Argumentative Essay on The Effects of Arming Teachers in Schools

Introduction

Every individual understands that the worry that every parent has is their children's safety. As a result of increased violence being experienced in most of the schools, many parents have begun to wonder whether their children will be safe when they are inside the school setting. There are several cases involving shooting in the school setting that has already been witnessed leaving teachers, administrators and parents feeling the urge to become proactive towards attaining the safety of the children. Reacting to this kind of situations is not sufficient enough considering that the lives of children are in line. The administration has already started brainstorming various ways that can be used to assist in ensuring the safety of the students. The idea regarding having the teachers carrying multiple types of concealed weapons has for a quiet time been on the front burner. Due to this extreme idea, many insurance organizations have begun to increase and even canceling their policies with schools which are having harmed teachers as a result of the high risk which they are subjecting themselves to. The administrators and parents also worry regarding this idea as it seems to be quite extreme and they feel that there exist other alternatives which are more positive and less dramatic like having of schools been protected by security guards that are armed.

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Mass shooting refers to the incident that includes multiple participants of violence that is firearms related. Mass shooting can be committed by organizations or people in either public places or non-public places. In recent times, the terrorist groups have utilized the mass shooting tactic to achieve their objectives. The people who commit mass shooting can fall into any of the many categories that include coworkers, students, random strangers, and family killers. The motive that leads to mass shooting varies typically depending on the people or group of individuals carrying out the act of mass shooting. The responses to mass shooting normally take different forms relying on the context, the casualties' numbers, and the political, country, and other factors.

The mass shooting is normally different from the school shooting. School shooting refers to an attack that is carried out at any educational institution like university or school that involves the use of firearms. The common factors that are behind the school shootings entail lack of supervision f the family, mental illness, and family dysfunction. Among the most top motives of the attackers include threatened, persecution, bullying, and revenge. The school shootings have been found as being overwhelmingly in regions that are known to have easy availability of firearms.

The kind of firearm which is the most commonly used in the school shooting is a handgun. The individuals carrying out the school shooting mostly make use of the handguns that they have not purchased on their own which are owned by a given family member (Darling-Hammond 63). Most of the homes have handgun type of firearms. As a result of having handguns in the homes, it poses an issue in the combination of unsecured guns, troubled adolescents, and general disorganization of homes which raises the risk of having the weapons easily accessed by individuals wanting to carry out a school shooting. The numbers of individuals who have died as a result of school shooting attack since 1990 have been found to be 32. Most of the shooters that conducted the school shootings are male teenagers. Te shooters report that they acquired the weapons from either their relatives or from their homes. AS a result of several school shooting incidences, there has been the rise of local and national campaigns with the aim to promote safe firearm storage.

Police officers are trained at the school for about three days in different situations. They are taught while responding to a scenario whereby there is a person that breached the school's confines and the individual is actively shooting, stopped the shooting and is taking hostages. The police officers get trained on how they should respond to such kind of incidences. On the other hand, teachers are trained differently on how to deal with guns. Before the teachers can start bringing guns to the classroom, they should complete a unique training which works on mental focus and accuracy. The practice is mainly real as the teachers can get. There is a real gun, recoil, and blast that normally come out when the trigger of the gun is triggered. The teachers aim, shoot and they eliminate suspects by using drills of a real-life video.

In every year, there are about ten cases of schools that experience gun shooting violence. About eleven individuals lose their lives in each year due to gun shooting at the school. Many parents oppose the practice of arming the teachers against the intruders. Parents argue against the arming of teachers by asserting that teachers have for a long time been known as good people. Teachers are good people who aim at making sure that all their students in schools succeed and understand the fundamentals of critical thinking. Therefore, the act of arming the teachers is viewed by parents as being similar to the arming of any civilian (Banks et al. 252). These guns could be utilized for anything which undermines the purpose of establishing a safe environment in school. It is scary to students when they know that their teachers are having a loaded gun in the classrooms which hinders a successful learning environment that is perceived as being safe. The parents fear that the possession of the firearm owned by a teacher at the school could end up being on the wrong hands of the students who might have come across it by mistake.

