Safety with Armed Guards Patrolling School
Introduction:
There is lots of schools that do not have as much security to protect students and teachers from violence.Having guards on school campus do help but what if the school was on a lockdown because of a shooting on campus. What is the guard going to do? Go up to him like nothing? No. What we need are armed guards. Armed guards will be able to stop the shooting and save people’s lives.
Prevention and mitigation. Graves has used U.S. Justice Department grants for classroom door locks that can be secured from inside, plus video cameras and electronic locks for outer entrances. “There are a lot of wonderful fire prevention approaches,” Graves notes. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could have the same consideration given to other kinds of threats?”
Preparedness. Because 95 percent of emergency situations requiring lockdowns happen outside of school buildings, Lincoln County schools have two kinds of lockdown. A partial lockdown occurs when you bring everybody inside and instruction continues.
“Does your school have a plan for getting students back indoors quickly?” Graves asks. “We call it reverse evacuation. And you have to announce it because there are almost always some kids outside.”
A complete lockdown is what happened in Newtown, with school employees working quickly to make sure children were tucked out of sight.
Response. During spring break, Lincoln County schools invite police officers onto each school campus for active shooter training, during which they learn the layouts of buildings and practice stopping an assault. It’s a useful exercise that, luckily for Lincoln County, has never been tested.
Recovery. During this period, the entire school community steps in to provide support. Graves experienced this phase firsthand when she was invited to Newtown after the tragedy there. She visited memorials, hugged people, cried with them and listened as one local man told her that even the shooter “was one of ours and we failed him.”
Schools are still by far the safest places in America. But the events in Newtown have swayed public opinion in ways that earlier shootings did not, and the AFT stands with President Obama, who said in his second inaugural address that “our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.”
Knowing that our schools will never be safe as long as it remains easy for criminals or the mentally ill to acquire guns.
AFT president Randi Weingarten, at the White House in January, commended President Obama and Vice President Biden for their proposals to reduce gun violence and promote safety, including:
- Banning sales of large ammunition clips;
- Expanding background checks and cracking down on those who lie on background check
- Stopping illegal gun trafficking;
- Banning assault weapons;
- Enforcing gun laws and investing in research on stopping gun violence; and
- Investing in mental health services.
The first solution, fortifying schools, is unlikely to be effective not simply because it is costly; a determined shooter could surveil and disarm the guards or defeat the metal detectors or other devices. Limiting media coverage might be more effective.
At the moment, media coverage of these tragedies is so relentless and invasive that it effectively glorifies the shooter.
If the media refused to provide such coverage, or if it were prohibited from doing so, a potential shooter might be discouraged from committing mass murder/suicide because he would realize that he will not get the postmortem fame he craves.
The difficulty would be in crafting a law that accomplishes this aim while not unduly infringing on the freedom of the press.
The third possibility, repealing the gun-free zone laws, shows the most promise in deterring these horrible crimes, because potential shooters would not know who else might be carrying a gun.
The most common objections to allowing licensed adults to carry firearms in schools is the fear that unless such a person is as highly trained as a policeman, he is likely to shoot indiscriminately at the shooter or over children’s heads, and cause even more terror than the original shooter has provoked.
Body Paragraph 3:
This objection shows both a lack of an ability to prioritize and a lack of understanding of how widespread responsible gun ownership is in the United States. While state laws differ about what constitutes “adequate” training, the vast majority of those who are licensed to carry do so responsibly.
In considering the possibility of allowing concealed carry on our law school campus, one of my colleagues stated that she would never trust her safety to Professor “X,” an older professor widely known for his staunch support of the Second Amendment and other conservative causes.
But if (God forbid) a disgruntled former law student entered the faculty suite hoping to shoot as many faculty members as possible, I would much rather trust to the ability of Professor X (or any other professor or student or even my own skill) to shoot him and not me than on my ability to run, hide in my locked office, or try to tackle the shooter.
ost mass shooters are young men or occasionally women–usually teens–who are emotionally unstable and want to exact revenge on society for some harm that they have suffered commit suicide in a blaze of gunfire, and get national media attention for their last act.
Their desire to commit suicide indicates that though such shooters may be “deranged,” they are cognizant of the likely consequences of their acts and are acting accordingly by choosing suicide.
Three possible ways of doing this are to: fortify schools with Armed guards and metal detectors as in airports, limit media coverage of mass shootings so that potential shooters recognize that they won’t become famous postmortem, or eliminate the gun-free zones and allow licensed parents, teachers, administrators, and adult students to carry their guns into school.
Body Paragraph 4:
Senetence 1: The first solution, fortifying schools, is unlikely to be effective not simply because it is costly
a determined shooter could surveil and disarm the guards or defeat the metal detectors or other devices. Limiting media coverage might be more effective.
At the moment, media coverage of these tragedies is so relentless and invasive that it effectively glorifies the shooter.
If the media refused to provide such coverage, or if it were prohibited from doing so, a potential shooter might be discouraged from committing mass murder/suicide because he would realize that he will not get the post mortem fame he craves.
The difficulty would be in crafting a law that accomplishes this aim while not unduly infringing on the freedom of the press. The third possibility, repealing the gun-free zone laws, shows the most promise in deterring these horrible crimes, because potential shooters would not know who else might be carrying a gun.
Conclusion:
It cannot be overemphasized that concealed carry has reduced violent crime every time it has been passed and is therefore most likely to reduce the incidence of mass shootings in schools. This could help save Students and teacher’s lives.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Nedzel, Nadia E. “Concealed carry: the only way to discourage mass school shootings.” Academic Questions, vol. 27, no. 4, 2014, p. 429+. Educators Reference Complete, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=PROF&sw=w&u=j020902&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA393875930&it=r&asid=60ebd55450302f2b54a3e4146bed4a53. Accessed 17 Feb. 2017.