One major area President Obama is targeting to reduce gun
violence is in our education system and our youth. We hear about school shootings
in the news, but do you know exactly how bad it is? A school shooting is defined as “an incident where a firearm was discharged at
a school infrastructure, including incidents of shootings on a school bus
or near school property while school is in session” according to Wikipedia. In the past ten years, there have been over
70 school shootings, and only 23 of those had no fatalities. This is an alarmingly high number, and only
the truly cruel school shootings get their 15 minutes of fame across the nation
on the news. Isn’t that what they
want? Attention? School shooters are seeking it in the most brutal
ways possible, but we are giving it to them!
We are giving in to what they want.
Is it not going too far to say that plastering these tragedies all over
the media is establishing a precedent for later shootings? That future school shooters will try to
copy-cat a former shooting because it got media coverage?
So how does this get fixed
President Obama? How do we make the
schools safe for children? In this
section of his plan, he states,
“The Administration
is calling on Congress to help schools hire up to 1,000 more school resource
officers, school psychologists, social workers, and counselors, as well as make
other investments in school safety. We also need to make sure every school has
a comprehensive emergency management plan so they are prepared to respond to
situations like mass shootings. In addition, the Administration is proposing to
help 8,000 schools put in place proven strategies to prevent violence and
improve school climate by reducing bullying, drug abuse, violence, and other
problem behaviors.”
So more counselors,
more officers and more plans; it all sounds like it will work, right? But let’s get down to the real question- how
are we going to pay for all of this? Does
President Obama have some magic pot of gold we didn’t know about? The money that this plan
takes to execute is really starting add up, my hope is we don’t have to
sacrifice any of the aspects of this plan that can really do some good.
School shootings are hard to pin down, whether they should be publicized or not. People need to know about these things so they are aware of the problem that needs to be addressed, otherwise it would go unnoticed and unresolved. But on the other hand I agree with you. Some kids see this in the news and want to be "famous". I think the real issue is with bullying in school (other than kids access to guns). For the most part these kids are pushed to such extremes that they feel they have no other chose but to exact revenge on the people who harmed them or on the people who did nothing to stop the bullying. I mean you never here about Jonny football hero and his popular friends shooting up a school.
ReplyDelete(Side note, the National Debt is mostly comprised of funds delegated towards Medicare and Social Security. As the population of the elderly rises, because of the baby boomers, the national debt will follow, and if Obama doubled the debt it would be at 21.2 trillion dollars, which it is not.)
Many times when we see school shootings on TV the shooter seems to usually take their own life at the end. Why is is that people say they only want attention when they'll never know if they got that attention when they're deceased? But seriously, the plan is to hire 1000 more people when teachers are being laid off by the thousands in all states. Hmmm.
ReplyDeleteI agree the media has a hand in sensationalizing these stories, but are they not giving the public what they want? News is now all about profits and if we were not watching 24/7 they would not cover it 24/7. Is it just another accountability issue? People are drawn to tragedy, that's why there are so many accidents on a freeway after one accident, the "omg look at that" next thing you know there is another one.
ReplyDeleteI do understand you are kind of line by lining Mr. Obama's plan of action but his plan beats the alternative, in my opinion. The opposition to the Mr Obama's plan suggests arming teachers or encapsulating our schools with armed guards and razorwire, very similar to a maximum security prison. I wouldn't want to go to a school like that, and I am glad my kids didn't have to either.
The problem is that there is NOTHING being done, nothing but silly immature parlor tricks by a completely ineffective and useless Congress. As I have uncovered in my blog, politicians are being bought and sold and WE the People are left holding the bag.
If this continues, and more mass-shooting occur, as they undoubtedly will, it is a matter of time since 90% of America thinks there are problems with gun sales. As a responsible gun owner I, and hundreds of thousands more like me, feel we need to close the "friendship" purchases and Internet loopholes and be helpful rather than obstructionists to protect our privilege of owning firearms.
I quoted you on this "Does President Obama have some magic pot of gold we didn’t know about? He has already almost doubled our national debt, but hey!” because it is inaccurate, and I have seen it passed around on Facebook, but not on a college research paper. In less than 3 minutes I can produce a wealth of factual information that disproves this via politifact.com or factcheck.org. For example “For the record, the debt nearly doubled under President George W. Bush. Only in that sense could Obama accurately be accused of proposing to double the debt again.” Has the debt increased under Mr. Obama? Absolutely, but to be fair we also had and are still in what most people consider another "great depression" with the difference coming from the amount of money the federal government dumped into the system to avoid the crash, or to minimize it, keeping a whole lot of Americans working. Apparently Congress is counting on America’s complete lack of interest or intelligence or the MASSIVE amount of money being spent on propaganda to keep us in the dark.
I can see your position and have a healthy debate on the guns, but this comment… This is part of the problem, mixing misinformation in with very good research confuses the situation.
I was more trying to reference how obama turns to spending money to solve problems in the U.S., and not trying to give actual facts by using the words almost and nearly. but i can understand how that can be misinterpretted, so i will change my writing.
ReplyDelete