"We heard everything over the intercom, though it was muffled because our closet door was closed, we just waited in the closet, saying The Lord's Prayer out loud over and over again, and praying for all staff members and the children." Shari Thornberg, principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School, recalls the Friday morning in which 20 of her students and 6 of her faculty members were murdered in a mere 10 minutes (Stoller).  Few people can ignore the severity of a school massacre in which innocent children are killed in a place where parents send their kids to receive an education. In America, a parent of a child or adolescent should not have to worry about their child being murdered in a place of learning. Pubic and School shootings may never be completely eliminated, however with the right proactive steps, the severity and likeliness could be seriously diminished. 

Throughout the last few decades’ public safety in America has been a major issue. Terrorism, hate crime, and unordinary motives have been the cause of mass homicide in places that are not expected or acceptable for such catastrophes.  People have debated for years about what is the best way to do this and still no conclusion has been reached. The left calls for gun free zones, while the right calls for more guns. It is a never ending debate that will most likely be experimented with for years to come. There are two distinct different views on the topic of gun control. The first believes that guns undermine liberty and increase violence. America is built of the idea of freedom to its citizens. Many people believe that citizens owning guns undermines that freedom. Firmin DeBrabander says, “Guns pose a monumental challenge to freedom, and particular, the liberty that is the hallmark of any democracy worthy of the name — that is, freedom of speech. Guns do communicate, after all, but in a way that is contrary to free speech aspirations.” This ideology pertains to the belief that someone with a gun would not be afraid to threaten someone that would challenge his verbal beliefs. DeBrabander believes that “free speech and expression can only exist with the knowledge that non-violence will be the response” and guns challenge this idea (Moosa). Many gun control advocates believe that by allowing easier access to guns will lead the way to more violence. 

The second stance on gun control, involves increasing availability to guns and sided with the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. One of the most popular arguments that arises from this side states that outlawing guns would not actually remove guns from our country. Criminals, by definition, would still have guns, the only thing that would change is that law-abiding citizens would not have guns. The result, inquires that “good people” or law-abiding citizens are now at a disadvantage to protecting themselves against “bad guys” or criminals, that regardless of the law, will always have guns. Outlawing guns would, in default, create a lot more criminals in America as well. This is because, just by having a gun one would be considered, by definition, a criminal. Consider the consequences of having a world in which only “bad guys” had guns. “A world without guns is one in which the most aggressive men can do more or less anything they want. It is a world in which a man with a knife can rape and murder a woman in the presence of a dozen witnesses, and none will find the courage to intervene,” Sam Harris describes. In this situation a gun could be used to intervene (Moosa).

The Second Amendment, in the eyes of many is one of the most important rights detailed in the Constitution. The Second Amendment states that “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.” In other words, this written right allows American citizens to own and carry guns. The importance of this right lies in the founding father’s intent. They added this right to the constitution “to function as a citizen check against overreach in the event that the government started to take away civil rights guaranteed in the Constitution” (Gosar). The Second Amendment is a simple but crucial addition to the constitution in the fact that it insures citizen’s ability to keep the government in check, when it becomes too powerful. By surrounding American Citizen’s right to own guns, the door is open to allowing complete government despotism a great chance at reality (Moosa). 

Clearly there are differences of opinion on the topic of gun control. However, in the late arise of more frequent public shooting and acts of terrorism, it is becoming more and more important to figure out a solution to protecting our citizens. More specifically, a certain group stands out over the rest. Child safety, in public schools, has become a serious national concern after recent attacks. The topic of gun control seriously affects this safety and so an important question arises out of this debate. Would more harm or benefit come from training and arming certain teachers in schools? 

School massacres such as the ones at Columbine High School in Colorado and Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut underline the increasing importance of protection for the young students of America. This paper is not being written to condemn gun control advocates or gun rights advocates. This paper is also not being written to prove that either of the two are correct. This discussion is written in the conjecture level of stasis because it will provide the sides and arguments of both gun rights advocates and gun control advocates so that the reader may choose which side they most closely identify themselves with. However, the purpose of this discussion is to show how the argument of gun rights advocates is more backed by logic and fact, in the intent that the reader sees the validity of the argument. Schools should be a safe place where children can go and learn without the fear of having their life threatened; the only way to do this is place armed and trained individuals in the classroom to respond as quickly as possible to an attack. 

Implementing and integrating armed and trained teachers into America’s public school would significantly diminish the severity of school attacks. On April 20, 1999, over twenty were injured and an additional thirteen were killed at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The worst High School Massacre in US history conducted by two teenagers (Muschert). On April 16, 2007, student Heung Hui Cho, of Virginia Tech University, murdered twenty-seven students and five faculty members in the deadliest school shooting in US history. Cho went to multiple different rooms in which he shot unselected victims (History.com). On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza killed twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. This was the second deadliest school shooting in US history (Vogel). After the Sandy Hook shooting Obama spoke to the public, “I know there’s not a parent in America who doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do. The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between five and 10 years old,” He paused, unable to speak, “They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own” (Vogel). No parent should ever have to undergo the pain and suffering of their young, innocent child being taken from them. It is hard for anyone to fathom that someone could murder children in elementary school. 

