Insurance Companies Say "No" to Arming Teachers

In the wake of school mass shootings, the NRA - a front organization for gun manufacturers - and its political prostitutes within the Republican Party insanely say the solution is more guns.  Indeed, they propose arming teachers and school staff embers, most of whom want nothing to do with the idiotic proposal. Nonetheless, Republicans in a number of states have passed laws allowing the arming of teachers; however, they are hitting a roadblock: insurance carriers who are refusing to offer insurance coverage -  something we need to see start happening to gun owners in the home insurance realm as intimated in a prior post.  As is their norm insurance carriers typically eagerly accept premium payments, but want to minimize as much as possible the risk that they might actually have to pay out on claims.  The analysis of these companies is that more guns in schools is a very bad idea.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at insurance carrier's refusal in most cases to issue policies to school districts arming teachers and staff.  Here are highlights:

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.

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.  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 (R) did last week, that the best way to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun.  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 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. Adding trained police officers to schools is generally viewed favorably, industry officials say. But giving guns to school janitors or history teachers — even with some training — raises concerns. More 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. Joe Carter, a vice president of United Educators, which specializes in insuring schools, said he frequently hears from insurance executives at industry events worried about whether they will be asked to cover armed teachers and school staff.  “I don’t know anyone out there who is ready to offer liability coverage for schools when they’re arming their teachers,” Carter said.

Kansas passed its law arming teachers in 2013, after the mass shooting the previous year in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. That immediately led EMC Insurance to announce it would rather exit the school insurance market than cover armed teachers and staff. Republican lawmakers were upset but couldn’t find another insurer willing to take on the policies.

Let's hope this common sense spreads to the residential insurance market and to homeowners having to discard their guns or lose insurance mandated by their mortgage companies.  With luck, it could also lead to landlords to ban guns in their rental properties. 

School Shooting Victim Family Sues Attacker’s Parents

In what ought to become standard practice, the parents of one of the victims of the Santa Fe, Texas, school shooting has filed suit against the parents of the shooter who used weapons belonging to his parents.  Weapons that obviously were not property secured and should not have been where a minor could access them.  If politicians lack the balls to buck the NRA, then civil lawsuits may be the means to force change.  If there are enough such lawsuits, just as insurance companies will refuse to issue policies to owners of certain dog breeds, so too insurance carriers might in time refuse to issue insurance policies to gun owning homeowners.  Suits against gun shops that sell weapons to shooters might accomplish a similar effect.  Of course, repealing immunity laws for gun manufacturers could likewise cause a major change in the availability of guns in American homes.  Here are highlights from CBS 21 in Dallas:

The family of one of the students killed in a Texas high school shooting filed a lawsuit against the alleged gunman’s parents, claiming the shooter’s father didn’t properly secure the weapons and were negligent in entrusting him with firearms.

Investigators said Pagourtzis used a shotgun and pistol belonging to his father that had been kept in a closet.

Texas law states that guns can’t be made accessible to children under 17, with exceptions such as hunting or when under parent supervision. Parents can be charged with a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and $4,000 in fines if the child fires the weapon and causes serious injury or death.

Christopher Stone and Rosie Yanas, whose son Chris Stone, 17, was killed, filed a lawsuit in Galveston County on Thursday. Stone’s funeral was Friday.

The lawsuit also argued that Pagourtzis’ parents didn’t obtain mental health counseling for their son and didn’t warn the public about his “dangerous propensities.” Dimitrios Pagourtzis posted a photo of a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Born to Kill” on social media, and Gov. Greg Abbott has said the teenager had journals with writings indicating he planned the attack.

Pagourtzis family attorney Nicholas Poehl said he only represents them in the criminal case against the son and declined comment on the civil lawsuit. He did not know when the family would have attorney in the civil matter.

The lawsuit is not the first of its kind following a mass shooting.

Most recently, the family of one of the four people killed in a shooting at a Waffle House restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee, sued the suspected gunman’s father, accusing the Illinois man of negligence. In that case, police said the gunman had displayed signs of mental illness before his Illinois gun card was revoked in 2017. His guns were transferred to his father, but police said the father returned them to his son at some point.

Texas law requires gun owners to “take steps that a reasonable person would take to prevent the access to a readily dischargeable firearm by a child, including but not limited to placing a firearm in a locked container or temporarily rendering the firearm inoperable by a trigger lock or other means.”

[Texas Governor] Abbott, a staunch supporter of gun rights, said this week he’s open to strengthening laws on gun storage and reporting lost or stolen weapons. But that suggestion is already drawing resistance from some gun rights lawmakers who said they would resist efforts for more government control of what happens inside the home.

New Mexico: The New Gay Marriage Battleground As Judge Orders Issuance of Marriage Licenses

Unlike many states in America, the state of New Mexico never enacted explicit gay marriage bans through either statutes or an anti-gay amendment to the New Mexico Constitution.   As a result in the wake of the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Windsor - which among other things correctly identified anti-gay animus as the real motivation behind DOMA - several counties in New Mexico have started issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.  And as reported previously on this blog, the New Mexico attorney general has announced that he will not oppose the issuance of such licenses.  To further confuse the mix of legal directives, now a judge has ordered county clerks to proceed with the issuance of marriage licenses to same sex couples.  Here are highlights from BuzzFeed:

A New Mexico judge has ordered the county clerks of Bernalillo and Sante Fe counties to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples who apply and are otherwise qualified.

Because the clerk in Santa Fe County already began issuing licenses last week, as did the clerk of Dona Ana County, the addition of Bernalillo County into the mix makes a third county in the state where licenses will be issued to same-sex couples.

Issuing a peremptory writ of mandamus, Judge Alan Malott found Monday that the couples suing for a right to marry in one of the only states in the nation without either marriage equality or an explicit ban on such marriages have a “significant likelihood of success” on the merits of their lawsuit.   In reading his ruling in open court Monday, Malott said he ordered that:

New Mexico law, Malott found, “does not preclude nor prohibit issuance of a marriage license to otherwise qualified couples on the basis of sexual orientation or the gender of its members.”.

To the extent it is found to do so, “those prohibitions are unconstitutional and unenforceable under” New Mexico’s constitution, he ruled.

Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Oliver and Santa Fe County Clerk Geraldine Salazar “shall comply with and perform” their duty to issue such licences.
Oliver and Salazar are “enjoined and restrained from refusing to issue” such licenses.

Malott is a district court judge in the Second Judicial District of New Mexico and was appointed to the bench by former Gov. Bill Richardson.

New Mexico Attorney General Gary King, meanwhile, has told that state’s Supreme Court in a third court challenge that any attempt to prohibit same-sex couples from marrying is unconstitutional.

It was not immediately clear who, if anyone, would appeal either last week’s or Monday’s court rulings. The question is relevant because neither ruling creates a final, definitive ruling about state law — a ruling that only could come from the state’s Supreme Court.