Insurers don't want armed school staff

These decisions aren't like a company combing the fine print for a reason to reject your claim for reimbursement. Insurance companies want to find a way to sell a policy.

If the only objective is to increase the odds of stopping a mass shooting at an Iowa school, then, by all means, give school employees guns and train them. They'd have a chance to act more quickly and decisively than a single school resource officer or off-site emergency responders.

But that's not the only objective. Families want students to be safe all the other days when there's no massacre to be thwarted, too. EMC Insurance of Des Moines recognized this, albeit from a business perspective, and has thwarted the plans of district leaders in Spirit Lake and Cherokee to begin arming some of the faculty. The districts' school boards said EMC refused to insure them unless they reversed the policies.

Republicans in the Iowa Legislature tried to get out in front of the question of coverage for schools that bring weapons to their campuses, but a measure to limit insurers' discretion — just one part of a broad gun-rights bill — stalled this spring.

These developments underscore one older problem and help to illuminate a newer one.

'Good guy with a gun' leaves out a lot of tragic risks

The old problem is an old argument, often articulated: "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." There have been well-publicized incidents of civilian heroes mitigating tragedy, including at an Indiana mall last summer. But this idea is compelling only at the moment when the "bad guy" is about to start taking lives.

At all other times, the presence of extra firearms in a school — in the care of staff members whose training was almost surely far less extensive than a police officer's, in the vicinity of dozens or hundreds of children of widely variable maturity — simply increases the probability of a different kind of tragedy. A curious kindergartner finds and discharges a sloppily secured gun. A school employee misreads the danger in a fight between students and maims or kills one. A suicidal teenager doesn't have a gun at home, but figures out how to get to it at school.

Every indication is that Spirit Lake and Cherokee developed thoughtful policies with stringent safeguards to prevent those scenarios. But no safeguard changes the addition of deadly weapons to the school building.

Professional actuaries judge risks for a living. EMC apparently told the districts that its actuaries' homework didn't support issuing school policies with these risks present.

Iowa Legislature shouldn't try to force insurers to provide coverage

In swoops the Iowa Legislature. State Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Denison, told the Storm Lake Times Pilot recently that one reason the bill to compel insurance coverage didn't advance in the Senate is that, to his credit, he was trying to negotiate a resolution with EMC instead of making "a business do something it doesn't want to do."

But other lawmakers have strongly suggested that the goal of letting districts bring in guns is worth threatening insurers through state law.

EMC has been at this for a decade; it refused to insure Kansas schools that wanted to arm staff in 2013. Schultz, referring to insurers' scrutiny of staff-with-guns policies, said at a committee meeting in March, "I think that is based on fear and distrust."

It's worth remembering that these decisions aren't like a company combing the fine print for a reason to reject your claim for reimbursement. Insurance companies want to find a way to sell a policy

Instead of inserting themselves into these business judgments, lawmakers would do better to support and supplement the work of the Governor's School Safety Bureau, which focuses more on hardening buildings, and on "red flag" laws and other measures to make it harder for dangerous people to obtain deadly weapons.

Another trend in school insurance deserves more attention

Or lawmakers could start work on another insurance issue that affects all Iowa schools: rising premiums and little competition.

What Spirit Lake and Cherokee discovered, a ccording to local news reports, was that they did not have feasible choices outside of EMC. In addition, Iowa schools in general are no exception from a national trend of rapidly increasing premiums in education. According to Ed Week, a 900-student Oklahoma district has seen its per-pupil rate for liability coverage go up over 320% in just four years. Double-digit year-over-year increases are common elsewhere, and rural districts often have it worst, the magazine reported.

The reasons for the increases are varied, although one of them is more frequent damage from extreme weather linked to climate change. Gaining a better understanding of the insurance market for schools would be well worth the time of Iowa legislators and their staffs in the coming months.

This is about assessing risk, not an anti-gun agenda

After two teenagers were shot dead in January at a Des Moines alternative school program, Dave Funk of the Iowa Firearms Coalition called for more armed staff in Iowa schools.

"It's long overdue for Iowa's education officials to put their personal politics aside and allow those who love their students enough to protect them to do so," Funk said.

Like the "good guy with a gun" mantra, this spin makes huge assumptions about the competence of armed personnel to defuse a crisis or to avoid inadvertently creating one.

We don't think EMC's judgment is about personal politics. Lawmakers should leave insurance companies alone on this issue. And school boards should stop trying to put more guns in schools.

This editorial appeared in the des Moines register on July 9. It was distributed by the associated Press.