This is a two-part series on my take from the following article from the Sun Sentinel. Voices of Change, Part III: The Great Gun Debate
Excerpt: As a grieving community struggles to heal months after a gunman murdered and maimed 34 people in Parkland, outraged voices continue to create a space to discuss the change needed to stop the carnage. Some target the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment, advocating for gun restrictions and bans on automatic weapons. Others say the answer is to harden schools and hold those in power accountable for breakdowns in the system. As the Great Gun Debate has raged on, more innocents have died in mass shootings at a school in Texas, a newspaper in Maryland, a trucking company in California and a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Bottom Line: First, to the Sun Sentinel. There’s no need for bans on “automatic weapons.” They’re already illegal and have been for many years. Second, I’ll walk you back to my research on school shootings from May of this year: you've probably heard about the 22 school shootings so far in 2018. I went through each one of them to find out the details and to determine how many are relevant to the conversation regarding grade school security. First, most of the school shootings this year have been on college campuses and outside, so I excluded them from this conversation. When you break down the school shootings at grade-schools that happened in-doors (a couple took place in parking lots) here's what we're starring at in 2018:
8 School shootings
I wanted to go a bit further to attempt to discover how reforms, changes in laws, etc. would have potentially impacted the outcomes. I started with how many of the guns were legally possessed at the time of the shooting by the perpetrator. The answer is one. The one we're all too familiar with in Parkland. As we know we passed a law in Florida that would have prevented the shooter from legally obtaining the guns used. While, I and many, feel that the reforms in Florida can and should be passed federally that still wouldn't have impacted these other shooters. So, what would have?
Look to the number three answer of the students. Metal detectors. If someone is illegally possessing firearms, passing the additional reforms, and even stronger gun control measures with more specific bans, a la rifles, wouldn't change the outcome. Not being able to get those weapons into the school would have the ability to deter and prevent those types of attacks. Where we go from here is somewhat unclear but we're closer to answers if we more closely examine what students suggest would help and the facts of the shooting thus far in 2018.
Yet, what’s changed regarding metal detectors? In Broward, throughout South Florida despite the talk, the facts, the desires of adults and students alike? But we’re still talking about dealing with the symptoms. We aren't dealing with the cause of these problems. In Part 2, I’ll address that conversation.
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