But that’s a different debate. Even if wrongful death suits verdicts should be smaller, in reality, they are not. And obviously if you’re going to insure against wrongful death, you have to insure against reality and not what we’d like reality to be.
[Here’s one cite, by the way, that looks at suits for females. But generally female wrongful death is worth less than for men since men earn more on average. Not also that this is the average for a verdict–averages that include settlements are a bit lower.]
All incentives are marginal incentives. And as I already demonstrated, unreported thefts are a real problem.
The “value of a human life” is a concept often used in actuarial contexts. More or less, it’s the amount you should be willing to spend to reduce the expected number of casualties of some project by 1. The precise value used varies, but it’s generally in the vicinity of a million dollars (some looking around seems to show 1.5 million as a commonly-used current standard). So if a stolen gun is used to kill somebody, then it can be quite reasonably said to have done over a million dollars in damages.
Meanwhile, why the assumption that the price of this insurance would be burdensome? If the free market works as robustly as many claim, then the price per year of such an insurance policy should be only slightly more than the price of the payout times the probability of the event occuring in any given year. And the people who are arguing against this law are also, by and large, those who argue that shootings involving the guns of law-abiding owners are exceedingly rare. If such shootings are so rare, then the insurance, by the natural laws of the free market, should be very cheap.
As you know, career criminals are stupid. There are over 70,000 denied applications every year, yet few if any of them are properly prosecuted. The point is, here they are, on a platter, folks who do not qualify to purchase or own a gun, yet are breaking the law by doing so. Rather than prosecute them, Illinois’ grand solution is to persecute those who have committed no such offenses.
Because I don’t believe that the free market works as robustly as many claim, and besides that because if people are forced to buy insurance there will not be the option of refusing to do business with the insurance industry, which is a necessary element to compell the insurance industry to set a fair price under the free market.
Even if everyone who owns a gun is compelled to buy insurance, a company cannot overprice the insurance without colluding with its competitors. If company A prices it at $100 over the break even price, then Company B can get more profit by pricing it at $99 over the beak even price, and so on. All that is required is a competitive market. Now, maybe collusion is a problem in the insurance world. I don’t know. But absent some evidence of collusion I don’t think your economic argument is correct.
It’s been a while since I took economics, but I think that for the free market to function in a manner that doesn’t screw the customers, you have to have a functioning supply/demand curve (which you don’t if purchase is compulsory). You are pointing at profit-limiting operations which function as a result of competition, which while it has the power to (maybe) keep prices from blasting clean through the roof, but which still do not function to force prices to the proper ‘free market’ level were they not compulsory.
Plus, you’re assuming perfect information and perfect mobility among the customers, which is ridiculous. Most people would just get this insurance through whatever company they already get some of their other insurance from, such that there would have to be a huge difference in price to cause them to switch providers. Meaning that companies do not have as much of an incentive to have price wars. I expect they’d probably all just run their numbers, add some standard 400% markup, and when all the companies turned out to be somewhat relatively in the ballpark of one another (due to running similar numbers), all the companies would sit back fat and happy to rip off their customers (as usual).
Obviously demand will be artificially high. But arguing that, therefore, the price will not be affected by the market is not right. It just means that demand is relatively inelastic (because people can choose not to buy guns). But lots of markets have that same property–gasoline, food, etc. They still function competitively.
The lesson from Econ 101 I remember is this: the market operates at the margins. Even if most customers are lazy, or fail to look into the costs, only a small percentage has to behave rationally in order for the market to function efficiently.
You are making an assumption yourself that there will be insurance companies lined up to take on this new business. As an IT Project Manager, I am required to have a $1,000,000 errors and omissions/liability policy. There are about three companies that will cover such a requirement and therefore they charge $1000 annual for the privilege of being insured against an outcome that will “never” happen.
There are not two or three dozen companies moving in to undercut the few that currently write this business. Therefore, they are free to collude, either intentionally or otherwise and charge exactly the same premiums. I fail to see how this insurance would be any different.
Maybe it wouldn’t. As I conceded, collusion could be a problem. Although I imagine there are many more gun owners than there are IT Project Managers, so maybe the larger market would lead to more competition.
Let’s have another look at what I wrote that you’re responding to:
I can’t find a single word in there that says I’m cool with anything at all. I do make it quite plain that I’m NOT cool with calling accountability measures “punishment.”
