Whom Do You Blame?

Skylar Tarkington, Editor

It’s sad that I even have to write about this but, school shootings have been happening more and more frequently. Recently, there was the Florida school shooting on February 14th. A former student who had been expelled from Stoneman Douglas High School, pulled a fire alarm then began to open fire on students and staff. It has become a hot topic in politics about the possibility of enforcing strict gun laws for the betterment of society. Is that really the case though?

There are two sides to this issue and they are, do you blame the gun or the shooter? The Right side of politics blame the shooter while The Left tend to blame the gun. It’s ridiculous to think that people would blame a gun instead of the person. Guns have been around for a long time and they have done a lot of good. In many cases shootings have been stopped because of being able to use guns as defense. It is not the gun that decides to go out and shoot children it’s the person. These shooters have something mentally wrong with them to decide to do something like this. Why should the mass be punished because of the actions of the few? It’s been proposed that schools start to have better security, which is an amazing idea. How often do you see high security federal building reporting that there was a shooting? Just because something is illegal do you really think that’s going to fix the problem? Drugs for example are illegal but there are still cases of people being arrested for drug possession. Banning guns or enforcing stricter gun laws will only create a black market for these guns. The people that really want their hands on guns for all the wrong reasons will find a way.

The government and the school districts do not need to fight for more gun laws, they need to fight for better security. There needs to be a system to mentally check that purchasers of fire arms are mentally sound to own such things. If the mentally unstable do get their hands on these guns, then the schools will have plenty of security to be able to protect their students and staff. Do you give credit to the hammer for building a house or do you give credit to the carpenter.