The free market rejects GOP gun policies
by David Atkins
When incompatible ideologies collide:
As more schools consider arming their employees, some districts are encountering a daunting economic hurdle: insurance carriers threatening to raise their premiums or revoke coverage entirely.
During legislative sessions this year, seven states enacted laws permitting teachers or administrators to carry guns in schools. Three of the measures — in Kansas, South Dakota and Tennessee — took effect last week.
But already, EMC Insurance Companies, the liability insurance provider for about 90 percent of Kansas school districts, has sent a letter to its agents saying that schools permitting employees to carry concealed handguns would be declined coverage.
“We are making this underwriting decision simply to protect the financial security of our company,” the letter said.
In northeast Indiana, Douglas A. Harp, the sheriff of Noble County, offered to deputize teachers to carry handguns in their classrooms less than a week after 26 children and educators were killed in a school shooting in Newtown, Conn. A community member donated $27,000 in firearms to the effort. School officials from three districts seemed ready to sign off. But the plan fell apart after an insurer refused to provide workers’ compensation to schools with gun-carrying staff members.
It's almost as if the people who make their living deciding what is safe and what is dangerous, think that turning schools into the OK Corral might be a reckless, crazy idea. The only question that remains is whether Republicans will abide by the will of the invisible hand, or insist on ideological purity?
That should be fun to watch.
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