With the ever-growing threat of school shootings happening amongst the United States of America, people have chosen to look elsewhere to help protect the least protected, the students. One such method is to arm the faculty. While there is some backlash, such as possible student access to the weapons, uncertainty of teacher person mental history, and the expenses of arming the faculty. Thus, this essay examines the reasons why arming faculty members in the school system is a good idea because itll minimize the threat level of a shooter, help law enforcement and help save student lives.
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Arming Faculty: the Truth and Reality
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Contents [show]1 Minimize the Threat Level.2 Helps the Law Enforcement3 Help Save Student Lives4 Counterargument5 Rebuttal6 Conclusion
Minimize the Threat Level.
Everybody believes that when people suggest arming faculty members, they automatically think of weapons (i.e. guns), but that isnt always the case. One reason that arming faculty members would be a good idea is that itll minimize the threat level of a shooter, for example, having the ability to detect a possible shooter and be able to control a situation with minimum losses. The ideology to arm faculty members in the school districts would be ridiculous to automatically think that a gun would help but it just might if its done right. Now, the ability to detect a possible shooter is something that could help protect the entire students, and faculty members lives. The whole idea of the ability to detect a possible shooter begins with looking for key aspects such as, history of social, emotional and mental disturbances, lack of ethics and or no meaningful friends. Another reason that would help minimize the threat level of a shooter, for example, be able to control the situation with minimum losses. When it states,
control the situation with minimum losses and the whole ideology of arming faculty members, everyone believes a gun yet its not the entire case. The controlling of the situation would be the chaos that happens when theres an active shooter in the school, being uniformed could help minimize that loss.
Helps the Law Enforcement
When the issue is brought up about arming the faculty members of the school districts, everyone thinks of cities where the first responders are a few blocks away but they dont think of the rural school districts across America. For instance, rural portion of Missouri has a school district called Plato R-5 School District, located in the northwestern part of Texas County. Area wise Texas County is the largest of Missouris 114 counties, hence its name as the second largest of the fifty states, it exceeds the smallest state, Rhode Island. If they should have an active shooter the nearest towns to Plato would be Houston, MO (28.1 mi & 35 min), Lebanon, MO (33.6 mi & 41 min), or Licking, MO (28.7 mi & 36 min). Based on that information, clearly arming the faculty would be a good idea because it would take clearly 28 to 33 miles away and anywhere from 35 to 41 minutes before any law enforcement could arrive. If anyone has ever been and or lived in a rural town with no law enforcement, everyone can agree that it takes awhile for emergency services to get to anyone including schools. Which can lead to the next idea about how arming faculty members is a good idea.
Help Save Student Lives
Half of the country believes that arming faculty members would help minimize the threat level meanwhile, the rest of the country strongly disagrees with that statement. With school districts being a gun free zone they are a weaker target and more susceptible to being a target for attacks. While already addressing the facts of the ideology behind arming the faculty and how some rural school districts across America dont have a police station right around the block to help them. Drawing it down to how can student lives be saved, either by undergoing a lot of training to have a better understanding on how to operate a weapon successfully in a complex, highly stressed situation and or a lot of emotional recognition brought into the school districts to help keep a shooting at bay. A Harrold Independent School District in Harrold, Texas, Mr. D. Thweatt has a plan called Guardian Plan. The program was simple, the school board would individually approve school employees who already held state concealed handgun licenses to participate in the program and the district would provide them with extra training (Thweatt, 2018). Again, Thweatt (2018) explained it best as, Think of how schools are set up: They typically have long, branching corridors with rooms off those corridors. The buildings themselves create their own gun-silencing and incident silo-ing effect. If a school has one resource officer on-site, and he or she is at one end of the school, it may not be feasible for that officer to detect, let alone respond in time to, a deadly threat. You need eyes and ears strategically placed throughout the school, and they need to be equipped to deal swiftly with a life-threating attack.
Counterargument
Inescapably arming teacher/faculty members wouldnt be a good idea because of possible student access, the uncertainty of teacher personal mental history, and expenses of arming the teachers/faculty. To even suggest having weapons near students is a ridiculous idea, there is a high chance of, for instance, high school students, who can overpower the teacher and get ahold of the weapon. Additionally, how can people know the personal mental health history of the teachers/faculty who will be having this option to hold a weapon, they could easily snap and be the active shooter. Lastly, the expenses of arming the teachers/faculty will be too far expensive for not only the school systems because theyre already so strapped for money, arming them would be ridiculous to add to the budget. To sum up, arming teachers/faculty wouldnt be a good idea but instead a horrible idea.
Rebuttal
Some people may argue that arming teachers/faculty is not the way to go, Thweatt (2018) said it best, Those opposed to this type of a plan argue that allowing faculty and staff to carry concealed firearms makes schools more dangerous, not less. Yet many of those same people are OK with the status quo uniformed, armed security guards carrying firearms on school campuses (not to mention airports, stadiums and malls) in open holsters. Their objection reflects a misunderstanding. but in all honestly arming teachers/faculty is a great start because there would be certain key steps to make sure students cant gain access to the weapons. Including mental health screenings and let alone the expenses of arming the teachers/faculty would be calculated to not be a big effect on the schools account or taxpayers. For instance, when making sure students cant gain access to the weapons, would be having the weapons in a locked safe with only the teachers/faculty who knows the password. The mental health screenings would be given to all the teachers/faculty who want to have this additional job would be screened to make sure mentally theyre capable to understand the importance they have. Lastly, the expenses of arming the teachers/faculty would be calculated to not affect the school account or taxpayers wallets because they can have it where the local police department give training that would drop the cost of arming the teachers. Thus, arming the teachers/faculty in the correct, logical way can be a good idea to help protect the least protected.
Conclusion
Taking everything into consideration, this was a pretty diverse yet highly argumentative topic on why arming faculty members in the school system is a good idea. There are clearly apposing notions on how to accomplish this problem, yet there is nonetheless an agreeance from both sides of the argument and thats helping to protect the least protected, the students of school districts. If both sides will work to find an equal medium on this most abrupt issue that has occurred in this year of America, the students of America will no longer be a target of shooters. If it happens to be with faculty members being armed with weapons to help deter the shooters or even faculty members being equipped with diverse knowledge on how to detect a possible shooter, if its done correctly faculty members being equipped with a weapon could very well be the answer.
When an essay has a Counterargument and a Rebuttal in the paper, the reader can already tell that this paper will be filled with a non-biased opinion on a topic. When it comes to Ethos and what it can do for the paper, it creates the perfect amount of creditability yet a challenge for the writer. Its very easy to get lost in really high lightening the writers opinion on a topic, thus, is why counterarguments helps redirect the writer to look at the other sides opinion of the topic. When looking at the other sides opinion it can bring up new information to look into, so the writers essay wont be so tunneled vision on just one side, they have to literally weigh out each side to find the equal medium. The Rebuttal though helps the writer further their opinion by shutting down the other sides opinion with facts, thats how a counterargument and rebuttal work for a writer. They can look at both sides and enrich their research by keeping in mind not only their opinion but also the other sides too. Thats how it adds credibility to the paper, it makes the writer further their research to get more in-depth or enriched evidence to help their case without losing the main idea of why theyre writing the paper to begin with.
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Arming Faculty: The Truth and Reality. (2019, Apr 01).
Retrieved July 20, 2022 , from https://studydriver.com/arming-faculty-the-truth-and-reality/
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