I’m quite capable of doing my own extrapolations, and to be candiid, I would prefer to shoulder responsibility only for the ones I personally perform. That said, I have not indicated that I am in support of this proposal. In fact, I believe I’ve already expressed skepticism regarding its constitutional soundness.
Yep, here it is:
Yeah, go ahead and characterize it that way to your heart’s content. I’m not going to spend any energy on it’s validity or lack thereof.
Just stop calling it a punishment, 'kay? It makes you look dishonest, agenda-driven, and given to knee-jerk opposition to any position that’s not word-for-word identical to yours.
This idea seems pretty blatantly discriminatory to me.
For anyone who supports this bill: would you also say that it’s a good idea to require a $1 million insurance policy for all automobile owners? Your justification of “compensating the victims” is even stronger in that case: accidental car deaths outnumber accidental firearms deaths about 50 to 1. Most states only require a very small amount of insurance which is woefully insufficient to cover the damages for injuries sustained in even minor collisions. Would upping the minimum liability to $1 million be a fair and reasonable step? Would it be economically feasible, for either drivers or insurance companies?
Hell, why not require everybody in the state to have $1 million in general liability coverage? That way everybody’s covered, no matter what happens, right?
It’s quite obvious that this is just another attempt to chip away at lawful firearm ownership.
Hey now, it could be just an attempt to take advantage of an opportunity to make a large gorvernment-mandated profit off of the low-hanging fruit of gun-owners, who apparently are a group with low political power in Illinois and therefore ripe for the exploitation.
Before you go making claims about the political power of gun owners in Illinois, you would do well to keep in mind that this bill is no more than a gleam in the eyes of its sponsor at the moment.
One difference is that two safe drivers can have an accident. Safe users of firearms don’t shoot people except in self-defense. But in either case, I would want to weigh the costs and benefits of having the mandatory insurance. In the case of guns, the cost of doing so might be relatively small for responsible gun owners. That’s one side of the equation we just don’t really know. In the case of cars, the increased cost might be greater than the expected benefits.
Just to be clear on this law, Richard, the insurance policy of $1million has nothing to do with stolen guns, correct? The stolen guns, once stolen, are no more the lawful owner’s responsibility than a stolen car or stolen money. It is just that under this law, one component of it is that the owner must report the theft to police.
So, I think we are mixing things when we talk about how dangerous stolen weapons are because this $1 Million will only apply to accidental or negligent shootings by the lawful owners (because I can’t see the gangbangers taking out insurance policies on these illegal guns). That being said, does your research bear out the idea that there is THAT MUCH damage being done in society by accidental and negligent discharges such that a reasonable person should get $1 Million in protection?
Nobody has anywhere near that kind of coverage on their autos, but their are exponentially greater number of auto accidents…
The insurance coverage required extends to unreported stolen guns. So it serves to incentivize owners to both report stolen guns and prevent their theft.
I’m sure that autos cause far, far more damage. But I think the calculus isn’t just about how much damage a piece of property potentially causes. The question is, given the amount of damage a thing causes, and the cost of requiring insurance, is this too great a burden to place on its owner?
I don’t know if the answer to the question is “yes,” in this case. But I think it is at least plausible.
What legal responsibility does someone have who has a gun stolen and does not report it to police? Is it the same as someone who has had a hammer stolen and does not report it to police? The same as someone who has had a car stolen and does not report it to police?
Let’s say I’ve got the flu, and am flat on my back for a week. I don’t notice my car has been stolen. Someone uses it to drive through a flock of nuns. Am I legally responsible in any form?
Well, unlike health insurance, gun ownership is actually an enumerated right in our constitution. So I vote that insurance is required, but also mandatory. Everybody needs to carry gun insurance, regardless if they own a gun or not. That way everybody has equal access to gun ownership. All these people are getting by without guns have been freeloading off those of us who own them long enough, and it’s time everybody pays their own share. A nice progressive pay rate would be nice, it’s not fair that rich people can afford a nice Ithaca Model 37, while poor people get stuck with a Mossberg or other plastic crap.
I’d also be OK with employer based coverage. It would encourage people to get and keep employment. And of course our senior citizens would need to be covered under Mediarm so they could maintain their ownership after they retire.
