Police officers still best option to protect schools
Ever since the massacre of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., back in December and the numerous school shootings since, the issue of how to guarantee safety in schools has been highly debated. In South Carolina, public opinion is mixed on the best way to keep schools safe, according to a poll from Winthrop University. Two-thirds of respondents supported placing armed police officers in every school, yet two-thirds also reported they were against teachers themselves carrying guns. While people have different opinions on how to maintain school safety, it’s clear the majority of South Carolina voters agree the best plan for safety in our schools is through the protection of an armed officer.
While teachers are devoted to the safety of their students as well, their daily focus should be on the education of their students — not on the possible imminent dangers that could arise. Teachers are not required to go through gun training. If we were to force our educators to carry guns in the classroom, the government would need to address certain issues if we were to entrust them with such deadly weapons. Each teacher would need to be allotted a gun and trained on how to properly operate it, and the cost and time to do so would be unmanageably high in these current economic times.
Police officers, on the other hand, are already trained in general gun safety and operation, so if there ever were a need for it they would be able to react properly. The role of the brave and courageous police officers is to serve and protect the community, and they are solely focused on this task. The very presence of an armed police officer would be beneficial because their only task is to guard the property and act on any suspicious behavior, so they could commit their undivided attention to the task.
Those who favor teachers carrying weapons over police presence argue that teachers are presented as defenseless, which makes them easy targets. But a similar argument can easily be made that police officers are easy targets because they are uniformed and easily spotted, but teachers would be unexpected protectors because their weapons would be concealed. And besides, if the state allowed teachers to carry weapons on school grounds, anyone who would potentially bring violence into our schools would now be aware of teachers’ new ability to conceal firearms, thus stripping our educators of their defenseless image.
The overwhelming data from the poll’s respondents help prove that the majority of South Carolina voters would feel more comfortable with police officers protecting our schools rather than burdening teachers with yet another task and responsibility. At a time when gun violence is such a vital issue in our nation, it is best to simply allow the people who have been trained and have the top priority of protecting us to do their jobs.
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