After the mass shooting that endangered the lives of many at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, President Donald J. Trump proposed the idea that teachers should be armed. Actually, not teachers, just “highly adept people.” This is his idea on how we can limit the amount of attempts of school shootings that are to come. Now, I am not foreshadowing or saying that there will be another shooting anytime soon, but looking at the past months, it has been occurring at a frequent rate. I believe that this will not help at all. How does it make sense to enforce the free-gun zone law on school property but allow guns to be present in schools?

First of all, teachers are people who have a degree that helps students acquire knowledge that needs to be learned at school. Their job is to teach and help students comprehend and succeed. A guidance counselor at Perry Hall High School, Jess Wasmer, said something very important at an interview with The New York Times that clearly shows how he feels about this idea.

“I think as educators we’re trained to nurture kids and foster kids, and our first instinct is to not shoot or harm them. What we need is more caring adults in these kids’ lives, not more guns,¨ Mr. Wasmer said.

While reading through many articles about this topic, I came across Wasmer’s quote and completely agreed. I don’t think there should be armed teachers to “prevent” any shootings. That is why we have resource officers whose job is to protect and ensure safety in our school. If we want to secure our schools more, why can’t we have more than one resource officer instead?

If we can’t increase the amount of resource officers, we could have more security within the school. This means more cameras, and more rules on how you can enter the school. At HHS, Principal Cynthia Prieto has said that we are not allowed to open doors for anyone who is coming from any side doors. At first, I thought it was irrelevant, but then I noticed that even the smallest rule could help out the safety for our school. At other schools in the United States, there are different drills that are used when there is a shooting. I believe that our school is very clear on what to do and would work if this were to occur.

To prevent any shootings from occuring, we shouldn’t need to arm teachers or staff. Instead, we could have more resource officers and have more cameras and rules about entering the school.

If our president believes that having armed teachers will make students feel safer, I disagree. I wouldn’t want to be near a teacher who has a gun by their desk. I wouldn’t even want to be in a school that has to have teachers armed because the government itself can’t improve gun laws. Would you?