# Why are gun owners not required to carry insurance? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 22, 2015, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-gun-owners-not-required-to-carry-insurance/735454 "2015-10-22T13:44:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2015, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-gun-owners-not-required-to-carry-insurance/735454/121 "2015-10-29T19:50:46Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > I’m officially changing my position on gun registration. It seems a good idea on the surface, but with what **Brickbacon** has laid out here, no way can I support anything that would help implement such a terrible idea as requiring gun insurance. This idea is so bad that it’s inevitable the US Congress will make it so … I can give you a long list of horrible ideas that congress has never passed. The only form of gun insurance I can see passing is the stuff you basically get for free when you join the NRA. Negligent discharges and wrongful death committed by an insured. I can’t see an uninsured motorist scenario ever. ---
**Author:** ![sbunny8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-gun-owners-not-required-to-carry-insurance/735454/122 "2015-10-30T15:18:22Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > What if there was simply nothing they could do about it because the non-compliant employers are simply criminals like drug dealers who engage in severe OSHA violations. And your workers comp covered things like the medical costs and disability associated with a drive by shooting of some street dealers that work for a distributor. And these costs accounted for the overwhelming majority of disability claims made to your workers compensation fund? I didn’t say that the criterion was “nothing they could do about it”, I said “nobody was _ **trying** _ to do anything about it”. In your drive-by shooting example, it is still true that the police spend a lot of effort going after violent criminals; some of the criminals get away and some get caught. I’m fine with that. But if the cops just shrugged their shoulders and said “eh, what can you do?” and gave up, then I’d be mad about paying into the fund. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-gun-owners-not-required-to-carry-insurance/735454/123 "2015-10-30T19:27:29Z")
> [@sbunny8](#): > > I didn’t say that the criterion was “nothing they could do about it”, I said “nobody was _ **trying** _ to do anything about it”. In your drive-by shooting example, it is still true that the police spend a lot of effort going after violent criminals; some of the criminals get away and some get caught. I’m fine with that. But if the cops just shrugged their shoulders and said “eh, what can you do?” and gave up, then I’d be mad about paying into the fund. So you would be OK with paying into a fund that spent most of its money (if not the overwhelming majority of its money) paying for the criminals activity of others and into which none of those criminals pay anything as long as someone was trying to catch these criminals? ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-gun-owners-not-required-to-carry-insurance/735454/124 "2015-10-30T19:33:37Z")
Would we be able to “opt-out” of foreign terrorism coverage like we can on our other policies? ---
**Author:** ![sbunny8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-gun-owners-not-required-to-carry-insurance/735454/125 "2015-10-30T22:36:08Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > So you would be OK with paying into a fund that spent most of its money (if not the overwhelming majority of its money) paying for the criminals activity of others and into which none of those criminals pay anything as long as someone was trying to catch these criminals? Yes. I’m already in that position. I pay into the Worker’s Benefit Fund, the purpose of which is to provide coverage for injured workers whose employers failed to obtain the necessary Worker’s Comp Insurance. In the construction industry, the majority of uninsured workers are due to employers who are essentially criminals. They hire illegal workers, pay them cash under the table, don’t withhold the appropriate taxes, don’t obtain the required Worker’s Comp Insurance, and in some cases they don’t even have a contractor’s license at all. The CCB goes after these outlaw construction companies by swooping in unannounced at a construction site and asking to see licenses. They don’t catch everybody, but the employers who get caught pay hefty fines (thousands of dollars per violation). AFIK, none of those fines go into the Worker’s Benefit Fund. The fund is maintained entirely by law-abiding companies like mine. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2015, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-gun-owners-not-required-to-carry-insurance/735454/126 "2015-10-31T00:50:49Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Again? I missed it the first time you explained it. Can you do so again? The negative externalities of gun ownership, including criminal acts and illegal possession of guns, is largely based on, and facilitated by the the legal market for guns; thus, differentiating between legal and illegal gun ownership as it pertains to insurance is meaningless. Both groups are part of the problem. To use another example you might have an easier time understanding, let’s look at the market for prescription opiates. Oxy became a street drug because criminal doctors and people legally prescribed the drug funneled the drug to people who used it illegally. The existence of the black market is largely due to the legal market. Everyone from the manufacturer who looked the other way despite knowing the drug was being abused, to the guy with legitimate needs who used the drug. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > No its not. Insurance companies segregates risk pools and considers some risks uninsurable. State insurance pools might do otherwise a la uninsured motorist pools but the uninsured motorist accounts for an insignificantly small percentage of the insurance pool. You missed the point, then tried to move the goalposts. The issue as it was originally stated was based on the facile misunderstanding that the insured do not carry the burden for the uninsured in many if not most systems. That is false. The cost of deadbeats is almost always baked into the cost for paying people. There is typically no way around that unless you allow people to suffer without recourse or have government pick up the tab. