"I don't want to be your hero…”
This 1987 song from the British rock band Johnny Hates Jazz was an antiwar cry against going off to faraway lands and dying for useless causes. Their lyrics include the phrase “Oh, send me off to war, with a gun in my hand, but I won’t pull the trigger…”
Well, problem is, when someone has a gun in their hand, you don’t know if or when they will pull the trigger.
Gun control has always been a problem in the United States since the 1960s, especially now, when certain schools want and are arming teachers to go into the classroom, a place of sanctity, where no weapon should be allowed. With the escalation of gun violence and schools becoming soft targets for deranged killers with automatic-assault rifles, people have to ask themselves — at what point do you place this kind of responsibility on an already overwhelmed teacher, when it is the government’s and law enforcement’s responsibility to protect the public, not a teacher who goes to university to learn how to teach children and give them an education for a brighter future. How can the American public accept these shenanigans from politicians and lobbyist who are only interested in self-service — for lining their pockets with the money from the NRA (National Rifle Association) and corporate gun manufacturers?
There is a bigger problem with this. When a teacher has to work with a weapon, he or she becomes a target; and there is something called liability. There are many issues to consider.
What if the teacher loses control and uses it by mistake on a student? What if a student jumps at a teacher and kills the teacher with the weapon, and then their classmates? What if the teacher in the event of a mass shooting, freezes and cannot pull the trigger? What if the teacher shoots and kills the wrong person by mistake? These are all situations which can create liability and cause a teacher to lose their job or even go to prison for not using their weapon appropriately.
Over and over again it has been suggested for Americans to enact laws which totally ban mass weapons sales across the country and assault rifles. The issue here is that, profit for people in power or in corporations has been given priority before the loss of life.
In the 1990s, Australians had a big problem with mass shootings and when their politicians united, they enacted laws to curb gun sales, making it not so easy to get weapons.
When will the United States learn to stop sacrificing their children over the Second Amendment? I am not proposing to eliminate the Right to Bear Arms completely.
Just deal with the problem with stricter gun laws. It can be done, perhaps difficult, but not impossible. Right now, there are over 400 million weapons just floating around the streets of the U.S. (nobody is certain how many). One thing is for sure, it is already too many and enough to arm every citizen in the United States and more. Why does it have to be this way?
Please stop placing teachers in this horrible position, between life and death — when that is clearly law enforcements’ work! Politicians ought to stop thinking of the profit margins and have the gumption to stand up, say something, enact laws and solve these problems.