Idea of arming teachers worries insurers

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.”

Then came the Parkland, Fla., school shooting in February, leading frustrated Republican legislators in Kansas to try forcing the issue with a bill banning “unfair, discriminatory” rates for schools that arm staff. The insurance industry held firm. Last month, the bill failed.

“I don’t think insurance companies are notorious anti-gun liberals,” said Mark Tallman, associate executive director for the Kansas Association of School Boards, “so we think they’ve got good reasons for not doing it.”

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.

“There’s not a lot of carriers that want to insure that risk,” Nate Walker, a senior vice president at insurer AmWINS Group.

The reaction of insurance companies is notable because they are supposed to evaluate dangers through the dry eye of actuarial science, largely avoiding the heated emotions of the nation’s gun debate, in which one side condemns guns and the other side claims, as Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, did last week, that the best way to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun.

“But an even better way,” Patrick added, “is four people with a gun to stop that person.”

Insurance companies are not so certain, worried more guns in schools might not only fail to stop mass shootings but lead to more accidents.

The epidemic of mass shootings in schools and other public venues has put new pressure on the insurance industry to take a stand. They face huge potential liabilities from these tragedies. The 2017 Las Vegas, Nev., shooting, where a gunman fatally shot 58 people, could cost insurers more than $1 billion, including potential lawsuits and covering lost business income from the incident and its fallout, according to the International Risk Management Institute.