I'm curious of what others may know about this, but this is my interpretation. I've used pirateship for a while and love it. Most of the time I don't add insurance. The last time I did, it appeared like the insurance was through a third party and not through the carrier (UPS/USPS). I see this as a possible upside as there are a lot of horror stories of carriers denying insurance claims for anything that even looks like it could be associated to a firearm. Though I don't know anything about the third party insurance (assuming it even is third party).