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > The harm caused by people who are not paying into the pool overwhelms the harms caused by people paying into the pool. Do you think this is the case with any of the other situations you describe? Who knows. Regardless, this is a matter of degree which is not the issue raised initially. That said, I, again, doubt the payouts will overwhelmingly be people who aren’t insured. Why? Because if you require all sales to require proof of insurance, even straw buyers and unscrupulous gun shops will be on the hook as paying, insured customers. This matters because these are largely the sources of guns used in crimes. So even if the ultimate criminal using the gun isn’t insured, there will often be someone or some company insured who is liable for the gun further up the food chain. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > OK, let me rephrase that, do you think there are no barriers to LEGAL gun ownership? The distinction is meaningless in this context. The point you seem to be making is that getting a gun legally is difficult, and thus the impediments are already screening out many people who would make bad decisions using a gun. However, that is clearly not the case since almost any inclined person can obtain a gun with minimal effort and almost zero real world impediments regardless of whatever laws exist. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Or do you not distinguish between legal gun owners and criminals? First, those two groups are NOT mutually exclusive. Second, no I do not differentiate between the two groups wrt insurance as I have said numerous times. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Of course it makes you wonder why the heirs of someone who commits suicide with a gun would be entitled to a cash award while the heirs of a suicide committed by jumping off a bridge would be entitled to nothing. Or why people killed in a Walmart shooting get a settlement from a deep pocketed company whereas people killed in an alleyway likely get less. This differences exist all the time in almost every facet of assigning liability. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > What?!?!! You asked me, “how would you pay out on suicides? How do you know that suicide would not have occurred but for the gun?”. I explained that the relative success of suicides using guns vs. other methods could be used to parse whether a given suicide would have occurred but for the gun, and that multiple factors I listed (among others I am sure) would be used to determine how a suicide would pay out. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > How do you “require” insurance companies to go after anyone? You make a law mandating them to? :dubious: > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > OK, so this insurance wouldn’t cover the intentional criminal acts of others Wrong. Please read more carefully. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > No commercial insurance company would put them in the same pool. They would because they know every legal gun owner today has a chance of facilitating the future crimes of someone else. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > You are shoehorning them in based on the fact that they both have guns. It’s hardly shoehorning them in given that is the basis for the system. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Wait. Are we now going to require insurance premiums for anyone that has ever owned a gun because the gun they once owned might one day be used in a crime? What are you taking about? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2015, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-gun-owners-not-required-to-carry-insurance/735454/127 "2015-10-31T03:34:43Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Would we be able to “opt-out” of foreign terrorism coverage like we can on our other policies? I’m not really sure what that means. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2015, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-gun-owners-not-required-to-carry-insurance/735454/128 "2015-10-31T03:36:06Z")
> [@sbunny8](#): > > Yes. I’m already in that position. I pay into the Worker’s Benefit Fund, the purpose of which is to provide coverage for injured workers whose employers failed to obtain the necessary Worker’s Comp Insurance. In the construction industry, the majority of uninsured workers are due to employers who are essentially criminals. They hire illegal workers, pay them cash under the table, don’t withhold the appropriate taxes, don’t obtain the required Worker’s Comp Insurance, and in some cases they don’t even have a contractor’s license at all. The CCB goes after these outlaw construction companies by swooping in unannounced at a construction site and asking to see licenses. They don’t catch everybody, but the employers who get caught pay hefty fines (thousands of dollars per violation). AFIK, none of those fines go into the Worker’s Benefit Fund. The fund is maintained entirely by law-abiding companies like mine. And does the amount that you pay into the workers benefit fund exceed the premiums that are used to pay your regular workers compensation insurance? Because otherwise, you are comparing apples and apple trees. