We Need to Solve School Shooting Issue

Staff Editorial

According to the Washington Post, there have already been five successful school shootings in the United States since the beginning of the year. The most recent school shooting, located in Parkland Florida, has left a heavy toll on everyone. The United States has blown up over the most recent shooting, mainly blaming guns and the “terrible” gun laws in America.

The AR-15 assault rifle was used at Marjory Stonemason Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Fair use photo by Creative Commons.

Many students we’ve talked to at Carroll believe the gun laws shouldn’t be changed because guns don’t kill, people do. Everyone can agree we don’t want anything to happen again like what happened in Parkland, but how do we do such a thing?

We could add more guns. People in some states, such as Alabama, believe that every teacher should be armed in case of a possible school shooting. If teachers were properly trained with a weapon then this could be a good idea, but every teacher would have to be comfortable with a weapon.

This idea would most likely make students feel safer in schools, having many armed responsible adults to protect them. Although this may seem like a good idea, the cons overpower the positives. The responsibility put on the teachers would almost be a burden on them as one slip up in a serious situation could end up in an extremely injured student.

On top of responsibility, the government would have to provide the funds for every school to properly train their teachers to use guns. The idea of teachers having weapons doesn’t seem realistic at the moment, but at this point in time schools might try anything for student safety.

Another possible “solution” would be using a tighter, airport like security in schools. This idea would secure schools from all hazardous objects such as weapons, drugs or those dreaded juuls everyone has been obsessed with.

Like anything else, there are negatives to this idea. Like the gun idea, this would require a lot more funding by the government which could go towards other things, but Airport Security has some other down sides as well. This security would require those famous “TSA feel ups” that everybody loves when going to the airport. This would give away most of our privacy and innocence as well as it would give off a prison like atmosphere more than school already does.

A third option to create safer schools is to take premature action on anyone believed to be dangerous enough to commit something as terrible as murder. This would obviously help keep all the psychopaths locked up, but the country cannot risk arresting someone without actually committing a crime. This idea could cause strong riots and movements across the country that we do not want to deal with.

The last possible option to promote school safety throughout the nation is defiantly the one being most talked about. Less guns.

The gun control laws have taken over the local and national news stations as well as the snapchat discover feed as well. People seem to feel strongly about gun laws being terrible in this country. They seem to believe that people can obtain guns too easily and maybe they’re right. Maybe the United States should reform the law, but not get rid of guns completely.

Without the ability to obtain weapons, good people who only use weapons for hunting or self-defense cannot get what they need. People are always going to find ways to get weapons and gun control might help, but won’t solve the problem. Maybe we could come up with an idea where only people who serve in the military can get weapons, but will it really help anything?

We go through the same process every time this tragedy happens. The school shooting happens, everybody mourns, we blame the government system, movements slowly die off, everybody forgets, and it all happens over again. In my personal opinion, the United States will never solve this school shooting problem. If we can fix this then let me know. I’m challenging the United States to finally find a way to fix this problem once and for all. Prove a 17-year-old high school student from a small town in Indiana wrong and we will finally feel safe.