hould Teachers Be Able To Carry Guns in School

SA series of unfortunate incidents associated with gun possession has led to the call for the strengthening of gun laws in the United States and the call for teachers to be allowed to carry guns to school. On January 20, in Winston Salem, North Carolina, A Winston-Salem State University football player, Najee Ali Baker, was shot to death at a party on the campus of Wake Forest University. It's been 24 weeks since 2018, and there have been 23 school shootings already in the U.S. and someone has been injured or killed. It averages more than one school shooting a week. Evelynn (1) points out that, the right to gun ownership is a highly debated issue in the US. Some argue that gun possession is an important part of the country’s heritage and that it is a birthright. On the other side, critics argue that civilians have no justifiable reason to own guns. Despite the arguments from both sides of the divide, experience has led to the realization that teachers are not supposed to carry guns to school. The cases of violence by use of guns has been on the rise with research indicating that over thirty-eight thousand people in 2016 were murdered using guns. In addition, gunshot wounds account for at least 93 deaths in the US (Berlin 1). The US is the country with the highest rate of homicides caused by guns and number of “firearms per capita” as compared to the other developed nations (Masters4). In order to reduce these incidences, laws regarding gun control have been put in place. The reason given for control laws is that "gun control laws aim to restrict or regulate the capstonewriting.com Surname 2 sale, purchase, or possession of firearms through licensing, registration or identification requirements”. These laws have received a wave of different reactions from the people especially since the US second amendment of the constitution advocates for possession of guns as an inexorableness for a free and secure. Apart from the Gun control laws, the Supreme Court has also endorsed restrictions in regards to firearms as well as the Brady Handgun Violent Prevention Act which also decrees a background check as a requirement when purchasing a firearm (Master 2-4). Research indicates that personal interest is the key influence on people's perspective on these firearm laws and whether they support or oppose them. For example, a research by Jacobs indicated that a subgroup (white male) in the country do not support the laws since they consider rifles as a “sacred object” and associates the ownership of rifles to authority and strength (Jacobs 2). Therefore, this group views gun control laws as a way of stripping off these qualities from them (Jacob 2). Additionally, place of residence, gender, age, and political ideologies are other major factors that influence the attitude that an individual has towards these laws e.g. increase in age indicates an upsurge in support of gun control laws (Pederson et al. 280). Although citizens believe that these rifles increase their safety, their availability in a region is directly related to the ability of criminals to access them which consequently increases the susceptibility of the community to crime. However, some researchers argue that there has been no direct relationship between the gun control laws and overall reduction of the rate of crimes. According to Parrillo, this inference can be attributed to the fact that gun control laws tend to reduce the levels of ownership in specific groups but not the whole population and only specific capstonewriting.com rifles are targeted i.e. handguns as compared to the long guns (Parrillo 423).