Guns will increase violence not end it
On Feb. 25 a potential nightmare took one step closer to becoming a reality.The Republican majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by the oft-controversial Sen. Karen Johnson, has pushed along a bill that would allow students on
college campuses to bring guns to school.
Online classes anyone?
Imagine sitting in class trying to learn calculus, difficult in its own right, knowing that the student sitting next to you is packing heat. Think you would have a difficult time concentrating?
Maybe not, but it is very difficult to remember a situation where increasing the amount of firearms in a public school setting saved lives.
One can dream up a hero scenario, where a brave gun-bearing student comes to the rescue of his or her fellow classmates by striking down a psycho -killer before they can wreak havoc on the entire school.
More likely though, these students who are without proper training and have likely never been put into a combat situation will not know how to react in a volatile environment.
Public safety directors from across the state have echoed the concern that having multiple students firing guns in various directions will make it hard for officers arriving on the scene to identify the perpetrator.
While this is a legitimate concern, it is still not the most pressing issue posed by putting firearms into the hands of college students.
Guns are the great equalizer and kids don’t fight the way they used to.
Now when students who are getting picked on are brandishing handguns all bets are out the window.
Guns will not be the answer to eliminating the threat of a crazed killer, they will only create more tragic instances of violence.
Instead of arming students and teachers alike on college campuses, Johnson and her band of gun-loving legislators should help provide colleges the resources necessary to help identify those who threaten school safety.
Every school shooter in America over the last decade has presented a vast amount of warning signs of being a threat to public safety and the main atrocity is that they were able to obtain guns at all.
Seung-Hui Cho, the shooter behind the Virginia Tech massacre, was adjudicated as mentally unsound, but because of a gap in Virginia’s reporting laws was able to purchase handguns.
There needs to be more done to keep guns out of the hands of those who are unstable, not arming young students with firearms that could potentially lead to more death.
This is not the Wild West and a shootout on campus will only magnify tragedy.
