{"id":78401,"date":"2022-03-08T13:28:53","date_gmt":"2022-03-08T19:28:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=78401"},"modified":"2022-03-08T13:28:53","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T19:28:53","slug":"78401","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=78401","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018The Trace\u2019 (Yes, \u2018The Trace\u2019) Reveals the Lie Behind San Jose\u2019s New Gun Owner Liability Insurance Law<\/a><\/p>\n

[Sam] Liccardo, the mayor,\u00a0has said<\/a>\u00a0that safe\u00a0gun<\/a>\u00a0behavior will determine insurance rates and lead to discounts. He told\u00a0Slate<\/a>\u00a0last month: \u201cWhen you notify the insurance company, the insurance company can start to ask questions like, \u2018Do you have a gun\u00a0safe? Do you have a trigger lock? Have you taken gun\u00a0safety classes?\u2019 And those kinds of actions can help to reduce the premium.\u201d<\/p>\n

But experts we spoke with said insurance companies won\u2019t be asking these questions, and gun\u00a0owner behavior probably won\u2019t influence rates, because the ordinance only requires policies that cover accidental shootings, which are rare in San Jose. \u201cIt\u2019s totally oversold,\u201d said George Mocsary, a law professor at the University of Wyoming. \u201cI think it\u2019s an idea that makes sense on the surface. But when you dig into it a little bit, it essentially falls apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Mayor\u2019s Office, Rachel Davis, told us that staffers reached out to \u201cover a dozen\u201d insurance companies and that all of them asked about risk factors. These included whether children lived in the home, whether someone was on medication for depression, whether there is a gun\u00a0safe, how many\u00a0guns<\/a> were in the house, and if the gun\u00a0owner had safety training. But Davis didn\u2019t say how these factors would affect premiums.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile there\u2019s a clause in most policies that covers negligent gun harm, it\u2019s up to the gun owner to disclose more information that could affect their rates,\u201d Davis said in an emailed response to our questions. \u201cIt\u2019s also up to each of the insurance companies to define their policy requirements and up to residents to find the insurance policy that will work for them.\u201d Davis insists that when gun owners file a claim, they will be asked about risk factors like gun storage, and the answers to those questions will determine whether a shooting is covered.<\/p>\n

We reached out to several major insurance providers for more details about how the policies will work, but only three got back to us. Farmers and State Farm, referred us to [Janet] Ruiz of the Insurance Information Institute, while AAA said in a statement: \u201cAAA supports the safety and security of our communities, which is why we offer insurance covering a broad scope of losses. We are reviewing the newly passed ordinance to determine whether it affects our products.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Pacific Institute study, San Jose has an average of two unintentional shooting deaths per year. The nonprofit\u00a0Gun Violence Archive<\/a>, meanwhile, has recorded just three unintentional shootings in San Jose since 2015, resulting in two deaths and two injuries. Those figures may be an undercount \u2014 GVA bases its tallies on news and police reports, which can be incomplete \u2014 but even so, none of those shootings would have been covered by San Jose\u2019s gun\u00a0owners insurance because they all resulted in criminal charges.<\/p>\n

According to Mocsary, the rarity of unintentional shootings make the odds of ever paying out on a claim so low that \u201cthe insurance companies just don\u2019t care.\u201d \u201cThey\u2019ve already had the opportunity to do the actuarial math on this, and they found that it makes no difference,\u201d he added. If risky gun\u00a0behaviors affected their bottom line, insurers would already be asking about them. \u201cAnd they don\u2019t,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That contradicts a major\u00a0selling point<\/a>\u00a0of the ordinance: the claim that risk-adjusted premiums will encourage gun\u00a0owners to take safety courses and invest in gun\u00a0safes, trigger locks, or chamber-load indicators.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Jennifer Mascia in\u00a0Will Requiring Gun Owners to Buy Insurance Improve Firearm Safety?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018The Trace\u2019 (Yes, \u2018The Trace\u2019) Reveals the Lie Behind San Jose\u2019s New Gun Owner Liability Insurance Law [Sam] Liccardo, the mayor,\u00a0has said\u00a0that safe\u00a0gun\u00a0behavior will determine insurance rates and lead to discounts. He told\u00a0Slate\u00a0last month: \u201cWhen you notify the insurance company, the insurance company can start to ask questions like, \u2018Do you have a gun\u00a0safe? Do … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goobermint","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78402,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78401\/revisions\/78402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}