The legalization and portability of guns has been a controversial topic in America, many massacres have been happening throughout our nation, and our citizens want to protect themselves with guns. There’s nothing wrong with protein in your Second Amendment right, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”. But now imagine teachers taking their second amendment right and bringing it to school in order to protect themselves and their students in case of any intruder. Teachers shouldn’t be able to carry any sort of firearm in a public school, many things could go wrong by letting a teacher carry a gun in school. There have been many protests in favor of letting teachers carry guns, but there have also been many protests against letting teachers carry guns. Every time there's some kind of shooting or massacre, the topic of letting certain people carry guns comes out. Some of these people are teachers. What makes you so sure that the next place of a massacre won’t be a school where there are kids, yet we have to think of the probabilities of letting a teacher carry a gun. What if a kid takes control of the firearm and his intent is to make some sort of harm to another student? In this essay, I will make you realize that letting an educator carry a firearm is not the right form of preventing any sort of harm to our students.
This paper will consist of ten different sources that will help you understand the mistake that we will be making if we let educators carry any sort of firearm in a school or around students. I will be discussing the negative effects of firearms on our students and the community around them. I will also be providing arguments for letting teachers carry firearms and arguments for not letting teachers carry firearms. If you believe that teachers should carry firearms, I will make you change your mind after you read all the evidence that I will be providing for you.
In recent years we have seen an increase in firearm purchases, you may ask yourself why? In these past years, we have seen an increase in shooting massacres throughout the United States. According to Everytown Research, there have been approximately 227 mass shootings in the United States in the past ten years, out of these 227 massacres, there have been 1,297 people who've been killed. All of these massacres make people think of different ways to protect themselves and their loved ones, one of these ways is to give a teacher a firearm which in all cases is not a good idea. The idea of giving an educator, such as a teacher, a firearm surged from school massacres. The most famous school massacre in the United States was the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. This massacre occurred on December 14, 2012, and tragically left 26 people dead, 20 of these people were kids. The occurrence of this massacre led to immediate action when it came to firearms. One of these proposals was letting teachers carry firearms. Unfortunately, this wasn’t successful and they denied teachers the right to carry guns.
Everyone had forgotten about if teachers should be allowed to carry weapons, but four years later another intense massacre occurred this time in a High School in Parkland, Florida, this shooting left 17 people dead. And again the proposition of letting teachers carry firearms came out. This time, they were looking toward the benefits and negatives if they let educators or staff carry weapons. For this to happen they need to see what could go wrong when letting a teacher have a gun in their waistband.
A police officer carrying a gun has a tremendous responsibility, they have to make sure that the firearm is out of the reach of any potential threat. Now imagine giving a firearm to a teacher or staff in a school environment, do we know for sure that this individual won’t panic or zone out in case there is a potential threat at their school campus? All these little things that we see as insignificant will have a major factor when it comes to your children. Irrelevant people will simply say to give a teacher a firearm and that’s it, our kids are safe. What they don’t see is all the pressure that is put on that teacher. If something goes wrong such as a student getting hold of the firearm and killing someone, we can all ensure that all the blame will go on the teachers because they were the ones who should've taken care of that firearm.
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Gun control has been going on in the U.S. for many years, not having sufficient gun control leads to massacres including school shootings, all this leads us to make a decision on whether we should give teachers firearms to protect their students. In an article written in 2019 by Lauren Farrar on gun control, the author stated: “What happens if a student gets ahold of a teacher’s gun, or if they accidentally shoot an innocent bystander”. And this is exactly what we should and will prevent because there simply shouldn’t be any firearms in a public place, especially a school where there are young students.
There are many obvious reasons why letting an educational instructor carry a firearm is not the right thing to do, that is not their job, their job is to educate students. The NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) stated: “Professional police officers hit their intended targets less than 20 percent of the time in training situations of an active shooter. Armed teachers will certainly have even lower accuracy rates”. This is most certainly an accurate statement, if a professional police officer who is trained and has multiple years of experience doesn’t have a high percentage in shooting a target what makes you think a teacher will have that ability? Even if teachers get the basic training in how to properly shoot a firearm, will they have the mentality when it comes to a real threat, shooting an actual human being? Maureen S. Rush, vice president for public safety and superintendent of the Police Department at the University of Pennsylvania, said: “You don’t want to have a gun that’s available to a student or another worker who may have mental health issues”. And this is exactly what we want to prevent, a gun in the hands of someone that could harm a student.
