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Discussion on teachers carrying guns
Discussion on teachers carrying guns
Preventing school shootings
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Arm The Teachers
If you hear gun bullets close to you, how would you feel? School shootings are becoming a huge issue. Making schools safer is all our responsibilities in order to get our education. The recent Florida school shooting was a disaster Killing 17 students.(Santoni, Matthew) Arguments on how we should stop these student attacks arose. For example arguments like veterans and more security but what I think the best solution is to have trained armed teachers. I will tell you the pros and cons about having armed teachers.
Teachers should be armed on school grounds. Having a free gun zone is an easy target building for shooters. (Santoni, Matthew) So teachers having guns would improve the safety for students and it will become a non-free
Michael Eisinger an eighth grade science teacher says, "If a gunman is going to cause violence in a school, they are going to have the element of surprise," "My guess is that they would still be able to shoot teachers, students or whoever else they wanted before some sort of coherent response materialized. (Huffington Post) Arming teachers isn’t going to solve the problem. We still will end up with deaths in schools. The gunman may decide to take the professors gun as well, which will result in the enemy having another harmful weapon.
One of the biggest debates in education is how to respond to gun violence in schools. According to BBC, “There were 64 school shootings in 2015” (BBC). One response to the rise in gun violence in schools is to arm teachers. Even our President has mentioned “giving a bonus” (Davis 2) to teachers that The fact that the idea of arming teachers is even being discussed is disappointing. Bringing more guns into a school is not the answer to gun violence. Most people that defend the idea that guns will “help” keep schools safe have basically three points: (1) teachers will be trained in gun safety, (2) it helps deter potential school shooters, and (3) it will make the students feel more safe. Even though there is some truth to those points, I think that the cons of arming teachers vastly outweigh the pros of arming teachers.
When I was in elementary school, I never feared of having an intruder enter my school, nor did we ever prepare for a tragedy such as that. It was not until recent years that school shootings became more of a common and feared issue. As a future educator, it is a terrifying thought that my classroom could be invaded and it would be my responsibility to protect my students. Even with the number of school shootings rising every day, our government has yet to make it legal for teachers in every state and every school to carry a gun in the classroom. This essay will review and analyze the opinions of multiple scholars and their input on the issue of teachers carrying weapons in the classroom and protecting the safety of students. It will discuss
Everyone knows that parents’ first worry is the safety of their children. With the increase of violence in schools, parents have started to wonder if their children are really safe in the school setting. Shootings like Sandy Hook and Columbine left parents, administrators, and educators feeling the need to be proactive towards children’s safety. Reacting to situations like these is not good enough when children’s lives are on the line. Administration has started to brainstorm different ways to help insure the protection of their students. The idea of having teachers carry concealed weapons has been on the front burner for quite some time. As a result of this extreme idea, insurance companies have started to increase or even cancel policies with schools that have armed teachers because of the high risk they are putting themselves at. Parents and administrators also worry about the idea of children getting their hands on one of the teachers’ weapons and injuring themselves or other students. Because this idea seems quite extreme, I believe there are other alternatives that are less dramatic and more positively out looked, such as having armed security guards in schools.
One reason teachers should not be able to carry guns because guns are currently illegal in schools; Guns are illegal because they are dangerous. The Gun Free School Zone Act (GFSZA) is a federal law that was accepted in the United States in 1990. According to the GFSZA, “It shall be unlawful for any individual knowingly to possess a firearm at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone.” In order for teachers to carry guns, we would have to discard this law. Also, the school board would have to create a new policy, allowing teachers to carry guns. Adjusting the rules would be time consuming and confusing. Changing the GFSZA would make students tense and distract children from learning. Citizens from CNN Politics say, “72.4% of educators said they would be unlikely to bring a firearm to school if allowed to do so.” This data shows that the majority of teachers do not even want possession of a gun in the classroom. School officers have the right to carry guns, teachers should just focus on education. Not only does it create a huge responsibility, there would also need to be a large financial investment to supply guns for every school. This money would be hard to come up with, and not everyone is in favor of sacrificing money for firearms.
