How not to reduce school shootings

Associated Press: There’s been no real reduction in the number of U.S. school shootings despite increased security put in place after the rampage at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012.

In Pennsylvania and New Mexico, Colorado and Tennessee, and elsewhere, gunfire has echoed through school hallways, and killed students or their teachers in some cases. “Lockdown” is now part of the school vocabulary.

An Associated Press analysis finds that there have been at least 11 school shootings this academic year alone, in addition to other cases of gun violence, in school parking lots and elsewhere on campus, when classes were not in session…

Experts say the rate of school shootings is statistically unchanged since the mid- to late-1990s, yet still remains troubling.

When you’ve tried everything but making it harder for kids to get their hands on guns and the number of school shootings remains unchanged, maybe it’s time to go with the one thing you haven’t tried. Maybe we should try living in a society that isn’t so saturated with firearms that kids have no problem at all finding one if they want one.

Maybe it’s time to stop being so fucking stupid.

Insurer won’t cover Kansas schools that allow guns

Talking Points Memo: An insurance company based in Iowa has refused to renew coverage for Kansas schools that permit teachers and staff to carry concealed firearms on campus, the Des Moines Register reported on Sunday.

EMC Insurance Cos. made the decision after Kansas enacted a new law to allow the concealed guns on campus. The company told the newspaper the decision was based on financial policy, not politics. The company reportedly covers 85 to 90 percent of Kansas school districts.

"We’ve been writing school business for almost 40 years, and one of the underwriting guidelines we follow for schools is that any on-site armed security should be provided by uniformed, qualified law enforcement officers,” Mick Lovell, EMC’s vice president for business development, told the Des Moines Register. “Our guidelines have not recently changed.”

It strikes me that insurance companies often find themselves on the opposite side of issues from supposedly “business-friendly" Republicans. Insurerers are raising the alarm about climate change, for example. There’s a reason for that: insurers make their money by accurately assessing reality. “Insurance is heavily dependent on scientific thought," Frank Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America, told the New York Times recently. “It is not as amenable to politicized scientific thought." So if something is a really stupid idea — like, say, encouraging people to carry loaded guns in schools — it’s not going to be real popular with the insurance industry. In this case, the science is simple math — every time someone is exposed to a loaded gun, their odds of being injured or killed go up, not down.

And EMC’s stance seems to be having an effect. Despite a new law allowing concealed weapons in schools, no Kansas school district has adopted a concealed-carry policy. It’s one thing to pass these idiotic laws, but it’s another to get them to actually work in the real world.

[image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com]