Eric Reed
A policy holder from the Erie Insurance Company received a notice of cancellation for owning a firearm. After this photo began circulating the internet, I became suspicious of it being legit, because it’s hard to believe that an insurance company would risk a potential discrimination issue by taking such an extreme measure.
I contacted Erie Insurance and received a return call from Karen Kraus Phillips from their PR Department. I identified myself as a journalist with FreePatriot.org, and questioned her about the photograph. She did confirm its validity, and offered to email me an official Erie Insurance statement. Their response is below.
“We can appreciate how passionately people feel about the Second Amendment. This issue, however, regards insurance underwriting. While we can’t give details about a specific customer, we can tell you that we do provide firearms coverage, both liability and property, under our Homeowners and Business policies. When we write a Business policy, we ask customers to disclose whether or not they keep firearms on the premises so we can accurately evaluate the full range of the risk it may represent.”
I asked her if police officers risk cancellation or pay higher rates for owning firearms as well. They declined any further comment or contact.
So I have a few major problems with their official statement. They’re alleging that firearms increase risk, but they fail to include any factual data to indicate that. Secondly, they won’t comment if police officers pay higher rates. What about military members, veterans, or competition/tactical shooters, many of which have equal or superior training to most police departments. This is a simple case of a NY insurance company discriminating against the “demonized” object referred to as a gun. I’m Eric Reed https://Facebook.com/EricReedGRAA, and may God bless America.