Tuesday, February 27, 2018
How "the good guy with a gun" stops "the bad guy with a gun"
Spoiler: they don't.
At least not enough to justify increasing the number of privately owned guns in America. A 2014 report released by the FBI examined 160 mass shooting incidents in the US. Only 5 in 160 shooters were stopped (meaning they were killed/wounded) by an armed individual not affiliated with law enforcement.
In comparison, 21 of 160 incidents were stopped by an unarmed individual "safely and successfully restrained" the shooter.
Studies have also suggest that the presence of a gun can encourage people to engage in confrontational behaviors that can escalate a situation (Zimmerman and Martin). This pose some very serious concern as to why Americans are so keen on increasing (and not just maintaining) the amount of gun that are privately owned.
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I agree with what you are saying here and i see that the Facts so that even when someone is armed they are not more likely to stop a shooter. But the idea that the government is trying to do is give the shooters and idea that the school is armed and that it will make the shooters think twice about coming and shooting up the school. Now that is completely different because how many times has someone thought twice about doing something stupid knowing that there were going to be harsh consequences?
ReplyDeleteThere have been incidents in the past where a school had armed personnel on campus as a mean of protection and prevention and it was still ineffective. See the most recent shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School, they had an armed security guard that took cover when he realized there was an active shooter on campus.
DeletePeople at schools are educators. They are not trained to be armed and to engage in combat. Even if you argue that you can train teachers, not every human being is mentally capable of entering combat. It's unacceptable that we have to ask our educators to prepare in the case that they need to engage combat. Why not solve the issue from the other end?
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ReplyDeleteTo me, the whole argument that people are safer when the public is armed can be refuted by the classic adage: You can't fight fire with fire.
ReplyDeleteThere have been at 17 reported cases of firearms going off on school campuses from January 1st - February 14th, 2018. 5 of those were accidental, 2 of those 5 resulting in death or injury. 29% of all firearm incidents on school campuses were on accident according to this figure.
Think about it. If you're on a school campus and someone's handgun goes off in their backpack, would you feel safe? Would you feel safe knowing that your entire campus is armed, and one accident could gravely injure, or even kill someone? I wouldn't. When you fight fire with fire, you only get more fire.
Just like firefighters don't add fuel to the fire when fighting a forest fire, our solution to solving gun violence shouldn't be more guns. We should instead focus on containing the fires, with much better gun regulation than we now have currently.
I personally think guns do not have a place in a civilized society, but I also realize that the right to guns is amended in our constitution. Whether or not we should be allowed guns is an entirely different question, but to me, it only makes sense that we should at least have better background checks, mental health checks more gun training, close private sale loopholes and guns being purchased on the internet.
I don't think gun violence will ever go away, just like forest fires won't ever go away, but preventing more cases of gun violence through gun regulation should be our next step forward in my eyes.