The parents are against arming of the teachers as they believe that the protection of the students by the government should always be given the priority. The schools are already lacking funding. Most of the public schools are experiencing the lack of sufficient funding. Therefore patents view the idea of arming the teachers as a misuse of resources which could have been invested in student's learning. The primary goal of a learning institution is to educate the students. Hence the schools should not focus on investing in the weapons, insurance, and training of teachers on how they should handle gun shooting.

The parents believe that all teachers in a learning institution want to teach the students. All teachers joined the teaching profession so that they would have the opportunity of doing what they most love: educating of children. Therefore, the key priority that teachers have is nourishing of the learning environment but not becoming an armed protector (Rostron 439). Consequently, it is not correct to have the learning institution and the government expect that the teachers in different regions of the country would enjoy carrying weapons. The parents fear that most of the majority of their beloved teachers are more likely to quit their jobs as they do not want to be carrying guns when working.

The teachers should not be allowed to carry weapons as it would make them become the major targets. Most of the mass shooters that aim the learning institutions usually have some experience concerning their destination leaning institutions. According to Buck and Drake (22), the mass shooters will be having prior that all teachers in the school are carrying guns and even though the teachers carrying weapons become concealed, they will start by targeting these teachers with the aim of getting rid of the major source of protection. As a result, the students will be left with no teachers who are carrying guns which makes them become easily attacked. Several school shootings are usually carried out by taking into consideration careful planning and taking much detail and the students may have the assumption the teachers who are potentially armed.

Additionally, there is a possibility that the armed teachers may not be a deterrent to the deadly gun shooters. The argument that indicates that the zones that are gun-free requires more guns so that they can successfully deter the mass shooters in untrue (Weatherby 119). However, in several recent mass shootings, all the killers have been found to be not having a fear of their death. They usually came to carry out mass shootings when they are already prepared to die. Therefore, they believe that by arming teachers will help in deterring the mass shooters is not effective.

The arming of the teachers should not take place as it will increase the liability and responsibility of the teachers. Given the fact that accidents normally take place at an increased rate more frequently than incidences of mass shootings, it remains unclear that who will assume the responsibility of taking responsibility when a gun may accidentally go off the hands of the teachers and become used by students who accidentally have access to the teacher's gun.

Guns are believed to make individuals have power illusion. Providing individuals with guns normally makes people tend to feel that they are more powerful (Pinkerton 22). Therefore the practice of introducing weapons into the class environment may completely change the dynamics of a classroom and may potentially change the behavior of the teachers towards the students as well as other teachers.

The idea of increasing the security in the learning institutions is widely accepted by teachers, parents and the administrators. However, turning off the teachers in the learning institutions into armed security officers are seen to be operating under the completely different realm of several logics. In essence, the arming of teachers is intended to only address the issue of increased mass shooting violence in many schools. The arming of teachers should not take place as it does not account for the increased mass shootings which have occurred at many public places. Mass shootings violence in schools represents a devastating problem which unfortunately happens in the public places hence there is the need of making excuses as well as addressing the issues for what they are.

Most of the students tend embracing their teachers as their role models and mentors. Therefore, arming of the teachers would eye all of the students with a new suspicion, as the teachers that would be possessing guns would be concealed. The minority students in schools that are already disciplined disproportionately and frequently coached by their parents to become cautious when around the police or other security officers would be majorly affected. As far as there is increased emphasize that the teachers require having guns in the classrooms, it is not guaranteed that all the teachers would strive to reach for their gun when there beak up situations which fall short of the mass shootings. Most of the mass shooters that aim the learning institutions usually have some experience concerning their destination leaning institutions.

The teachers are trained to handle extremely stressful situations by being taught how to handle countermeasure. The countermeasure training involves teaching teachers how they should fight back against shooters. However, this method of preparation is controversial as there are some schools which only implement certain sections of the training especially for younger children. The people who commit mass shooting can fall into any of the many categories that include coworkers, students, random strangers, and family killers. The motive that leads to mass shooting varies typically depending on the people or group of individuals carrying out the act of mass shooting.

Theoretically, having the knowledge that the teachers in school could be potentially carrying guns can minimize the incentive to attack which make the school environment safer and reducing of the fear of striking th...