Your First Call After You Shoot Someone
Although self-defense insurance companies mainly market firearms lovers, they are agnostic about the means of self-protection of a client. “Whenever you have to defend yourself with a legal weapon – Dog, firearm, baseball bat, car, makes no difference,” said a shield representative of US law during a recent presentation to potential customers. “We represented a lady once, someone broke into her house while she was cooking. She threw her warm fat and hit her with a pan. It is a legal weapon.” A client told me that he added his young daughter to his plan: “In case my child would beat your child on the playground and get a Sue-Happy.”
The detractors called the “murder insurance” product. But industry representatives argue that their customers exercise their legal rights. Companies reserve the right to deny the coverage if they determine that a shooting was not in self -defense, or if the shooter was engaged in criminal activities at the time of the incident. “We do not register for people who say:” Oh, Goody, now I will use my weapon “”, said Ken Cuccinelli, the former prosecutor General of Virginia, in 2014, when he launched the Virginia self-defense company, whose legal-retainer program cost as little as $ 8.33 per month. “This community is more respectful of laws than the average citizen. It is better Americans than the average American. It’s my customers. “
The US Law Shield Foundation was inspired by a high -level shooting. In the afternoon of November 14, 2007, a retiree by the name of Joe Horn called 911 to point out that two men deprived his neighbor’s house in Pasadena, Texas. “I have a shotgun – Do you want me to stop it?” Horn asked the distributor.
“No, don’t do that,” replied the distributor. “There is no property worth shooting on someone, ok?”
In the several minutes that followed, Horn has become more and more agitated while the distributor warned him several times against the intervention. “Okay, but I have the right to protect myself too, sir … The laws have been changed in this country since September the first, and you know and I know,” said Horn. “There, my friend. You hear the hunting rifle click and I go. ” Then he came out and killed the two men. In the United States, the right of self-defense is largely based on the principle of the doctrine of the castle of the castle: your house is your house, and you can use a deadly force against an intruder. But, as the republican legislator who wrote Texas then recently adopted is your field law – that which Horn invoked during his call at 911 – at the time, “it was not his castle.”
The case drew the attention of Darren Rice, a lawyer in Houston. “Darren is a business lawyer, but he is also a guy from the weapon,” said Evans, and in the case of Horn, Rice has seen a sign of things to come. The field laws, which are now in place in a large part of the country, extended the scope of the fatal self -defense outside the house. In Texas, a person who fears “reasonably” death or an imminent injury could now use a deadly force to defend themselves or defend themselves or others, which has created all kinds of legal complexities. What type of fear considered “reasonable”? How much threat should a threat be imminent? “There were a lot of myths of law of firearms that people had in their heads who were simply false, but who spread among culture, on the Internet and during firearms shows,” said Evans. The owners of firearms needed two things, Rice concluded: better legal advice on the moment when they were justified to use a deadly force and better legal defense when they did.
(Horn became a right -wing hero after he was revealed that the men he had killed were undocumented immigrants. Seven months after the shooting, after listening to two weeks of testimony, a large jury refused to indicate it.)
The idea that the owners of firearms may need to use a weapon to protect themselves or protect themselves or their loved ones is a cornerstone of the contemporary culture of firearms, and at the heart of the sale arguments of self -defense insurance companies. Such situations are rare, although they are less rare than before: the number of justifiable homicides in the United States has increased by more than twenty percent since 2007, the year when Texas adopted its law on the ground, about eight hundred per year; Since 2019, the majority of them have been committed by law enforcement agents but by armed civilians. (Just because a shooting was deemed justifiable that it was necessary.)
Many other incidents are classified as defensive use of firearms – in which a firearm is deployed or brandished in order to dissuade a crime. According to the Ministry of Justice, there are around seventy thousand uses of defensive firearms per year; Firelessness rights groups often cite figures ten times higher. (It is notoriously difficult to obtain precise statistics concerning the use of firearms, both because research is strongly supported and because republican legislators have prohibited certain forms of research on armed violence.)
But even the uses of defensive firearms which are ultimately deemed justifiable often lead to legal consequences – shipments, accusations, small jury procedures and sometimes trials. “Many people are shocked, because they feel, like, hey, I just saved my life,” said Larry Bloomquist, a lawyer based in San Antonio who works with Us Law Shield. Evans told me that the company receives some three hundred “real emergency” calls per month and regularly sends lawyers to crime scenes and police services in the middle of the night. The customers of self-defense insurance companies to which I spoke seemed to appreciate their lawyers for their emotional support as much as their legal expertise. “Have you ever been in a situation of self-defense? It is, like, ten crazy.” Larry came and he held my hand all the way. “