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2015, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-gun-owners-not-required-to-carry-insurance/735454/129 "2015-10-31T04:16:33Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > The negative externalities of gun ownership, including criminal acts and illegal possession of guns, is largely based on, and facilitated by the the legal market for guns; thus, differentiating between legal and illegal gun ownership as it pertains to insurance is meaningless. Both groups are part of the problem. To use another example you might have an easier time understanding, let’s look at the market for prescription opiates. Oxy became a street drug because criminal doctors and people legally prescribed the drug funneled the drug to people who used it illegally. The existence of the black market is largely due to the legal market. Everyone from the manufacturer who looked the other way despite knowing the drug was being abused, to the guy with legitimate needs who used the drug. And do we charge the legal users of oxy for the crimes committed by abusers? Of course not, that would be silly. And so is your proposal. > [@](#): > > You missed the point, then tried to move the goalposts. The issue as it was originally stated was based on the facile misunderstanding that the insured do not carry the burden for the uninsured in many if not most systems. That is false. The cost of deadbeats is almost always baked into the cost for paying people. There is typically no way around that unless you allow people to suffer without recourse or have government pick up the tab. The cost of deadbeats is baked into the cost because it is a fucking tiny sliver of the cost. If the majority of your health insurance costs or your car insurance costs were to pay for deadbeats, we wouldn’t have compulsory insurance in those areas. > [@](#): > > Who knows. Regardless, this is a matter of degree which is not the issue raised initially. That said, I, again, doubt the payouts will overwhelmingly be people who aren’t insured. Why? Because if you require all sales to require proof of insurance, even straw buyers and unscrupulous gun shops will be on the hook as paying, insured customers. And this proof of insurance requirement wasn’t raised in the OP either. How the heck would you be able to check if someone checked for proof of insurance? > [@](#): > > This matters because these are largely the sources of guns used in crimes. So even if the ultimate criminal using the gun isn’t insured, there will often be someone or some company insured who is liable for the gun further up the food chain. Reducing crime is a worthy goal. This is a retarded way of achieving that goal. How the heck would you know who dropped the ball? All you know is who bought the gun when it was new. Do you think there is a chain of title on guns? There is no record keeping requirement when I sell a gun. I can sell a gun and then forget I ever owned it tomorrow. If the cops show up at my door and ask me what happened to the gun, I just say I sold it to some guy that showed me a valid Virginia driver’s license and tell them I didn’t keep a record and there is not much they can do (in practice people take pictures with their phones so there is a record but there is no requirement). > [@](#): > > The distinction is meaningless in this context. The point you seem to be making is that getting a gun legally is difficult, and thus the impediments are already screening out many people who would make bad decisions using a gun. However, that is clearly not the case since almost any inclined person can obtain a gun with minimal effort and almost zero real world impediments regardless of whatever laws exist. Yes and those people would not be touched by your ridiculous insurance requirement. > [@](#): > > First, those two groups are NOT mutually exclusive. Second, no I do not differentiate between the two groups wrt insurance as I have said numerous times. And that is why your idea is retarded. > [@](#): > > Or why people killed in a Walmart shooting get a settlement from a deep pocketed company whereas people killed in an alleyway likely get less. This differences exist all the time in almost every facet of assigning liability. So, you accept that not everyone gets compensated for every injury they ever sustain but you think that this one type of injury (injury caused by guns) should be singled out and compensated for by people who had nothing to do with the injury. > [@](#): > > You asked me, “how would you pay out on suicides? How do you know that suicide would not have occurred but for the gun?”. I explained that the relative success of suicides using guns vs. other methods could be used to parse whether a given suicide would have occurred but for the gun No you can’t. Suicides by gun are no more successful than suicides by jumping off a fucking building. You seem to think that the people who commit suicide by shooting themselves in the head would substitute ineffective means of suicide rather than a method that would actually work, like jumping in front of a train or off a building. > [@](#): > > and that multiple factors I listed (among others I am sure) would be used to determine how a suicide would pay out. Thats not the part I have trouble with. I know how wrongful death damages are computed. Its odd to treat a suicide as a wrongful death but then again this whole idea is less than rational. > [@](#): > > You make a law mandating them to? :dubious: So now here is yet ANOTHER element of your plan that would impose yet another cost on insurance companies to become cops. > [@](#): > > Wrong. Please read more carefully. But its not just intentional criminal acts of the insured that are not generally covered. I cannot think of a situation where I am liable for the intentional criminal acts of OTHERS (who are not agents or employees). > [@](#): > > They would because they know every legal gun owner today has a chance of facilitating the future crimes of someone else. > [@](#): > > It’s hardly shoehorning them in given that is the basis for the system. Of course they wouldn’t are you fucking kidding me? They wouldn’t do it unless there was a law that forced them to do it. > [@](#): > > What are you taking about? Never mind. I’m just going to back away slowly because this is nucking futz. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2015, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-gun-owners-not-required-to-carry-insurance/735454/130 "2015-10-31T14:51:45Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > And do we charge the legal users of oxy for the crimes committed by abusers? This is because we don’t have oxy insurance. That said, legal users do bear some of the costs for illegal use because the drug maker has been sued multiple times for things like that, and has had to redesign their product to curb abuse. So even in situations without a regulatory regime in place to apportion liability, legal users still bear costs brought on by bad actors. