The tragic school shootings of the past few weeks have brought up many important issues dealing with violence and youth in our country. It is obvious better relationships must be made between students and administrators if we hope to solve this problem. Arming teachers, as state Rep. Frank Lasee, R-Bellevue, proposed last week is not the solution.
It seems misguided that anyone would think the solution to a problem of violence is to throw more guns into the mix. It is nothing but a foolish and hyperbolic reaction to the latest wave of school shootings and does nothing but grab the media's attention.
In defense of his legislation, Lasee compared arming teachers in Wisconsin with similar initiatives in Israel and Thailand—countries characterized by perpetual violence and police states. This is an absurd comparison.
While the latest school shootings make us all feel like school violence is a huge issue, statistics actually show it is on the decline. According to the National School Safety Center, the nation saw a 50 percent decline in school-associated violent deaths from the 1992-'93 school year to the 2004-'05 school year.
This proposal only exacerbates our fear about the safety of our youth in schools when in fact violence is much more common elsewhere. Gunfire outside of schools takes the lives of 3,024 children each year. Six children are killed every day from family violence, and 90 percent of homicide victims under the age of 12 are killed by adults.
This editorial board believes putting guns in the hands of teachers would only expound a problem that obviously runs much deeper.
Also, it has the potential to facilitate more school shootings since it would be easier to steal a teacher's gun than to sneak one into the building. A student in a fit of rage may get into a fight, but if there is a gun in the classroom who knows what could happen.
The bottom line is that schools are still safe for children and shootings are aberrations in the long-term. The knee-jerk reaction of arming teachers is not an acceptable proposal and hopefully our state Legislature feels the same way.
