There is no longer a reason, one suspects, for the planned fly-over protest at the Overland Park headquarters of insurance carrier Lockton Affinity by the radical anti-gun group “Guns Down.”
Lockton Affinity caved as quickly as a California hillside in a rainstorm, proving no more courageous in the process than Broward County sheriff’s deputy Scot Peterson.
“This is HUGE!” Guns Down gloated in a tweet. “Lockton was one of the NRA’s biggest partner, providing all kinds of products, including Carry Guard murder insurance.”
As reported in Monday’s Sentinel, Lockton Affinity’s sin was to offer what is called “Carry Guard” insurance. The program was designed to cover costs for “any covered claim resulting from the use of a legally possessed firearm — including an act of self-defense.”
As is obvious above, Guns Down called this protection “murder insurance.” The Guns Down website puts that charge in context, “6 years ago, Trayvon Martin was shot and killed. Today, the Lockton Companies are working with the NRA to push Carry Guard murder insurance coverage to people like Trayvon’s killer. Tell them it’s time to stop selling murder insurance.”
For the record, Martin’s killer, neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman, was brutally attacked by Martin after calling him into the Sanford, Florida, Police Department. Zimmerman saw Martin looking in the windows of the apartments in Zimmerman’s housing complex. Zimmerman’s gun saved him from a severe beating and possibly even death. That a jury acquitted Zimmerman of murder does not much interest Guns Down.
Neither the Business Journal article on the Guns Down threat or the Star article on Lockton Affinity’s collapse cited a single named person from Guns Down. No name is found on the group’s website either. The site offers no organizational history and no list of donors or sponsors. Wikipedia does not recognize it. Yet the group has proved scarily successful in intimidating businesses from working with the NRA.
That a group this sketchy swayed Lockton Affinity so easily says nothing good about Lockton or Lockton’s clients and vendors who kept their mouths shut while their partner was being bullied into submission.