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > The cost of deadbeats is baked into the cost because it is a fucking tiny sliver of the cost. No, it’s because there aren’t many other options. No profit seeking entity would eat those costs however small they might be if they had a choice or better option. And again, I sincerely doubt the cost of deadbeats would be the majority of the costs as I have stated multiple times. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > And this proof of insurance requirement wasn’t raised in the OP either. How the heck would you be able to check if someone checked for proof of insurance? One, I am not the OP so I am not sure why you think I’d be bound or limited by anything s/he said. Two, the same way you require any insurance for a transaction. You ask for documentation then verify said documents. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > How the heck would you know who dropped the ball? All you know is who bought the gun when it was new. Do you think there is a chain of title on guns? You don’t need one. You can generally work backwards if you require insurance documentation with every sale. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > There is no record keeping requirement when I sell a gun. I can sell a gun and then forget I ever owned it tomorrow. Yes, which is really stupid and is a huge problem. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Yes and those people would not be touched by your ridiculous insurance requirement. Yes, they would. Why this idea is so hard for you to grasp is beyond me. If you put a price on accountability for every gun out there, you are going to make it harder for those who aren’t accountable to get guns. Why? Because if I knew as a hypothetical straw buyer that I needed to insure every gun I bought and validate insurance for every gun I sold lest I be on the hook, I would probably find some other racket. No, some “gangbanger” would almost certainly not pay into the system via insurance, but they would be less likely to have a gun in the first place BECAUSE of the insurance requirements adhered to by others. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > So, you accept that not everyone gets compensated for every injury they ever sustain but you think that this one type of injury (injury caused by guns) should be singled out and compensated for by people who had nothing to do with the injury. Yes, because guns are a much bigger, more pervasive, insidious problem where all the actors take almost no accountability. Even gun manufacturers are indemnified. That’s ridiculous, and all the above are a few reasons why guns are not the same as whatever other injury scenario you are going to raise. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > No you can’t. Suicides by gun are no more successful than suicides by jumping off a fucking building. Absolutely [incorrect](http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-fatality/). Not that I should be surprised by your ignorance on this matter, but this is a huge issue in the suicide prevention community because guns are so often MUCH more lethal. The above link pegs the rate of firearm lethality at 85% vs (your suggestion) falling at 31%. Given the decision to actually commit suicide is often sudden, access to a gun is really determinative of whether someone actually dies. See more detail [here](http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-ownership-and-use/) and [here](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/20/us-gun-suicide-idUSBREA0J1G920140120). But since I imagine you will read this, and then pretend you never said something astoundingly ignorant, I am pretty sure you won’t respond on this point. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > You seem to think that the people who commit suicide by shooting themselves in the head would substitute ineffective means of suicide rather than a method that would actually work, like jumping in front of a train or off a building. It not a matter of debate. Try to find ANY respected expert who will disagree on this point. You likely will not because almost every expert in the field agrees that is generally not how suicidal people think and behave. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Its odd to treat a suicide as a wrongful death but then again this whole idea is less than rational. Why? Most life insurance policies do after a given period. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > So now here is yet ANOTHER element of your plan that would impose yet another cost on insurance companies to become cops. Hardly. Insurance companies in many states already must alert the state or relevant parties when your insurance lapses. They even regularly investigate the specifics of an accident to determine if anyone or any other policy would apply. For example, my health insurance company was very eager to determine whether an injury I had was done at work or in a car accident because they would largely be off the hook. This requirement would not make them cops; it would make them a profit driven company that wants to limit their payouts. That is not much different than what is happening now. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > But its not just intentional criminal acts of the insured that are not generally covered. I cannot think of a situation where I am liable for the intentional criminal acts of OTHERS (who are not agents or employees). Again, I have already outline numerous examples of this as have others. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Of course they wouldn’t are you fucking kidding me? They wouldn’t do it unless there was a law that forced them to do it. Of course they would since on a basic level, it means more money for them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-gun-owners-not-required-to-carry-insurance/735454.md?page=6)