Perhaps Gun Laws May Not Be The Issue

After the shooting that took place in Parkland, Florida, talk about gun control has skyrocketed. Though gun control does sound like a quick solution to the probable shootings in the coming years, perhaps it may not be the best.

In 2016, California had 1,368 gun-related homicides, and if you didn’t already know, California is known to have the strictest gun laws in the nation.

“By the statistics of crime rates in California, where gun laws are one of the strictest in the country, [how do we know] anything [would] be different in the other 49 states?” junior Tarek Shraim said.

Only California, Connecticut, and Hawaii require a gun permit to purchase a firearm. A background check is also required in some states, but only in nine of the 50 states. However, due to the 307 mass shootings this past year in the entire U.S., people think that performing a background check will determine someone’s sanity; this is not the best deterrent.

“A lot of people feel unprotected,” junior Winfrey Oenga said. “Authorities should do more than just gun reform.”

Enforcing gun control will only increase the likelihood of crimes within a society. If we make it more difficult to acquire a firearm, then the only other way to get a hold of one would be through the black market, or on the streets, which are both illegal.

“Crime rates would increase,” Shraim said. “Less guns would be registered, and acquiring guns would be [difficult, therefore] there would be more unregistered guns on the streets, making it difficult to track down murders.”

Law says cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin are illegal, yet, according to Sara G. Miller on Live Science, “nearly 21 million Americans ages 12 and older had a substance use problem in 2015.” If 21 million Americans can easily break the law to do something as illegal as drugs, who says they won’t go out of their way to get a hold of a firearm?

President Donald Trump has proposed teachers who have had special training should be allowed to carry firearms. If teachers were to be armed, they would be equipped and ready to end something as tragic as a mass shooting.

“I don’t want teachers to have guns, I want certain highly adept people, people that understand weaponry, guns — if they really have that aptitude,” Trump said in a conference at the White House.

School systems don’t have much security, which is where the problem lies. SROs (School Resource Officers) are not being used to their full potential, and two SROs per school is not sufficient enough to assure the safety of every student.

“To better secure schools,” sophomore Marvin Aguilar said. “I would implement a metal detector [at] the entrance of every school.”

Instead of worrying about making gun laws stricter to prevent the wrong person from procuring a firearm, we should make schools more secure for the students attending, and for the parents whose trust is in the hands of the administration.