies.
FIN
If they can’t charge more for premiums, can they exclude gun-related accidents from coverage?
That’s what I thought. And why I thought it was weird.
No. The law prohibits that, too. In practice, this aspect of the law seems to have little or no effect. Most homeowners’ insurance carriers don’t ask about guns and will only know if there’s a gun in the house if there is a specific rider added to increase personal property coverage (as you might do if you have a large, valuable collection of guns). During the legislative discussion of the bill, the state insurance commissioner reported that only one major carrier asks about guns in the home as a general matter. There was some anecdotal evidence that homeowners had policies cancelled after gun-related claims were filed, which is probably true.
Also, Florida already had the highest homeowners’ insurance rates in the country thanks to hurricanes, floods and sinkholes, so the impact on rates overall is likely to be negligible.
Note that homeowners’ policies only cover accidental injury anyway; liability related to crimes - at least those committed by the homeowner - is excluded.
So one more update-