It seems to be happening with more frequency. And once there is a major event, there are copycats or others who have been planning on something like this who feel empowered after watching ongoing news reports. I am, of course, referring to school shootings.
Much has been made recently of the number of times this has been happening, especially after the tragedy in Florida. That encounter was followed by a copious amount of activity in and around schools, both here in Minnesota and across the country. Most of the threats that came forth were unfounded, but there were also some very scary near-misses.
Let’s take a step back in the old time machine and revisit 1999, April 20 to be exact, at Columbine High School. The killings in that school shocked the nation and put teachers everywhere on alert. There was much debate after that regarding our gun laws, and some changes were made at various levels, though nothing too substantial.
Following 9/11, the country went on high alert again and many people argued for the need for weapons to defend against the terrorists. The mood in our country shifted once again.
What’s the moral to the story? There are no right or wrong answers in the debate that rages once again in regards to gun ownership and how to deal with the problems brought by young people who get their hands on them and have a desire to kill others.
We’ve heard a lot of talk in the hallways and teachers’ lounge at school, some good discussions looking at every side of this issue. When President Trump came out and said we should arm our teachers, my first reaction was, “No way!” The idea of bringing guns into our schools scared me. All the “what ifs” popped into my head. What if a student got ahold of one of those guns during a fit of anger? What if a teacher responded to a tense situation and shot the wrong person? What if we faced the same racial issues the police across the country are encountering?
And then others talked about the opposing point of view. If students knew some teachers were armed, would it make it less likely for a shooter to want to do anything at that school? Would having trained and armed staff present shorten any incident? After all, especially at small schools, there is often not a security force on the grounds, so the response time of local authorities could become negligible if armed staff took down the assailant.
So now I was torn. I could see both sides of this. The problem is the normal mode in times like this is to have a gut reaction to something bad and make changes without thinking things through, simply because we feel we have to change something, anything.
I do wonder where the money would come from to arm, train, and pay teachers to do something like this. There are many schools which are severely underfunded anyway, so where is all this new money coming from? Or will it be taken from already dwindling funds to go with this new idea?
Should we ban some types of guns, especially assault weapons? I think so. There’s no problem with you having some guns for hunting or personal defense, but you probably don’t need military-grade weapons for those uses. Could people still get their hands on them? Of course, the same as many other illegal items. However, let’s make it tougher to do so, especially for teenagers.
But the real problems here lie deeper. We have a deepening mental health crisis in our country. We have young people in need, and too often, the resources aren’t there to help them. The resources aren’t even there to train people to recognize what’s going on.
And maybe even the way our society has changed has made a deep impact on how our young people’s brains develop. I remember being a teenager and people were up in arms about violent video games. We shrugged it off and said, “We’re not going around shooting people, so who cares what we play?”
But now kids are doing just that. There is a proliferation of violence in video games, on television, and in movies. I heard kids talking about playing a game while they were running around outside one night called Assassin, where they would sneak up behind people and “kill” them. That’s disturbing.
It’s hard to imagine these things going away. You won’t keep violence out of video games, television shows, and movies. But maybe parents need to be better informed and expected to talk with their children about what they’re watching and doing. Maybe we need to help parents more than just the videos they show you in the hospital when your child is born. We as parents can always use refresher courses on how to be the best we can be.
Things change all the time. How many parents know what Fortnite is? (An online gaming community) How many know the different forms of vaping? (using electronic cigarettes) How many know how to recognize deteriorating mental health in their own children and what to do about it? If I didn’t work with young people every day, I’m pretty sure I’d be unaware of the scope of these things.
Maybe our government should look at the larger issues that are sending our society down a sinkhole. Things aren’t going to get better without the efforts of everyone. We can change gun laws and we can even arm teachers. It’s not going to stop every school shooting. It’s not going to get rid of crime. It’s not going to help people who need help. And it’s not going to foresee the next dilemma that will force our children to look at life in a new way.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is redintegrate, which means to renew or restore, as in, “The legislature passed laws to redintegrate the good values our country used to have.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!