| Janet Joyce Friday, December 21, 2012 |
The hate filled shooting spree that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut was both a tragic loss of life and devastating disruption of life. In a moment of pure evil, those beautiful chldren lost their lives along with 5 heroic teachers and staff. It is still very hard to even write anything about this event as the tears begin to flow freely.
Today, the NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre spoke at a press conference in Washington, DC to give their view of the events and how future tragedies of this nature can be avoided. Needless to say that the remarks were not very well received by school administrators in the Long Island area.
The reactions of parents, teachers and school administrators ranged from hesitation to anger on Friday after a proposal by the nation’s largest gun-rights lobby to put an armed police officer in every school. One of those who is outraged at this ludicrous idea is Superintendent Hank Grishman of the Jericho, schools on Long Island. He says putting more guns in schools won’t make children safer.
“Their solution to resolve the issue around guns is to put more guns in the equation?” said Girshman, an educator for 44 years. “If anything it would be less safe for kids. You would be putting them in the midst of potentially more gunfire.”
During the press conference, LaPierre stated that children would be much better protected if there were armed guards stationed in every school in America. In fact, he put out a call for congress to enact legislature immediately that would put this into motion as soon as possible.
Parent and community activist Helen Gym in Philadelphia believes the NRA’s proposal is “extraordinarily opportunistic.” Philadelphia schools have debated and rejected the use of armed guards or police officers in its city schools. The district, with about 146,000 students in nearly 250 schools, instead relies on unarmed school police.
The controversy of armed or unarmed will continue to wage regardless of whether or not assualt weapons are banned. But, that does not stop some schools from having them on grounds. There are an estimated 10,000 school resource officers, most of them armed and employed by local police departments, currently in the nation’s schools, according to Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers.
Is this making the children safer? There is currently no way to estimate the effectiveness of this type of security answer to the problem of rampage shooting within the nation's schools. One the one hand it is preposterous that the United States of America has to make a decision whether or not to place armed guards within the schools that are in every community. However, it is also preposterous that there are people in this world that have the thought of taking guns into a school and shooting defenseless children.
Whichever way this goes, it should always be the priority in the minds of leader and parents that our children deserve the very best protection that we can give them. After all, they are our next generation, aren't they?
janetj@longislandyellowpages.com Appears In: Education
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