Gun Safety

gun-free-zone
On Wednesday, February 28, 2018, a threat was received about a shooting on the San Jose State University campus. The threat was written inside a women’s restroom in Dudley Moorhead Hall. The police were made aware of the situation and conducted a thorough investigation. Although it seemed like the threat was minor, they still took precautions and cancelled classes in that area and made students and faculty aware of the situation. Luckily, no shooting happened that day.
With the media coverage surrounding the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, people are  thinking about safety within schools and how often school shootings really happen. According to Everytown For Gun Safety, there has been approximately 160 school shootings from the years 2013-2015. This number includes a combination of multiple types of violence during the school shootings, including: suicides, homicides, injuries, and no injuries at all.
Since February 20, 2018, right after the Parkland school shooting, the number of school shooting rose to 18 in this year alone. Although, that number is very high, the definition of school shootings can be misconstrued. This number is accounted for shootings that has happened on school property/ grounds, meaning that some have been accidents, some did not involve students at all, and some happened after hours.
According to Snopes, as of February 20, 2018, the number of school shootings is 18. Of those 18 shootings, 7 were attack shootings that has been during school hours, 5 resulted in injuries. 2 happened outside of school hours, but on school property. 5 were accidental shots, 1 was a suicide attempt, and 2 were random stray bullets fired at the school.
I think that school shootings are starting to become this notion that people are afraid all the time, especially for students. It has started to instill fear in a lot of people. There has been some talk about militarization in the school system and wanting to arm teachers with weapons to protect students from potential attacks. This could seem like a semi good idea but in reality, it would potentially cause greater danger because teachers would still be untrained. Even if they do have training prior to carrying a weapon, under stress and pressure situations like an attack could potentially cause the training to go out of their head because they get scared and nervous.
I do believe that school shootings are an issue and it has more to do with how people are obtaining guns. But nonetheless, I feel turning the schools into a military station and arming teachers with weapons would not be the best route to take.
This article was written by BKJ, an intern at the San Jose Peace & Justice Center. 

Analysis of School Shootings. (2015, December 31). Retrieved March 03, 2018, from https://everytownresearch.org/reports/analysis-of-school-shootings/
Emery, D. (2018, February 16). How Many School Shootings Have Taken Place So Far in 2018? Retrieved March 10, 2018, from https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/02/16/how-many-school-shootings-in-2018/

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