Hannah Bramm
Staff Writer
Throughout history, humans have a tendency to overreact and come up with the most absurd solutions to problems and tragedies. A girl’s boyfriend looks at another girl and she wants to gouge out his eyes. During ancient times if you stole bread they would cut off your hand. In days of kings, if you continued to eat after the king was finished, the king made that person eat until they burst. After all the school shootings recently, the parent’s reaction is to arm every teacher by giving them guns.
By placing guns in every classroom, we are basically giving an open invitation to anyone, including students and teachers at Harbor, to challenge our security and shoot up the Newport Harbor campus. “The idea that, I an untrained teacher, should have a gun and consider shooting it in [a classroom] is ludicrous” said James Sigafoos, an IB English teacher at Harbor. By putting guns in the hands of teachers, schools are asking for trouble. All it takes is an aggravated student or a teacher snapping and either upset party has a gun at the ready. A simple problem becomes a life or death situation. First year English teacher at Harbor, Ms. Kelsey Andrus said that she doesn’t “want a gun in her home let alone in a classroom full of students.” Mr. Gary Robinson, a History teacher said he would” under no circumstances keep a gun” in his classroom.
After talking with other students at Harbor, most agreed adding more guns would definitely not make us feel safer. Looking at it from a parent’s point of view, when children, no matter what age, leaves home to go to school, they are now under the protection of the school and if, Heaven forbid, a disaster ensues, the parents hope that the school will be able to do whatever is necessary to protect their kids. It is understandable then, after the Sandy Hook and Bakersfield school shootings, why parents would want the teachers to be as equipped as possible to keep their kids safe, even if that means the use of lethal weapons.
As a student I worry about our campus, especially when I hear about the shootings at other schools. I am all for making our campus safer. Wanting to protect our school is perfectly fine; however is lethal force the best and most effective way? “As much as I like the idea of being able to pack heat in my room, guns are not a good idea in the classroom” said science teacher Mr. Oscar Constandse. Constandse and English teacher Deborah Pogue agreed that “it would be next to impossible to get out, load, and fire their gun successfully in a chaotic situation.”
There would have to be stricter monitoring of classrooms and stricter enforcement of students staying away from the teacher’s desks. The school has us practice intruder drills and what to do if our campus is infiltrated, but we don’t do any drills that prepares us for a student stealing the teacher’s gun or a teacher going ballistic and shooting at the students.
I am not suggesting that the teachers at Harbor will fly off the handle and results to violence or that the students will automatically try to hijack the gun if they get angry, I am simply saying that anything is possible when a deadly weapon is introduced into an environment with stress and impatience.
School shootings are nothing to take lightly, so why would we risk making it possible for a student at our own school to start a shooting by providing a gun for them to use? The chance that someone other than an intruder would use the gun in the classroom is too great a risk to justify a guns presence in the classroom. No matter how good the intentions are, placing a gun in a room of students that the school is responsible to protect is not the answer to preventing a shooting tragedy.
Staff Writer
Throughout history, humans have a tendency to overreact and come up with the most absurd solutions to problems and tragedies. A girl’s boyfriend looks at another girl and she wants to gouge out his eyes. During ancient times if you stole bread they would cut off your hand. In days of kings, if you continued to eat after the king was finished, the king made that person eat until they burst. After all the school shootings recently, the parent’s reaction is to arm every teacher by giving them guns.
By placing guns in every classroom, we are basically giving an open invitation to anyone, including students and teachers at Harbor, to challenge our security and shoot up the Newport Harbor campus. “The idea that, I an untrained teacher, should have a gun and consider shooting it in [a classroom] is ludicrous” said James Sigafoos, an IB English teacher at Harbor. By putting guns in the hands of teachers, schools are asking for trouble. All it takes is an aggravated student or a teacher snapping and either upset party has a gun at the ready. A simple problem becomes a life or death situation. First year English teacher at Harbor, Ms. Kelsey Andrus said that she doesn’t “want a gun in her home let alone in a classroom full of students.” Mr. Gary Robinson, a History teacher said he would” under no circumstances keep a gun” in his classroom.
After talking with other students at Harbor, most agreed adding more guns would definitely not make us feel safer. Looking at it from a parent’s point of view, when children, no matter what age, leaves home to go to school, they are now under the protection of the school and if, Heaven forbid, a disaster ensues, the parents hope that the school will be able to do whatever is necessary to protect their kids. It is understandable then, after the Sandy Hook and Bakersfield school shootings, why parents would want the teachers to be as equipped as possible to keep their kids safe, even if that means the use of lethal weapons.
As a student I worry about our campus, especially when I hear about the shootings at other schools. I am all for making our campus safer. Wanting to protect our school is perfectly fine; however is lethal force the best and most effective way? “As much as I like the idea of being able to pack heat in my room, guns are not a good idea in the classroom” said science teacher Mr. Oscar Constandse. Constandse and English teacher Deborah Pogue agreed that “it would be next to impossible to get out, load, and fire their gun successfully in a chaotic situation.”
There would have to be stricter monitoring of classrooms and stricter enforcement of students staying away from the teacher’s desks. The school has us practice intruder drills and what to do if our campus is infiltrated, but we don’t do any drills that prepares us for a student stealing the teacher’s gun or a teacher going ballistic and shooting at the students.
I am not suggesting that the teachers at Harbor will fly off the handle and results to violence or that the students will automatically try to hijack the gun if they get angry, I am simply saying that anything is possible when a deadly weapon is introduced into an environment with stress and impatience.
School shootings are nothing to take lightly, so why would we risk making it possible for a student at our own school to start a shooting by providing a gun for them to use? The chance that someone other than an intruder would use the gun in the classroom is too great a risk to justify a guns presence in the classroom. No matter how good the intentions are, placing a gun in a room of students that the school is responsible to protect is not the answer to preventing a shooting tragedy.
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