There is this strange idea that many Americans have that people in other countries do not, that guns = freedom and freedom = guns. This idea gets extended to the more seemingly personal the idea that if anyone wants there to be less guns, they are trying to take away your individual freedom. Thinking like this simply doesn't exist in other countries for the most part, because no other country's national identity was forged so much in the idea of taking up arms against an oppressive regime.
In almost all other developed countries, people want their governments and police forces to protect them, and they see less guns as freedom from having to fear rampant gun violence. They see access to education, healthcare, paid parental leave, and other resources and services as freedom to do what they want with their lives.
I honestly feel sorry for anyone that equates freedom exclusively with access to guns. There is so much more to life than that. It's also sad because it goes hand in hand with this paranoid way of looking at life, like there's always someone out there looking to attack or take advantage of you. I'm not suggesting one should be naive and trust everyone, but it's sad if someone always feels like life is "me vs. them" or "me vs. the world" - how lonely. It's what can ultimately lead to the toxic thoughts that foment in the kinds of people who tend to perpetrate gun violence. In other countries where freedom isn't equated with guns, where there aren't anywhere near as many guns as people, there isn't this same paranoia that someone is out to get you behind every corner. Police don't come on every scene treating everyone they deal with like they could have an assault weapon, because the chances are very minuscule, whereas in the states police sometimes accidentally shoot people during routine traffic stops because they feel they need to react as though everyone is armed.
Which leads me to this idea of arming teachers with the goal of keeping students safe from gun violence. It's absurd for many reasons.
1 - I don't know a single teacher who wants to be armed or wants there to be more guns around them than there already might be. If you show me a teacher who wants to be armed, I would question their motives for becoming a teacher in the first place. Most become educators because they want to mentor and better the lives of their students and empower them with knowledge to solve problems. Guns and violence are the antithesis of this. So, even if the law changed and teachers could carry guns, very few, if any, would. As a teacher, being expected to use a weapon or take a bullet for my students should not now, or ever be, part of my job description.
2 - The gun would have to be locked away safe from students, so then it wouldn't be easily accessible. If it's too accessible, a student could get access to it and start an incident.
3 - In an active shooter scenario, anyone else who also shows a firearm that isn't wearing a police or SWAT uniform could easily be confused as a perpetrator and then get shot, or at least make the real law enforcement take longer to figure out who the perpetrator is
4 - Educators are already paying for many of their supplies out of their own pockets. Many schools cannot afford to give teachers the resources they need to teach, or pay them what they are worth, and now there would be another huge cost added on top of that? Yeah right.
This current national conversation angers me because it wastes time and takes away from actual productive solutions being offered and considered.
Numerous countries have dealt with their gun control issues and successfully reduced the number of incidents and people killed, and all of them have done it by somehow reducing the number of guns in circulation and making access more difficult. This is fact. Anyone who argues that more guns make people safe is willfully ignorant at this point. If that were true, America would be the safest nation in the world instead of one of the most dangerous, in terms of gun violence.
There are thousands, maybe millions of American teens who are speaking out against violence because they have already seen enough in their lifetimes. That doesn't seem radical or hard to believe at all to me, and yet the conspiracy theories are swirling. In any case, I have hope that something will change as long as the people don't let this topic just fall by the wayside yet again. I don't want to hear anymore sickening news stories that could have been prevented by the implementation of common sense laws, like banning assault weapons and improving background checks. There is no reason it should be easier to get a gun in Florida than it is to vote.
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