Our View | Students face threat of possible shootings

In the past two weeks, school shootings have happened in a Colorado K-12 school and at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. With the growing number of school shootings, how can we keep track of these tragedies? 

According to the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, 94 incidents of school gun violence were documented in 2018, an increase of nearly 60 percent over the previous record high in 2016.

State legislatures in Florida, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas have proposed one solution. These states propose to put more guns into schools by having teachers carry them. Teachers will be trained to carry guns and make shooting decisions when necessary, but this is contrary to the message of anti-school violence. 

Although a March 2018 Gallup poll found that 73 percent of U.S. teachers do not want to carry guns in schools, these states now have guns in schools with the intention to prevent school shootings. Putting more guns into schools increases chances of an accidental shooting or the ability for a student to obtain a gun from an educator. How can adding guns solve this problem?

When the Bill of Rights was signed, the Second Amendment called for “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.” Students and schools were never in mind when this was written, so why does this justify putting more guns into schools when guns are the sole problem? 

Thoughts and prayers don’t work anymore for the students who are killed in school shootings. There is a generation of students who are coming up through schools across the United States who will be in fear of guns entering their school through an intruder, and also from the ones that might be carried by educators. 

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