Reviews for Should Teachers Have Concealed Weapons in Schools?

Reviews For: Should Teachers Have Concealed Weapons in Schools?

RuathaWehrling
2007-11-18
ch 1,

abuseHey again! I was scrolling down the list of new essays and when I clicked on this one -- low and behold! -- I found it was yours. :) I promise, I'm not trying to stalk!

Also, as long as I'm writing to you, thanks for the notice on that dress code essay. Feel free to keep pointing out essays I may have missed (you and I seem to write about similar topics, so you know what to look for).

And now, to the essay. First off, as usual, your grammar is excellent and the piece as a whole is coherent and rational. Well done! I've got no real technical arguments, though I might warn you that if you're not careful, bluntly stating your conclusion ("We should allow teachers to bear concealed weaponry in their place of work") as the last sentence can come across as a bit childish. It's okay in this piece, but keep an eye on it. Subtlety is generally better, especially when you've already made your opinion known earlier in the piece.

Concerning your sentence: "What is to happen if a teacher brings a concealed weapon onto the campus and the teacher becomes the one to createthe school shooting?" -- First off, there's a little typo ("createthe"). Best clean that up. But I'd really like to offer a counter-point here:

Teachers opening fire on students is only one of two potentially-dangerous effects of this law. You later say, "one cannot have been diagnosed with any mental illnesses in the past or present nor can they have any bad marks shown from their background check," and that is true. However, that didn't stop mentally-unstable students at Columbine or Virginia Tech from getting ahold of guns, so it's not really a good defense against teachers either. On the other hand, if a teacher walking into school with an uzi over her shoulder, it's really not a "concealed" weapon anymore. Point is, the law isn't going to stop everyone who wants to shoot up a school, be they teachers or students. Some guns are going to get into unstable hands, and those unstable hands are unlikely to have filled out the paperwork for a concealed gun registry! As such, I don't see stating "teachers might use their concealed weapons to shoot kids" as particularly relevant to this topic. Know what I mean?

However, there IS one way in which teachers bringing legal, concealed guns to school COULD have a relevant effect on students' security. Let's say that your chemistry teacher carries a gun in her purse, which you noticed one day as she left the school. Let's also pretend that you have a seriously bad attitude and decide that the right way to deal with your lousy life is to kill a whole bunch of the kids that have picked on you lately. Now, it's hard to sneak a gun in to school, but pickpocketing from the Chemistry teacher -- or even just outright stealing the weapon from her bag while she's away from her desk... that you can do. Your mom will never even need to know.

There, as far as I am really concerned, is the real danger of having ANY weapon in a school (or any other public place). Even if we can trust the owners of the guns, we can't be sure that someone else less trust-worthy won't get ahold of them. This is true about police or security officers too, of course, not just teachers -- but since those types usually wear their weapons in the open, it would be harder for a student to successfully take them away and use them. A teacher, who is busy and not often paying attention to her weapon and who may or may not even have any self-defense training, is a lot easier target, if you're a student looking for a weapon.

For the record, this is one of those topics where I don't have a strong opinion. I think both sides have good points -- or, rather, that both sides have potential flaws in their points. But :) I feel it's my duty to play devil's advocate, so here you go!

Take care,
Ruatha

MrFlames
2007-11-17
ch 1,

abuseWhen setting up a counter-point to take down, don't belittle it beforehand (ie "Maybe that view was only expressed by *ignorant* teens but nonetheless, it is worthy of addressing.") First of all, it's poisoning the well. Second of all, it builds your ethos more if you successfully take down a respectable opposing view, and hurts your ethos if you dwell on the criticisms of unimportant people.

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