Right to Bear CCW Insurance Review [2024]: Written by a Lawyer

If you’ve heard of Right to Bear Insurance and you’re looking to see if they’re the right concealed carry insurance for you (more accurately called self defense liability insurance), we’ve got some good news: we’re going review Right to Bear, explain their coverage options, and give you some pros and cons to help you make an informed decision.

In this Right to Bear CCW Insurance review, I’ll take a deep dive into their policy and I’ll let you know what you can expect and whether or not I think Right to Bear is worth it for you and your family.

Although I am a firearms attorney, I’m not YOUR attorney – this is not legal advice and only you can decide whether self defense insurance is right for your situation (and which provider to choose). This stuff is a bit more complicated than your standard car insurance, homeowners insurance, or life insurance.

Before we begin, I want to let you know that some of the links below are affiliate links that can help us keep our ammo budget going but they will NOT affect your price nor do they affect our advice about the insurance policy.

In this Right to Bear Insurance review we’re going to cover:

• Who/What is Right to Bear?
• How Much Does Right to Bear Coverage Cost?
• What Does Right to Bear Cover?
• Pros and Cons to Right to Bear Self Defense Insurance
• Right to Bear vs Other CCW Insurance
• Right to Bear Review: Our Take
• Final Grade on Right to Bear

In the next couple of sections I’m going to cover the features, pricing, and what we do and don’t like about what Right to Bear offers. However, if you’d like to know how I rank Right to Bear against other gun liability insurance providers, check out our Best Concealed Carry Insurance Comparison.

What is Right to Bear Insurance?

Right to Bear, like other concealed carry insurance providers, isn’t technically “insurance.” Instead, these “ccw insurance companies” provide legal support for self-defense scenarios.

Right to Bear has a strong backing in the firearms industry as they are a related business to Palmetto State Armory. We’ve had some great conversations with them over the past year – our initial review was highly critical of their coverage and they took it in stride with a promise to improve as they said that they were interested in providing great coverage at a great value. It honestly made me feel bad to write a non-positive review of them because I like them and what they stand for. However, you come to Gun University for the truth and not just marketing fluff – so that’s what you’re getting.

Thankfully, they have taken every point of feedback we’ve had and have shifted into a great value for CCW insurance and our grade for them has changed from a “C” previously, to an “A” now!

To us, this says a lot about the company.

Is self defense liability support needed?

Unfortunately, the fight can be even more difficult AFTER you’ve used your firearm in self defense. The government may try to prosecute you for a crime or the person you shot, or their relatives, can sue you in court for damages.

As you can imagine, dealing with legal fees, lawyers, and more can be VERY expensive – especially if you lose and are ordered by the court to pay someone that sued you. Spending a few hundred thousand dollars, or more, is not uncommon just to get a defense started in a criminal case.

I’m known for telling my clients that “it’s often better to avoid a fight than it is to win a fight.” That’s because “winning” can be VERY expensive when legal costs are involved.

Right to Bear insurance exists to help cover the costs associated with your legal defense in both criminal and civil cases.

How Much Does Right to Bear Coverage Cost?

Right to Bear self defense coverage used to have different tiers, however, they have recently changed their program to have one level of coverage that costs $125 per year (or $11 per month).

What Does Right to Bear Cover?

Before we get into what RTB covers, it’s likely valuable to explore some broad areas of coverage common among the major self defense insurance providers.

After all, you’re a gun owner looking to exercise your second amendment rights and you want to be covered in case you need to use your firearm in self defense to protect yourself and your loved ones from violence. 

As gun owners, gun ownership is a right we enjoy in the United States but it does come with responsibilities and requires a focus on gun safety. 

First each of them charges a different amount and offers a different max dollar amount of coverage. This can be misleading as it is often the first and only thing someone looks at when they’re purchasing coverage: dollar amount of max coverage versus the dollar mount of monthly cost.

Second, and perhaps most important, they don’t cover the same things nor for the same amounts. This is EXTREMELY important as a lot of money that can only be used in certain areas or doesn’t even apply to you because of a loop-hole is not always wise.

Here’s the problem: It can be very tough to wade through all the differences by reading the actual legal paperwork and policies but only you can decide which features are most important for you.

Here’s my advice: if you decide to get coverage, learn about what each company actually covers and then choose the one that you can afford and gives you the best protection for what’s important to you.

Also, I have a set of 3 baseline rules that I feel strongly about and I think that you should make sure your chosen ccw insurance has these three things (at a minimum):

1. Money up front
2. Ability to choose your own lawyer
3. Daily “per diem” payment while in trial

I’ll address these must-have ccw insurance features along with some of the other features to see how Right to Bear “stacks up” so you can decide if they’re right for you.

Criminal Defense Protection: Even if you think, and your friends all agree, that your defensive gun use was justified, you might still be prosecuted! Your criminal defense can be very expensive (it’s not unreasonable for things to START at $200,000) and although RTB used to specifically cap their coverage, they now offer “unlimited” legal coverage.

Civil Defense & Liability coverage: Previously, Right to Bear used to cap coverage depending on which tier a member was a part of and the amount needed to be shared between criminal and civil matters – however, the current RTB policy does not make a distinction between criminal or civil suits and will cover them each equally.