My recently divorced History professor seemed to be in an extremely foul mood one dreary Monday morning. Every move and comment the class made seemed to irritate him more and more. Everyone in the room stopped moving and talking in concern for him, everyone except Josh, who is our class clown. He made the decision to make a comment to our teacher that any other day would have broken the ice and class would have resumed. For some reason, on this particular day it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My professor looked up from the floor and in a matter of seconds had removed a gun provided to him by the school for protection, from under his jacket, and then shot Josh before anyone could do anything to stop him. Although, this is a story of fiction and never really happened, it could become a headline on the six o’clock news if David McGrath gets his way. He is the author of an article that supports teachers being given loaded weapons for protection in the classroom. To me providing teachers with weapons is a drastic move because the epidemic of school shootings is not as big as McGrath makes it out to be and there are many more sensible solutions that have yet to be explored.
School shootings have the ability to be stopped. They are largely one of the worst repeated tragedies our great nation has endured, and they should be stopped today! No terrorist wants to go out in his/her infamous blaze of “glory” by failing in their attempt. Arming educators has the capability to end school shootings in this decade. “And I haven’t even touched upon the pure deterrent effect of a potential mass murderer having to worry one of his targets might be armed” (Concealed Weapons). This quote presents the very real possibility that just if teachers are armed, future shooters will reconsider and possibly not attempt it at all. Providing this overwhelming deterrent in the foremost thoughts of a would be murderer emphasizes the positive effect concealed weapons operated by teachers could
However, schools could just prevent that my hiring a security guard or have one police officer on campus. This way the parents will be assured that their children are in a safe place and teachers also don’t have to worry about carrying a weapon with them all the time. By provoking teachers to carry concealed weapons, it will also save money for the schools because the teachers won’t have to take special lessons on the weapons and learn how to use
Gun control is a controversial issue already; now the question society is pondering is: should teachers be allowed to carry guns to school? Like most instances there are some pros and some cons that could occur if allowed. Although some instances occur where students need protections in schools, teachers are not the ones who need to carry weapons; however, more security and other measures need to be enforced.
Schools were once traditionally viewed as a safe place for children, teenagers, and adults. The educational setting coupled with community involvement gave no reason for violence to occur in schools. As years progressed, the occurrence of violence in school shocked communities across the nation, calling for state lawmakers and school districts to produce a solution to prevent these acts from occurring. Events such as the 1999 school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado urged schools throughout the U.S. to increase their security measures with more stringent policies and procedures while spending millions of dollars on security equipment from security cameras to metal detectors. While schools increase their safety measures to prevent another major incident from occurring, such as a suspect with a firearm (active shooter) from entering school property, some of the security measures have not been effective. An example is the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, where the shooter was able to bypass a locked door which is one of the security measures the school had in place, making personnel visiting the school required to request entrance into the building (Barron).
With all of the school shootings that have happened lately I’m sure that most parents would want their child protected at any cost. As of January 2014, there had been an average of one school shooting every other school day. What are the schools doing to protect our kids when they are away from us at school? What more can be done to protect them? We are not able to be with our kids while they are at school, but we surely want to know that if a gunman does try to enter the school, there are measures in place to protect them. Should teachers be allowed to carry a handgun while in class? In my position argument I will discuss reasons that I feel that teachers should be able to carry while in class.
“Since 2013, there have been over 200 school shootings in America, an average of nearly one a week”(Everytown Research). How safe is our family members at school? Allowing teachers and staff to carry guns could lower that number. Some people may disagree with it, saying that it would be teaching students violence. School shootings would be a thing of the past if staff were armed.
What would you do if you were in a school shooting? Students at schools fear the worst after what happened in Florida. We should not enact more gun control laws as it will probably make it worse and people will find ways around the laws. Gun control laws should not be enacted, because shootings would most likely still occur even if enact more laws, and people have ways of obtaining more weapons, and the crime rate would still exist and may even gradually increase. We should not enact more gun control laws because shootings would most likely still occur.
protect children in school every day in school and should we allow gun in school.
Out of the 102 teachers that responded, 62% of those teachers said that they were for teaching gun safety in schools. Of those 62%, about 54% say that they feel that police or trained military personnel should teach these safety classes in the schools.