These three school shooting consist of the most recent and catastrophic attacks in America. Attacks with a magnitude of death like these three schools cannot continue to happen in this country and many believe that equipping teachers with the ability and tools to prevent, is the answer. In these major attacks the only response was the police which were clearly not a quick enough response to stop these attacks. In all of these attacks the gunman(s) killed themselves after they had already done far too much damage. However, if the gunman walked into a classroom and the teacher pulled a gun on him, things would go much differently. Even if it was a classroom down the hallway, after a shot or two the response would be much quicker than waiting for the police, and many lives potentially saved. Mark Valez proposes that there are two logical rationales behind arming teachers. The first is that if it is known that teachers are armed at a certain school, it is less likely that someone would attack that school. The second rationale is that if an armed individual begins a shooting spree on a campus an armed teacher could put a sudden halt to it (Valez). 

After the attack at Sandy Hook Elementary the National Rifle Association (NRA) provided a two-fold plan. The first stated that every school would have an emergency plan consisting of “armed, trained, qualified” school security personnel.  The second part is that, in order to reduce funding, these security personnel would be voluntary (Valez). Valez says this is controversial however, it has been done before similarly in the “Watchdog Dads” group in Arkansas, in which they provided extra security by patrolling school campuses. The Guardian Plan, started in 2006 was the first program designed to allows teachers to carry concealed weapons. Harrold Independent School Districts, in Texas, have implemented this program because the nearest police department is thirty minutes away and they value protecting their students. The Guardian Plan entails that these armed teachers must have a concealed handgun license, approval by the school board, and additional training implemented by the school board. These teachers used specialized ammunition that breaks apart on impact, reducing affect or chances of ricocheting rounds.  The defense of this program suggest that it has redundancy in its system rather than a single identified security guard. Teachers in a Missouri school district are required to go through 35 hours of training on the firing range and 5 hours in the classroom in order to carry a concealed weapon (Jacobson). In schools like these where law enforcement reaction time is too slow, teachers are the first line of defense. Organizations all over the country, just like these, are providing training programs for teachers and proposing bills to further advance the chances of allowing armed and trained teachers in schools. 

Steven Siebold is on the more extreme side and believes that every teacher in America should be armed. This is a bit outlandish but he’s not completely crazy. He references the pearl High School shooting in 1997. Here a student injured 7 classmates and killed two others, but was halted by an armed assistant principal (Siebold). This event most likely saved many other student and faculty members lives, that otherwise would have been killed had it not been for the armed assistant principal. 

Of course with one side of an argument there is always another that refutes it. The preceding support defends the ideas of gun rights enthusiast. The opposing side is that of the gun control enthusiasts. Gun control supporters have a massive problem with the idea of arming teachers. They believe that the shear idea of it promotes violence and that there is the possibility that these teachers could turn on their students. Harrold ISD representative responds to this by saying that at Sandy Hook Elementary students are constantly reminded they are not safe when they walk down the hall and see large concentrations of identifiable law enforcement. He believes that the program they are implementing is far less representative of teaching violence (Jacobson). 

The NRA is one of the biggest supporters of gun advocacy and many groups that believe schools should remain gun free zones, heavily debate the NRA. For example, Crews, gives a statistic of student death from 2009-2010 and claims that school shootings are decreasing. This is contrary to the NRA offered claim that schools are not safe for children. This source continues to say child death is much more likely away from school (Crews). There are two problems with this argument. First of all, a survey of data from one year is certainly not enough to make a claim that school violence is decreasing. Just before and after this time period the Columbine shooting of 2007 occurred and the Sandy Hook shooting of 2012 occurred, the two biggest shooting in US history. The other problem with this argument is that it does not matter if more deaths happen away from a school campus. The problem at hand is the amount of children that are killed in school shooting and how that can be minimized if not extinguished. 

The biggest fear of gun control advocates is that allowing more guns in schools allow more opportunity for violence, and therefore, schools should be gun free zones. Deborah Gorman-Smith, and Michele McLaughlin offer an explanation to this theory. They believe that schools being gun free zones serves as an effective method to keeping violence of campuses and that metal detectors are effective devices. Secondly, the write, “an analysis of U.S. mortality data found that people with guns in the home are at greater risk than those without guns in the home of dying from a homicide there” (Gorman-Smith). They proceed to ask why a school should be any different and that with more guns there are more opportunities to use them. The fundamental issue they have confused here is that is not the gun that kills. It is the individual who operates the gun who kills. As long as guns are in the right hands they can be used for good. Their solution to school violence is something called the “Gatekeeper” program. This is the idea that adults and peers are trained to recognize warning sings in individuals so that they can connect them with a mental health professional. They also believe strong teacher-student relationships are an answer to stopping school violence. However, this does not have an answer for the crazed gun man or terrorist who walks into a gun-free school, and opens an undefended killing spree. 

School violence and shooting belongs in an epidemic that has been extremely prevalent in America for over four decades. Even though deciding whether to place armed security guards and armed teachers in schools is more than controversial, it is a topic that requires authority’s immediate attention and action. It is important that people on both sides of the argument try to put aside their differences and realize that the ultimate goal is protecting the children and that it is in everybody’s best interests. In the end schools should be a safe place where children can go and learn without the fear of having their life threatened and the benefit of putting an end to these school shootings or quickly ending them so that death is minimalized, far outweighs the outdated ideology that schools should be gun free zones. 
