Earlier today, I read an article on yet another school shooting. Honestly, I’m not at all surprised to see this in the news, which isn’t a good thing. It saddens me to see that more and more children are dying because of school shootings, and it's fazing our society less and less with every incident.
School shootings have become like tallies. We see a story of a shooting and immediately add it to our mental lists of all the other times. Columbine, Sandy Hook, Lake Worth, Parkland, others and our newest shooting, Santa Clarita. When reading this article, it scared me knowing that after bringing a gun to school and shooting classmates of his, the shooter shot himself in the head.
What bothers me the most, though, is how the government sees these shootings and just sits there waiting for the next one to happen before doing anything to help the situation. They’re watching countless students die and won’t do anything to fix the problem.
So many ideas have been passed around to help. Improving gun regulations, for example, which I believe would help improve the situation but wouldn’t solve the problem completely, having teachers keep guns on them in case of emergency and banning guns from citizens completely are all ideas that have been thrown around. Even though all these ideas have been discussed and brought up, the government has yet to decide what they will do about this major national issue. In the meantime, more children and even school staff will die while those up in Washington D.C., possibly, contemplate what the nation should do. How many more children have to die before this situation is seriously taken into account?
I understand your frustration. It's sometimes scary to be in a school every day.
ReplyDeleteThis is indeed a complex issue that many in the nation are split on how to solve. School shootings are often perpetrated by white male adolescents who have significant mental health issues and/or experience abuse at home or in school. Mental health has only recently started to be taken seriously, and while some advocate improving the support system for these troubled kids at school, this will be a gradual process that will be both difficult and with uncertain results. On the other hand, gun control measures that have been suggested will have much more immediate effects, but they will affect the general population as well, and gun culture is a big thing in America. I am just as displeased as you are that these shootings will likely only continue while politicians debate, but unfortunately, in such a charged climate, it will take a long time for conclusive measures to be instituted that will hopefully mitigate and prevent these shootings from happening.
ReplyDeleteSchool shootings are horrific incidents, we can all agree on that. The problem then becomes how in the world will we deal with them. You have mentioned different ideas that have been thrown around but it seems like there have been counters to every one. Ban arms or certain arms from American citizens: "what about my second amendment right?" "how will you enforce such a policy?" Give teachers firearms: "do we really want a pistol in a teacher's desk drawer or anywhere in a class room?" "how will students and faculty feel about having a large number of guns in the school?" It seems like every proposal is shot down. So that leaves the other option: do nothing and expect the same shootings to occur year after year. I completely agree with you that these shootings are awful and there needs to be some kind of change. I do not, however, see a change coming in the near future. And until we get a congress that is willing to work together to develop some kind of solution, it seems like the faulty third option is the one that the U.S. is going to stick with for some time.
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