WhyNottMe?

I recently finished up my summer semester at SLCC.  In my English class we were required to write a persuasive report, meaning we had to find a topic that we felt needed to be made public and write a paper on why we felt it should change.  I did mine on Gun’s in Schools.

The emphasis was mainly about allowing those who are of age to carry a gun on school grounds.  that would mean K-12 teachers could, and in my opinion, should carry daily.  I’ve seen the Vlogers who say that guns = violence, but those vlogers haven’t seen the stats about guns.

Colombine - 12 dead and 23 injured (in 1990 no guns on school grounds policy took place restricting guns in the hands of teachers)

Virginia tech - 33 killed, more injured (V.Tech does not allow guns on their campus.  Their policy states  “… Students may not poses, use, or store firearms or weapons on university property…”)

Fort hood tx - 12 killed 31 injured (Fort hood does not allow guns to be carried on base by anyone with the exception of training excursuses.)

Look at how the crime rate sky rocketed for Washington DC when they restricted hand gun use.  Look at the states that don’t follow common CCW laws and the high violente rate.

Now look at Kennesaw GA.  in 1982 they required ever head of the household, with the exception of mentally incompetent, those with criminal history, or violent behavior, to own and maintain a firearm.  since than they have had 3 murders.  2 with knives and 1 with a gun.  the gun murder was from someone outside the state.

It was interesting to read some of these statistics.  According to the yearly FBI violent crimes report, cities with fewer guns have higher murder rates, however cities with fewer guns and higher concentrations of registered democrats have higher rape and murder rates than even just those with lower gun ownership, in some cases double that of a prominently republican city.

In England in 2004 gun laws became even more strict.  their crime and murder rates have risen 77% from 04-09 making them the leader in violent crimes in europe.  When filling out a crime report in England they have a check list; Murder, rape, theft, etc.  Due to the high rate of bizarre crimes, they have had to add, “Bitting” to the check list in 2008.

U of U allows their students to carry guns to class.  U of U also has one of the lowest bomb threats, rape rates, and mis-conduct reports of any college in the US. The state of Utah has allowed Collages to permit their students to carry.  As predicted by those in favor of this ruling, crime and violence in the schools has dropped.

While doing this report I ran into a few issues that I found rather funny.  I’d run fact checks on articles I used and on more occasions that not I had to throw out articles due to incorrect information.

NEW YORK TIMES - out of 16 articles, only 7 were useable.  the other 9 contained wrong names, numbers, and in one article it had the name of the school and it’s location in the US wrong.

CNN - out of 8 articles, 6 were useable.

Fox News - out of 12 articles, all 12 were usable.

In short, Fox News wins.  I had a few local papers that I had used 1 article from (Cincinnati, Tennessee, kennesaw) but saying 0 out of 1 is too limited a number to sugest a stat.

In the end I found I had 1 more piece of inaccurate information from NYT, in one article about fort hood the had stated that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan committed suicide after the shooting.  Fortunately I was able to show my sources to my teacher and she excused the error in my paper.

In short, Teachers should be allowed to have a gun on them, or locked in their rooms somewhere.  The teachers first line of defense would be to close the door and lock it.  if that get’s breached, the teacher should be allowed the right to protect them self and their students, that’s when the gun get’s drawn.

When people know they are one of the few with a gun, it gives them more power of the others.  By having more guns in the hands of good people, we level the playing field.