The U.S. government should ban civilians from owning guns because of school shootings. Many innocent lives have been lost due to people taking advantage of their rights and freedoms.
“I feel like schools should try to like, do more to like, decrease the risks of school shootings,” said sophomore Jane Mganga.
She said she feels schools are not doing enough to ensure students’ or staff members’ safety.
“They traumatize people, they hurt the students, the staff, and it’s really sad that we have to fear every day of like, someone like coming in and like hurting us,” said sophomore Venus Lazas.
School shootings can have a lasting outcome on those who are affected.
According to Stanford University, “Research indicates a higher rate of antidepressant use among those exposed to a school shooting in the years following the gun violence.”
Anti-depressants are used to minimize the effects of depression amongst individuals. Gun violence contributes to a larger percentage of people taking anti-depressants.
“Because people are allowed to buy guns whenever they want, because whenever they want, it has allowed people to make it easier for them to go to school,” said sophomore Lilly Leverett.
Yet, there are some people who’ve never been in a stressful situation like that.
“I had never encountered someone who had like went to like lockdown due to like somebody shooting in school,” said sophomore Tiffany Vu.
However, there are some who have experienced and can share about it.
“I have this one friend. He’s in a different school,” Lazas said. “He had a lockdown like the very end of school and it was like so bad that they held them in like, like an hour after like school ended.”
But can schools provide tactics and consequences effective enough to hold off school shooters?
“I feel like we’re doing pretty good. I feel like we just shouldn’t joke around about it,” said Jane Mganga.
“I feel like the consequences are understandable, I guess,” Leverett said. “But it’s not that safe that they just walk into school. Some schools just let them walk into whenever they want.”
Lately there’s been a lot of uproar surrounding a teacher who was shot by her 6 year old male student in Newport News, Va.
According to NPR, “Zwerner alleges that administrators ignored multiple warnings the boy had a gun that day and had routinely dismissed ongoing concerns about his troubling behavior.”
It is disturbing for many reasons that a child could hold a gun. And that higher-ups could ignore such a cause.
Should this be something we fear for the upcoming years to follow?
“Not really, just because like the statistics are kind of low,” Kerton said.
She said she believes the North Kansas City district does pretty well maintaining our safety at school.
“I do think we should be scared, because this is like the school shooter that you don’t know trying to shoot everybody,” Vu said.
School shooters can often be unpredictable, causing people to panic and turn to the complete lockdown during school hours.
Therefore, taking away guns from civilians and making them illegal seems like the best option to prevent more school shootings from happening.
Background sources:
- https://news.vcu.edu/article/2022/06/why-do-school-shootings-keep-happening-in-the-united-states
- https://time.com/5169210/us-gun-control-laws-history-timeline/
- https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-guns-decision-58d01ef8bd48e816d5f8761ffa84e3e8
- https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/resources/gun-facts-and-fiction/gun-law-changes/#:~:text=The%20new%20regulation%20reclassified%20guns,stabilizing%20braces%20with%20the%20ATF
