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Causes and effects of school shootings
Arguments for arming teachers essay
School shootings
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Arming teachers is believed to make schools safer. Each year 142 school shootings take place, but only in the U.S.. On 5/3/17, 45 school shootings took place in the U.S. in the year 2017. That’s about one third, only in four months, which gives more time for shootings to happen. In these shootings, many people die, and many others wish they were stopped. Many states in the U.S. have already armed their teachers so they can eliminate the threat of school shootings. Since August 2014, schools in Missouri have been taking teachers in the summer for training. They hold drills at the schools and give lessons at a shooting range. After the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, Martin, who was in law enforcement for more than a decade, created
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.
In America there is 89 firearms per 100 people (Moore) so it is safe to say most people will come in contact with a firearm in their life time. But when you do will you know how to handle the situation? Guns can be deadly when abused and used incorrectly. There is a way to reduce the unnecessary deaths. Firearm safety is the important piece in reducing the deaths and firearm abuse and it should be made mandatory in schools.
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.
Arming Teachers In the last ten years, there have been eighteen school shootings in the United States. Elementary Schools, Middle Schools, High Schools, and Universities are all included. From these eighteen shootings there were one hundred and one students and faculty members killed, the majority being students. In the average classroom, there are at least fifteen students to one teacher. One adult is tasked with insuring the safety of fifteen to thirty students.
It is a sad time in American history when one can easily recount recent school shootings in their own area. This ease stems from a sharp increase in the number of firearms brought into elementary and middle schools across the country, with an intense focus on the issue beginning after the shooting of 20 children from Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. Most school shooters are male, white, and often upper middle class. They are also more, often than not, under some type of mental stress that is causing them to create this type of violence in our communities. In fact, many school shooters are never suspected of doing any harm to their peers and teachers until it is much too late.
In “Vulnerable Schools Need Protection: Guns, Training For Teachers may be the answer”, published in a 2008 edition of the Chicago Tribune, David McGrath argues that some teachers should be allowed to carry a concealed weapon for protection. First, McGrath states that if a random psychotic gunman were searching for someplace to attack, his classroom would make an easy target. He feels that if he was trained and armed, his class would not be trapped without a chance of survival because he would be able to defend against the gunman. Sec...
School shootings are still happening and we have to put a stop to it. We need to have these teachers prepared and ready to fight. Students to deserve to have their lives out to rest knowing something could have been done that’s why we need to have these teachers armed. This is a cold world if someone enters a school with a weapon teachers need to have their weapon ready too for the sack of their children. A school is a fun place to learn but to also keep safe. This is why teachers should be armed.
School shootings have occurred countless amount of time in the 21st century and will continue to occur. This is a crime that has been taken lightly for so many years and just now has been taken seriously. At first they were on awareness but not taken as serious as they are now. Yes they would try to be prevented but now almost every school in America is trying everything to not let one happen in their school. The drastic measures that schools have gone through has changed the way kids go to school and how teachers do their jobs. Schools have changed rules and regulations just so that the children will be safe and it still does not assure their safety but the laws passed and things done have prevented and helped.
Although most security measures passively make schools safer, it is not nearly enough to prevent an individual who intends on creating mass violence from completing his or her task. State representatives, national organizations, school staff, and parents need to come together to figure out the most reliable ways to prevent an active shooter situation from occurring in their schools. One solution that has been active is many schools have partnered with local law enforcement agencies to provide a police officers to patrol school grounds....
Throughout the years of education, kids go to school to get an education, to hang with friends, to get excise, and many other things. America should have armed officers in in public schools. Since kids are spending a majority of their time throughout the day and year at school, they should feel safe in that environment. That can soon change with school security falling behind with this current growth of school shooting. Schools shootings have begun occurring more often in the United States from elementary schools all the way up to colleges. How should school systems fix this problem? One solution that could be the most effective is having multiple armed officers in schools. Let’s begin with some major school shootings that were lacking armed officers, when the resource officer successfully stopped a potential shooting, and reasons why we should have an armed officer.
School shootings can have countless causes, from a child getting bullied to the mentally disturbed. However, there are ways to avoid them. Some say teachers should be armed and others say gun control laws should be strengthened. There is a multitude of ideas that need to be considered before such influential decisions are made.
Teachers play a very important role in our kid’s lives on a daily basis. Not only are they there as educators, but they are also there as protectors as well, especially for our younger students. They are not only there to watch over them and make sure that they get home safely, but they are there to protect them from any harm, including a gunman. If a gunman were to enter the school and some if not all of the teachers were licensed to carry, he could be stopped before harming or even killing several people, including our children.
That is why Rebekah Elliott’s article “The Real School Safety Debate: Why Legislative Responses Should Focus on Schools and Not on Guns” would be valuable to include. Elliot writes that to properly provide safety into schools is to put more funding into higher security and individual school safety programs. Like many writers, she agrees that the Sandy Hook incident shifted America’s views on the second amendment but she believes that having armed teachers could be a safety risk in itself. Her argument is that although it would be more cost efficient to arm teachers than to hire more security, it could increase the liability for negligence if there was a result in injuring a student (2015
Allowing teachers to carry guns could help lower school shootings. “While some believe tighter gun controls are the answer, others believe the best solution comes in giving more people — like teachers and administrators — more training and more access to firearms that can save lives as well as take them away” (Evensen guns and teachers). “Our organization