"Murder Insurance"

Tort Boards
   I will get to the subject of "Murder Insurance" in a few sentences, so if you are in a hurry, jump to the next sub-title. 
   Back in the last century (and not that far back in it), it was seen as both undignified and unprofessional for lawyers to pitch their wares. That is now not the case. On a recent car trip to the United States, bulletin boards for personal injury lawyers blotted the brief spots of landscape, not already obscured by tattoo shops and weed and dollar stores. (As an aside; given that travel to that country is now discouraged I will offer as an excuse the fact that it was an "oblication" - an obligation to which we tacked on a brief vacation.) On our next trip, if the political situation allows one, there are likely to be more bulletin boards by lawyers offering "Murder Insurance", which is no longer just a niche market.

Finally - "Murder Insurance"
   The word "murder" was assigned to this new insurance product by the critics of it, who may have considered, the words "homicide' or "manslaughter". Those selling it prefer "self-defense insurance" and, if it existed up here, it would be called "self-defence insurance", but it is unlikely to be on sale in Canada because our lawyers are less enterprising and we have far fewer guns. 
  I learned all of this from the following article, the title of which reveals two reasons why the market for self-defense insurance has grown to over two million customers:
"Did You Shoot Somebody in Self-Defense? There's An Insurance Policy For That: Insurers Cover Self-Defense Shooters - Rise in Gun Ownership and Stand-Your-Ground Laws Drives a Lucrative New Market," Mark Maremont and Tawnell D. Hobbs, The Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2025.
   The major purveyors of this new product are listed below, along with additional information should you have concerns about protecting your own castle. Like, State Farm, I suppose, call and they will be there like a good neighbor, to provide such things as defense assistance, civil litigation support and money to cover the costs for cleaning up the mess that usually results when someone is stopped dead. They may be busy since it has been noticed that, "the industry’s expansion coincides with the growth of permitless concealed carry laws, stand-your-ground statutes, and increased firearm purchases, particularly during periods of social unrest..." It is also the case, as the critics of "Murder Insurance" suggest, that the existence of such a product may incentivize the use of force in even trivial or accidental acts of trespass.
  Loyal readers of MM will appreciate the irony (there is usually some around) if they recall my post of last May when I noted that homeowners in many states were having difficulty getting insurance for protection against natural disasters. See, Your CASTLE.

Some Self-Defense Insurers:
U.S. Concealed Carry Association - "Keep Your Family Safe"
Armed Citizens' Legal Defense Network, Inc. "Can You Survive the Legal Aftermath of Self Defense?"
U.S. Law Shield. The website is there, but you will likely be blocked as a Canadian and have to contact them.

Post Script: 
  I went looking for the origin of the term, "Murder Insurance" and found usage of the words together, but they generally related to people being murdered for insurance or those who had received insurance payments when someone was murdered. Teachers got murder insurance back in 2001 and parents in New York city bought murder insurance for their kids back in the early 1990s. Some municipalities also sought murder insurance to help with the costs associated with bringing murderers to trial.
   The first occurrence, I found, of "Murder Insurance" used as it has been in this post, was back in 2017. The NRA was selling it.
  " 'Murder Insurance' or Protection in Self-Defence Cases?" Lisa Marie Pane, AP. Oct. 19, 2017.
"ATLANTA — The National Rifle Association is offering insurance for people who shoot someone, stirring criticism from gun-control advocates who say it could foster more violence and give gun owners a false sense of security to shoot first and ask questions later.
Some are calling it “murder insurance,” and say that rather than promoting personal responsibility and protection, it encourages gun owners to take action and not worry about the consequences. And, they say, it’s being marketed in a way that feeds on the nation’s racial divisions.
Guns Down, a gun-control group formed last year, is running an ad campaign to criticize the NRA’s new insurance. It’s just the latest group to take aim at the NRA’s offering.
“The reason I call it murder insurance is because if you look at the way this is marketed, it’s really sold in the context of ‘There’s a threat around every corner, dear mostly-white NRA member,’ and that threat is either a black man or a brown man or some other kind of person of colour,” said Guns Down director Igor Volsky.
“So when you inevitably have to use your gun to defend yourself from this threat around every corner, you have insurance to protect you.”
Carry Guard insurance was launched this past spring by the NRA. Rates range from $13.95 a month for up to $250,000 in civil protection and $50,000 in criminal defence to a “gold plus” policy that costs $49.95 a month and provides up to $1.5 million in civil protection and $250,000 in criminal defence. The coverage kicks in if a court finds the person lawfully shot someone in self-defence or the case is dropped.
The NRA isn’t the only gun lobbying group offering such insurance. The United States Concealed Carry Association has been in the business much longer and provides up to $2 million in civil costs and $250,000 for criminal defence. But the NRA is the most prominent gun-rights group in the country and it offered similar insurance previously. And Carry Guard is more comprehensive and being marketed more aggressively than it has been previously. It’s drawing attention to a type of policy that was relatively obscure until now."

Post Script:
   The very clever term, "Tort Boards",  was constructed by me to describe the bulletin boards constructed for lawyers. Those who use the expression "tort boards" without acknowledging MM, will be charged with first-degree plagiarism and a tort board will be used to track down a lawyer who will sue you on my behalf.

