Mix an equal part of misinformation with the natural predisposition of fear of the unknown and you have a perfect storm of B.S.
Kansas has a problem: It has a law allowing teachers to carry guns in the classroom, but almost no schools are using it because insurance companies refuse to provide coverage if they do. As EMC Insurance, the largest insurer of schools in Kansas, explained in a letter to its agents, the company “has concluded that concealed handguns on school premises poses a heightened liability risk.”
I am not surprised: This is a new area and Insurance Companies are notoriously adverse to unknown risks. If they don’t have the data to their actuary tables, their collective panties suffer incontinence accidents.
As proposals to arm teachers sweep across the nation, insurance companies are being forced to weigh the risks of these controversial plans. Some insurers are balking. Some are agreeing to provide policies but lamenting the lack of evidence about whether it makes schools safer — or increases the chances of people getting shot. Others are raising rates.
So, when in doubt, they go back to what they know even if it does not apply.
“Putting in more resource officers — that’s additional security — we feel that makes it safer,” said Paul Marshall, of McGowan Program Administrators. “It’s different when you start pushing it to arming teachers, volunteers, voluntary security.”
Marshall has a particular interest in ways to prevent school shootings because his company sells “active shooter” insurance policies. It’s a newer line of coverage that has gained popularity as schools look at ways to grapple with the risk of mass shootings on their campuses. The policies pay for counseling services and victim death benefitsMore guns make insurers nervous in other situations, too, said Scott Kennedy, president of CCIG, an insurance company in Colorado. He pointed to the common preference among insurers that nightclub bouncers remain unarmed, while off-duty police officers working security are usually allowed to carry firearms.
Don’t rock the boat. And I am gonna hazard that the fear of being targeted by the David Hoggs of the Gun Control Side may have to do something also. But I am also willing to bet that the re-insurers that cover those companies have among their many clients a various and extended sundry of gun clubs. From the basic coverage for square ranges to full coverage for action shooting sports, gun clubs have not only insurance coverage but a long history of being safe which shows in the absurd low fees. I say absurd, because the monies for insurance paid by IDPA club I used to shoot with were substantially lower than paintball clubs or pewee sports.
The solution? Allow school carry and make it illegal to force disclosure to anybody in the School administration system. That would force the insurance companies to either stop trying to weasel out or they would have to stop insuring all schools and lose that potential revenue which I am sure is not peanuts.
PS: Lance, a friend in Facebook noted that adding schools to Immunity from prosecution would help.
Hat Tip Don J.
Another solution would be self-insurance. It takes more capital up front (which could be tough in this situation), but some businesses and groups use this when getting insurance otherwise is excessively costly or impossible.
A lot of schools already do the self-insurance for health care, so they already know how that goes.
Insurance companies are headquartered in liberal, Northeastern cities, thus their directors and risk managers are likely to be liberals and buy in to the “more guns mean more deaths” meme.
Immunity from prosecution has risks as well as rewards. Massive screw ups like Broward County should be civilly and criminally liable, since a few mult-million dollar awards and maybe even some indictments will convince the insurers that any district without a working security plan and real disciplinary programs to remove threats deserves premiums on par with malpractice for neurosurgeons. (As an aside, a friend’s father was paying $100k a year for malpractice in 1987)
This is how you will actually stop school shootings.
Make it painful and expensive for the school mis-administrators, and the school board. Nothing will change until the idiots in charge hurt physically and mentally, and most of all FINANCIALLY. After one or two examples, watch everything change overnight.
So they will insure “active shooter” liability and PAY for death benifits BUT
They wont insure to help PREVENT active shooters….brilliant
“Texas appears to have taken the lead on arming teachers, with more than 170 districts opting for policies that allow trained teachers or staff to carry firearms.
The school board in Santa Fe, Tex., considered such a policy last year but waited while it looked at training requirements.”
Ten Dead People that should be alive.
I have been saying this for years. The US has a legal climate where a property owner is not liable for the acts of criminals on their property, as long as they can show that they took minimal steps to prevent crime. They put in lighting in the parking lot, and a “no guns” sign, and they are then immune from lawsuits if a criminal robs or kills someone.
On the flip side, if they allow employees or invitees (customers) to carry weapons, they can then be sued to oblivion if one of them actually fires a gun, even in lawful self defense.
Thus, the default position of property owners becomes one of “no guns allowed” because it is cheaper to allow employees and customers to be robbed, raped and killed than it is to defend and pay out lawsuits when they defend themselves.
This is why Pizza Hut demands that their delivery drivers go unarmed, and fires them if they carry and defend themselves when robbed. The driver or his family can’t sue Pizza Hut when he gets shot during a robbery, and can be replaced rather quickly and cheaply. However, if the driver shoots his attacker, that attacker, through his no recovery, no fee attorney will sue the holy bejesus out of Pizza Hut.
Part of the US problem is that you can always be sued into oblivion. Even if the other guy loses the suit eventually, you’re still screwed by the costs. What the US needs, desperately, is the practice of much of the rest of the world of “loser pays”. It’s rare to find a legal practice done better in other countries; this is one of those exceptions.