BY ZANDER REYES

It seems there is a shooting every week in the United States. You always hear it in the news, whether it is FOX, MSNBC, CNN, or any other outlet. With headlines such as “There has been a mass shooting in (Insert place here)” or “BREAKING NEWS: A mass shooting has just occured in (Insert place here),” all of these incidents have surely raised national awareness into the solidarity and sentiment of having the 2nd Amendment, and have posed question of what we could do in these desperate times to combat it.

In terms of the 2nd Amendment, it is a very misinterpreted element in the Constitution. The common notion today is that the 2nd Amendment allows for any citizen to own guns no matter if there is war or not. However, the 2nd Amendment was originally adopted into the Constitution to allow militias to own any amount of guns they please in case for war and mobilization in times of conflict. So, this misinterpretation has really guided people into the wrong mindset and actually made this situation worse. As history continued the misunderstanding that anyone can have guns normalized the idea that guns to be held by any ordinary citizen which leads us to today, where mentally ill people of America can own guns with simple background checks that just are not viable right now, which in effect has brought upon an era of extreme gun violence.

With this outbreak of gun violence in America, and more specifically the one place we are meant to be safe in, school, there is a couple questions raised as to what should be done to protect the kids from these immediate threats.

Just recently, on October 29, there was a school shooting that resulted in a death in Matthews, North Carolina. As a matter of fact, in the last 3 months, there have been a total of seven school shootings in the United States. The casualties in these shootings have amounted to three people and at the same time have injured with the addition of four injuries. That approximates to one death and one injury in school due to guns per month. Obviously, this does not sound right.

So, some have proposed the idea of giving teachers guns to defend the children at schools.

At first, this sounds great, I mean, what could be better? Teachers defending students all while killing the antagonist of the situation. That sounds something straight out of a superhero comic book. However, for the same reason superheroes do not exist, there is a reason why this proposed idea will never see the light of day. There is always one adjective to describe a comic book full of action and fights: chaos. The events that live on in fantasy worlds and characters are full of chaos and inflected deaths. This trend will for sure come to life if we give teachers the right to wield guns in the classroom. There will always be a huge possibility of misfire and shooting the wrong people. Out of the next school shootings which will be for sure, I could guarantee there will be a couple cases of misfire and the people who advocated for the idea of teachers having guns will take back that idea in the snap of a finger.

There are two simple ideas that can significantly decrease the amount of gun violence in America and have a safe environment in schools again. These two are reevaluating the Constitution and actually bringing the actual purpose of the 2nd Amendment into society, or create extensive, complex background checks, which will whittle out the mentally ill people and create a better population with people who will use guns safely and correctly.