In Love With Norma Loquendi

 Quoth the Maven

   I do not  write much because I keep discovering things about which I would like to write and then never have time to do so. I start poking around to learn more about the new things, while the older ones gather dust. It is a disease of the dilettante, I suppose, to be so easily diverted.
    That attempt at constructing an alliterative phrase is made in deference to a major manufacturer of them, William Safire, the subject of this post. The new thing distracting me this week is that I learned that it was during the last week of September that Safire died 15 years ago. Examples of such diversions which keep me from creating my magnum opus are easily found. I noted, for example, the anniversary of the death of another columnist and even his birthday. (That columnist is Russell Baker: see "Russell Baker (August 14, 1925 - Jan, 21, 2019," and "Russell Baker's Birthday." (Like Safire, Baker was both clever and funny.)
   If you spent the majority of your years in the last century you will recognize the name "William Safire" and remember him as a conservative hanging around the Nixon White House, both of which are true. Safire was also responsible for these Spiro Agnew utterances: "pusillanimous pussyfooters" and "vicars of vacillation" (Democrats) and those "nattering nabobs of negativism." Another one, which could be used in Canada these days: "The hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history." Pulitzer Winner He won a Pulitzer for his "distinguished commentary" about the Bert Lance affair and here are his distinct titles: "Carter's Broken Lance," "Boiling the Lance," "The Lance Cover-up," "Lancegate," "The Skunk at the Garden Party" and "Beyond Lance." We could use him now.

Enough politics. Safire became a prose pundit and his New York Time's columns were under the title, "On Language." They were fun to read and have aged well. Many of them are collected in the books listed below. There is enough reading to get you through winter. What About Love and Norma and the Maven? They are found in titles of two of his books and you were probably more curious about them then you would have been about any title I could have come up with. Here they are with some information about each book.

In Love With Norma Loquendi "Safire charms yet again with his lively interest in our language. ``Norma Loquendi,'' that fickle lass whose name the author translates as ``the everyday voice of the native speaker,'' is the title character of this ninth book to come from Safire's ``On Language'' column in the New York Times Magazine....Those who believe language is a delight as well as a necessity will happily while away the hours meandering through these pages." from Kirkus Book Review.

Quoth the Maven
"There are connoisseurs. There are virtuosos. And then there are mavens. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Safire is the maven's maven....Safire - using alliteration, puns, and other tricks of the writer's trade - offers a cornucopia of words, phrases, slang, and grammatical oddities, proving once again why Time calls him "the country's best practitioner of the art of columny."" "Safire probes the surprising origins of such expressions as "kiss and tell," "people of color," "stab in the back," "bonfire of the vanities," and the whole nine yards. He attempts to explain what a White House press secretary meant when he announced, "We can't winkle-picker this anymore.... "Knowledgeable, witty, and impeccably grammatical, William Safire's essays on language are an important and entertaining reference for mavens everywhere." from the Book Jacket.

Books By Safire
  Listed here are just his nonfiction works; he also wrote a few novels. The London Public Library has a couple of them and the Western Libraries have lots. They are easily found for purchase and you can read all of In Love with Norma Loquendi on the Internet Archive.

Nonfiction

Before the Fall (1975)

On Language (1980)

What’s the Good Word? (1982)

I Stand Corrected (1984)

Good Advice (1985) LPL

Take My Word for It (1986)

You Could Look It Up (1988)

Words of Wisdom (1990)

Leadership (1990)

The First Dissident (1992) LPL

Lend Me Your Ears (1993)

Quoth the Maven (1993)

Safire’s New Political Dictionary (1993)

Watching My Language (1997)

Spread the Word (1999)

Let a Simile Be Your Umbrella (2001)

Fumblerules (2002)

No Uncertain Terms (2003)

The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time (2004)

How Not to Write (2005)

Safire’s Political Dictionary (2008)

In Love with Norma Loquendi (2011)

Language Maven Strikes Again (2011)

Coming To Terms (2012)

Post Script:

  I have a copy of the very thick Safire's Political Dictionary and pulled it from the shelf for this exercise. A few pages were noted, for reasons I don’t recall, but here is what was on one of them. It provides a good example of what can be learned by poking around in a Safire book. Note his last sentence. I hope members of the NRA don’t happen upon this post.

“Your Home Is Your Castle”

--A slogan appealing to whites opposed to residential integration.

   George Mahoney, perennial candidate for statewide office in Maryland, used this slogan in his 1966 campaign. It was picked up by Louise Day Hicks, candidate for mayor of Boston in 1967; both campaigns lost.

   “Your Home Is Your Castle – Protect It” was regarded as a Code Word phrase by most analysts, playing on the prejudices of voters concerned with property values in their neighborhoods if blacks moved in.

   The phrase “a man’s home is his castle” is taken from a proverb and was codified in English law by Sir Edwin Coke in 1604:

“For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique tutissimum refugium…Resolved: The house of every man is his castle, and if thieves come to a man’s house to rob or murder, and the owner or his servants kill any of the thieves in defence of himself and his house, it is no felony and he lose nothing…”

   In recent usage, the proverb has been more the property of opponents of desegregation than of the “gun lobby.”

Safire’s Political Dictionary….1978. p.806.