Holly Terrell
Professor Pearce
ENGL 1301
Nov 29th, 2018
Keep Our Kids Safe
On May 18th, 2018, ten innocent people lost their lives in Santa Fe, Texas due to a mass shooter. This shooting was the second deadliest shooting in the United States in 2018. This mass shooter stated that he meant to kill the classmates he shot and wanted to spare the students he liked so he could “have his story told”(Washington Post 1). Another shooting that has had an impact on the United States was the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in 2012. During this shooting, 26 people were shot and killed. The United States has seen a major increase in school shootings since 2000. The United States needs to find a good solution to eliminate more school shootings. I personally do not have a clear position on whether teachers should be armed with guns in schools.
Gun laws are becoming more of an issue in the United States in the past few years. Some people believe we should have a more strict gun law, while others in the United States believe the laws should stay the same because they are concerned with their safety. The second amendment states “ A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”(Second Amendment 1). This means that people are legally allowed to have a weapon if they are of age. In the most states in the United States, almost anyone can purchase a weapon as long as they have a permit and are of age. People who want to kill people most often do so with guns. President Trump believes we should arm teachers with guns to prevent school shootings. In a press conference, Trump stated “An attack has lasted, on average, about three minutes. It takes five to eight minutes for responders, for the police to come in, so the attack is over. If you had a teacher who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly”(Smith 1). Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the newly created Federal Commission on School Safety, which she chairs, is working daily "to identify proven ways to prevent violence and keep our students safe at school”(Diamond & Tatum 1). One of these ways includes arming teachers with a weapon. Arming teachers with weapons may sound like a great idea to some but it is not.
During a shooting, a teacher’s adrenaline will rise which can cause impulse decisions as well as the teacher being identified as a shooter when police get involved. Having a gun on a school campus also runs the risk of a student trying to take the gun from the teacher, it could also cause school break-ins to increase. “Arming a teacher with a weapon may also change the way students, and parents see the teacher. A teachers self-esteem may also be affected by how well they can handle a weapon. Some teachers may even try to demonstrate how skillfully they can use a gun. Doing this can the lives of students and other teachers who are in the building. In addition, there is an assumption that the training teachers receive in using a gun will not decay over time. Years after the teacher has been trained to use a gun, will the teacher still react correctly in a few seconds when an emergency situation arises?”(Teachers 1). Most people who carry a gun will never need to use it for self-protection over their lifetime. The dangers of doing so far outweigh the potential advantages. The pros of arming teachers with guns include scaring away a possible shooter, knowing that there are armed teachers on campus will let the shooters know that there will be someone at the school to stop them almost immediately. Also having weapons already on a school’s campus means that there will be a faster response to the shooter and not having to wait for the police to arrive to take action. Most of the time it takes about five to ten minutes for police to get to a scene, by this time the shooter will already have done a lot of damage to the school, and the people inside it. The school campus should choose only certain teachers to have weapons, they should also be required to take an extensive training course to learn how to use the weapon for the safety of others. The chosen teachers of the weapons should be kept a secret to avoid students being afraid and knowing where to get a weapon from on school campus. If the school chooses certain teachers to have a weapon on campus, they could inform the local police officers and that way if there was a shooter and the teacher was taking action, they would not be mistaken for the shooter. Another solution to help lessen school shootings is hiring a security guard or a police officer to stay on campus all day. This would be helpful because everyone would know that the police are there to help in case something goes wrong and there would not be any worries about training teachers to use the weapons. Also, students would feel safer knowing someone is on campus for emergency situations.
Maybe the issue with an increase in school shootings is not with guns but with the shooter’s mental health. Most of the time the motives for a school shooting is because the shooter was once a student at the school and was bullied by fellow students or because the person had a mental health issue. School officials and teachers should be required to know signs to look for if a child is being bullied. They should be able to notice a change in the child’s attitude as well as maybe a decline in their school work. There is no reason for a child to be bullied on a school campus and it goes unnoticed. A student should be able to go to school and not have to worry about being bullied. A student who is bullied will later have behavior, mental as well as academic problems. As a student who was bullied, their problems become worse as they grow up. Usually, the student will not just snap and become a mass shooter, but they will let their emotions grow and plan out revenge for the people who bullied them. There are three types of distinct shooters, they are the traumatized shooter, the psychopathic shooter, and the psychotic shooter (School Shooters 1). The traumatized shooter is one who was bullied in school and wants to get rid of rage and depression. A student’s mental health is also critical and could play a role in the increase of school shootings. People with mental health issues have the same access to weapons as anyone else in the United States. This could be a problem because they most likely are not trained to use the weapon properly as well as they are known to have random spurts of rage with an unknown reason. The United States needs to have a better, more safe way for evaluating people who are buying weapons. Maybe the U.S. could have a more in-depth test that is required to take before being able to purchase weapons. The test should have questions that help determine the mental health of the person buying the weapon as well as, their ability to use the weapon properly. Another requirement should be having to take a training course. The course should be specific to the person’s weapons, and they should have to pass the course and the test. With no doubt that they will use it for good and not evil such as school shootings.
With an increase in school shootings, it has become more and more clear that something needs to be done to decrease the deaths of innocent people. The safety of America’s children should be a top priority. No student should have to go to school and be worried if they are going to die in a place that should be safe. With stricter laws about who can and cannot have a weapon, the number of innocent children dying in schools will decrease greatly. I personally cannot decide if teachers on school campuses should or should not be armed with weapons. There are positives and negatives that are affecting my decision, and I am sure it is affecting a lot of people as well. With the help of the United States government, they should help us decide on what to do to protect children from school shootings. In the coming years, I hope our president finds a solution that satisfies everyone’s needs and decreases the number of school shootings drastically.
Works Cited
Diamond, Jeremy, and Sophie Tatum. “Trump on Texas School Shooting: 'This Has Been Going on Too Long in Our Country'.” CNN, Cable News Network, 18 May 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/05/18/politics/trump-texas-school-shooting/index.html.
Martin, Brittney, et al. “'Overwhelming Grief': 8 Students, 2 Teachers Killed in Texas High School Shooting.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 20 May 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/05/19/ten-killed-in-texas-high-school-shooting-were-mostly-students-police-say-suspect-confessed/?utm_term=.c9a7e56b1db1.
“Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting: What Happened?” CNN, Cable News Network, www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/12/us/sandy-hook-timeline/index.html.
“School Shooters – Inside Their Minds.” Inside the Mind of School Shooters – Theory to Practice | Lehigh University College of Education, ed.lehigh.edu/theory-to-practice/2013/school-shooters.
“Second Amendment – Kids | Laws.com.” Kids, kids.laws.com/second-amendment.
Smith, David. “Trump's Solution to School Shootings: Arm Teachers with Guns.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 Feb. 2018, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/21/donald-trump-solution-to-school-shootings-arm-teachers-with-guns.
“US School Shootings: Causes And Solutions.” ValueWalk, ValueWalk, 24 Jan. 2018, www.valuewalk.com/2018/01/us-school-shootings-causes-solutions/.