How Gun Violence Is Affecting Students

School students are getting worried with school shootings on the rise. “Each day 12 children die from gun violence in America. another 32 are shot and injured” website Sandy Hook Promise says. Gun violence has turned into a political debate about the right to bear arms even though kids’ death totals from gun violence and school shootings are on the rise. Last year there were 188 school shootings with injuries involved. 

Gun violence has been a rising issue in American schools and actions have not been taken. School shootings are breaking records every year for school shootings especially with injury. Lia Myers said “I think that school shootings has impacted how I feel coming to school and I feel that students should feel safe coming to school.”

Mass shootings are still a problem across the globe but the U.S. makes up thirty-three percent of all mass shootings with only five percent of the world’s population with that number rising each year. Even a kid could take a gun to school and shoot his teacher, and that is now an actual reality and there have already been cases of this happening. A teacher at Richneck Elementary School was shot by her first-grade student in January of 2023. It is scary that this is now a reality we live in where even the teachers are scared to go to school in fear that their own elementary school students could shoot them. 

Some schools are getting this new tool that is a whiteboard that then turns into a bulletproof panic room. Even some parents are sending their children with bulletproof backpacks. The American classroom is changing so much that students do not feel safe coming to school, especially the parents sending their kids to school and not knowing if they are gonna come back. Parent of Champaign Central High student Dawn Riegel had this to say, “It is crazy what school shootings have come to. When I was a kid we never had to worry about getting shot at school.”

The main reason for school shootings is people wanting to get back at somebody. Reed Wischhusen is in court for allegedly planning out an attack with homemade weaponry. He planned on doing a “Planned Hitman style attack to get revenge”, says BBC. This goes to show two things, one of which is proving that attacks are planned out, and the other one proves that revenge is the leading cause of most mass shootings. Ian Weber had this to say, “I do not think the schools are doing enough to protect the students. I don’t even think the metal detectors do anything” 

It does not help that it is so easy to get high-power guns. There needs to be something done to try to stop the shootings. More background checks are needed to buy guns, guardians should keep their guns in a gun safe so their kids can not get to it, and help others go through their stuff possibly through therapy. This is an epidemic in America and if something is not done soon it will dramatically affect the education system and how people see it. School shooting survivor Florence Yared had this to say at a Never Again Rally “The right to bear arms… does not and never will overpower the individual’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”