The Debate Over Guns in Schools Heats Up

In response to the school shooting tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, the California State Teachers Retirement System has announced that it will sell all of its stock holdings that are associated with firearms. Such holdings include the Freedom Group, producers of one of the brands of semiautomatic weapons that Adam Lanza used during his rampage, according to The New York Times.

Since this announcement, other states have been looking at their retirement investments to find out exactly whom they have been supporting. In this public act of retaliation against automatic and semiautomatic weapon accessibility, the debate over how to make schools safer against potential attacks continues to blaze.

Armed Police Officers in Schools

According to the The Daily News, the president is considering a proposal to invest in increasing the presence of armed resource officers in schools. California Senator Barbara Boxer made the recommendation in a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden, who seemed open to the idea. Said Boxer, “If a school district wants to have a community policing presence, I think it’s important that they have it.” The NRA has also expressed support for this proposal, which they consider a better solution than an all-out assault weapons ban.

The Backlash

In a letter to Vice President Joe Biden, the American Civil Liberties Union has expressed its dissatisfaction with Boxer’s proposal to place more armed police officers in schools. According to The Huffington Post, the ACLU considers this solution misguided and claims that police officers in school are a recipe for disaster. Resource officers often focus on petty issues and may seem intimidating to minority students as well as students with disabilities. According to Deborah J. Vagins, the ACLU senior legislative counsel, “Criminalizing minor misbehavior that should be handled by teachers or school administrators has serious consequences for kids and only contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline.”

In another article from The Huffington Post, Mark Kelly, husband of former Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords, also vocalized that armed resource officers are not the answer. Placing guards in school would inevitably lead to a “trend” of putting guards in all public places. In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Kelly asked, “And then what do you do, do you put a security guard on a school bus? How about in a church or a movie theater? When does it end? What it really comes down to is Congress doing the right thing and coming up with some responsible, common-sense changes to gun violence laws.” Kelly has been pushing the government and American citizens to look at the bigger picture. Gun safety is the big priority, and placing guards in schools is merely a defensive tactic.

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