There are many other resources that the government can give to schools in order to keep them safe, not just giving a teacher a firearm. Giving a school a trained police officer will make the school way safer, you don’t have to worry about if he knows how to use a firearm as you will with a teacher. Police officers have the experience and the knowledge to handle any threat they face. If schools will simply have other methods of security, we could get rid of giving teachers a firearm. But it's not always an outsider that comes to a school in order to do harm, sometimes their student who commits the massacre. How do you think a teacher would handle the situation? This teacher has spent an entire year and a half of their day teaching this student. We have to be realistic, this teacher would’ve most likely panicked and not shot the kid. This is why teachers shouldn’t carry weapons, we should leave it to the professionals. There are also other methods of security, such as metal detectors and security guards.
Giving a teacher a firearm calls for extreme responsibility, which teachers don’t want to be part of. An article published by Education Week stated, “But putting guns in the hands of school staff is often met with resistance from educators, who say they don't want the responsibility of carrying and securing a firearm on top of their already demanding jobs”. Teachers don’t want to carry a firearm because they know the responsibility and stress that someone has whenever they carry a firearm, plus not only do they have a firearm, but they also are stressed they dedicate themselves to their students. The government shouldn’t decide whether to give a teacher a firearm or not, if they are going to be allowing teachers to carry firearms, the teacher should decide if they want to carry the responsibility of having a firearm.
There are many positive things in letting a teacher carry a firearm, such as having their own security in their own classroom, but this comes whether it is the firearm in the hands of someone who’s not trained to carry one. The right decision is simply abolishing firearms from all public schools and only letting professionals such as security guards or police officers carry them. And if the government is irrelevant and allows teachers to carry guns, they should go through a series of different steps to get approved. The first thing they would have to do is get a cytological exam to see whether they are mentally prepared to carry a firearm, the second thing they need to do is have the proper training to be able to properly and accurately shoot a firearm. Teachers should have the same training that police officers have if not they should have better training because they have students right next to them, and they should know how to act under pressure.
In conclusion, allowing teachers to carry firearms has its pros and cons, most of which are cons, and is why we should abolish carrying guns in any school in the U.S. We can’t allow risking the lives of our students, even the simplest mistake a teacher with a gun could lead to the death of an innocent student. Yes, allowing teachers to carry a firearm would benefit them in case of a school shooter, but there are always different resources we can use. Having more than one police officer and having motion detectors will boost the security of the school.
References
- Bucci, Steven. “Here's How School Security Should Be Improved in 4 Easy Steps”. The Heritage Foundation, www.heritage.org/education/commentary/heres-how-school-security-should-be-improved-4-easy-steps
- Chen, Grace. “Arming Public School Teachers with Guns: The Controversial Legislation”. Public School Review, 28 Jan. 2011, www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/arming-public-school-teachers-with-guns-the-controversial-legislation
- Farrar, Lauren. “Should Teachers Be Allowed to Carry Guns at School?”. KQED, 7 Nov. 2019, www.kqed.org/education/532863/should-teachers-be-allowed-to-carry-guns-at-school
- Hansen, Michael. “How to Make Schools Safe without Arming Teachers”. Brookings, Brookings, 1 Mar. 2018, www.brookings.edu/podcast-episode/how-to-make-schools-safe-without-arming-teachers
- Hartocollis, Anemona, and Jacey Fortin. “Should Teachers Carry Guns? Are Metal Detectors Helpful? What Experts Say”. The New York Times, 22 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/us/school-safety-mass-shootings.html
- Rieck, Dean. “Should Teachers Carry Guns in Classrooms?”. Buckeye Firearms Association, 19 Nov. 2018, www.buckeyefirearms.org/should-teachers-carry-guns-classrooms
- Staff, Education Week. “Should Teachers Carry Guns? The Debate, Explained”. Education Week, 2 Apr. 2020, www.edweek.org/ew/issues/arming-teachers/
- Wheeling, Kate. “Should Teachers Carry Guns? In Many Rural School Districts, They Already Are”. Pacific Standard, 12 Feb. 2019, http://psmag.com/education/should-teachers-carry-guns-in-many-rural-school-districts-they-already-are
- “Guns in Schools”. Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, http://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/guns-in-public/guns-in-schools/
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