Up Front Money: If you need money for your legal defense, you need it up front. Reimbursement is nice, but if you can cover a few hundred thousand dollars on your own in case of a self defense gun use, perhaps insurance is not right for you?  Right to Bear pays legal fees directly.

Bail: If you elect to pay an extra $35 per year (or $4 per month), you qualify for bail bond coverage up to $100,000 (with a max payment of $10,000). If the bond is over that amount, they’ll cover the first $100k and you can cover the rest.

Per Diem: While you’re in court for trial, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to work. After weeks or months, this can be a serious strain on your finances in addition to defense costs. This is one of our 3 required features and used to be covered by RTB for an extra fee, however, their current policy has no provision for any per diem coverage. This may not be a big deal to everyone so we graded RTB in light of their low cost may justify not having this coverage.

Appeal Coverage: Under RTB’s previous policy, there was no coverage for appeals. This was a major concern for me. Our original review covered this and we included that we knew that they were working to improve their policy and had high hopes. For some good news to share, their current policy has been updated and it now includes coverage for appeals – this is wonderful and what we were hoping for.

Choosing Your Own Attorney: Up until a week ago (as of writing this article), there was some problematic language in their policy that made it clear that you could not, in fact, choose your own attorney. Thankfully, this has been changed and you can now choose your own attorney but they must agree to RTB’s billing guidelines and they must be approved by RTB – this is reasonable and great news!

Firearm Replacement: If your firearm is confiscated as part of a justified self defense incident, RTB will replace your firearm with a firearm of equal value from Palmetto State Armory.

What’s Not Included With Right to Bear:

No Sales in NY, NJ, WA: Just recently the local governments for these three states banned the sales of “CCW insurance” programs. This doesn’t mean that your CCW insurance won’t work if you’re visiting there, it just means you can’t buy it if you live here. However, this is a limitation for all CCW insurance services right now.

Per Diem Coverage: As mentioned above, there is no longer any per diem (daily amount while in trial to offset lost wages) coverage offered.

Right to Bear vs Other CCW Insurance:

It is almost impossible for me to say which ccw insurance is “best” overall because everyone’s situation, budget, and risk tolerance is unique. However, I can say that I do now recommend Right to Bear for your self defense legal protection – especially if the monthly cost is a concern for your budget.

Right to Bear Review – Our Take

Our review of right to bear has significantly changed! We can now recommend them for self defense liability coverage.

They do not have the most features, nor the most coverage. However, they are solidly in our “Bet Value” recommendation for CCW Insurance.

For any concealed carry insurance option, we strongly recommend looking for three basic ccw insurance requirements:

1. The ability to choose your own attorney,
2. Money up-front, and
3. A daily allowance to help offset time off work

Right to Bear only offers 2 of these three basic “must-haves” – the ability to choose your own attorney (this is new) and money up-front.

Even though they don’t offer one of my “must haves,” a daily allowance, they still earn a strong grade and I can now recommend them. Why?

Well, the daily allowance may not matter much to some people and, if you consider how inexpensive their coverage is, it’s reasonable that this “add-on” feature is not available.

Two of the biggest concerns I used to have with their coverage (and which I discussed in the previous review) was their requirement that you had to pay back everything if you lost your case at the trial level and there was no option for coverage of an appeal AND the policy included language that really didn’t;t give you free choice of an attorney.

BOTH OF THESE ISSUES ARE GONE!

I mentioned above that they made some updates to their policy that we have been waiting for and are very happy with these changes – the current policy allows you to select your own attorney (that they must approve) and it no longer has the provision that requires you pay back RTB if you lose and they now include appeal coverage.

We hope that our highlighting these issues from the previous policy helped to influence these great changes.

Second (or third since I snuck two issues into the first one), there were some very odd limitations in their coverage. Previously, if you were on property owned by a religious institution or if your firearm is “modified” from the factory configuration or if you were an FFL, then you wouldn’t have been covered. Thankfully, these limitations no longer exist and we’re including these in some of the good changes we’ve seen in the newest policy. Now, if you’re working as an FFL, you can have personal coverage but your business policy needs to cover anything work-related. This is very reasonable.

Another issue that I had, which is now gone thanks to their commitment to improve, was Section VII(E)(4) of their policy which said that you will not be covered if the self defense incident is against “…current or former family members, household members, domestic partnerships, romantic relationships…”

That meant that if you have a self defense incident against an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, for example, then you wouldn’t have been covered.

Yes, in case you were wondering, we really went section by section to detail issues we had and addressed each with RTB.

After our most recent conversation with Right to Bear were we addressed our concerns in both their previous policy and coverage they been receptive and as I’ve detailed above, some good changes have been made. They changed the prior limitation to include coverage if you are acting in self defense as the victim of the incident.

They have truly seemed interested in making their coverage on par with the best available. We are happy not only with their current coverage but also their willingness to improve.

As it stands now, Right to Bear is likely the BEST VALUE for your CCW Insurance. We encourage you to check out our Best CCW Insurance list to make a decision on which one is right for you.

Right to Bear Pros and Cons