My Neighbor: Student or Shooter?

My Neighbor: Student or Shooter?

In April 2011 at Leander High School during the school's first lunches, a wing of the school was place on lockdown and blocked off from everyone. Classes that were in that wing were escorted one by one by the school's principle and a police officer. Students during that lunch period were looking out the windows of the school trying to see what was going on. Looking into the parking lot, it was filled with emergency personnel vehicles. At one point, you heard a lot of talk about two EMS workers carrying out a body bag on a stretcher and being placed into the back of an ambulance.

Heading back to class from lunch, you could see the look of everyone's faces filled with curiosity and wondering what was going on. A few hours later, the school alarm was going off and everyone is forced to evacuate the building. Walking out into the parking lot, all that is visible are the emergency vehicles as well as the fire department trucks coming into the already jammed parking lot. Looking across the street there were news vans out in the field across the street filming the chaos taking place at the school. Teachers are calmly telling students that the school is under a bomb threat and not to worry. An hour or so goes by and the school is finally able to re-enter the building, but not their class, we are told to head into the competition gym. Once packed into the gym, the principles and a few police men walk in and inform the school that a student shot has herself in the head, committing suicide in a bathroom downstairs.

In Concealed Carry on Campus, by B. Robert Shibley, from Pajamas Media, points out that a movement has arisen that students in college are promoting that license to conceal the use of a weapon on campus in the likelihood that somehow preventing another violent act happening on a school campus (Shibley). Since 2000, there have been a tremendous amount of school shootings across the United States on school campuses; elementary, secondary, and college. They can happen at any given time and any given place. The question that everyone constantly asks, will there ever be a day where students and or the faculty of the school should and can be able to carry a concealed weapon on the campus to help prevent another day like Columbine, Red Lake Massacre, the Amish School, Virginia Tech massacre, Northern Illinois University, and most recently the school shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Based on the subject, I decided to conduct a survey around work, asking if students should be allowed to carry a concealed weapon on campus. The workers vary in a age range of eighteen to sixty-seven. Majority of the workers did not agree on the topic, because of students being so young and immature. One co-worker, Martha feels that students should not be allowed to carry a concealed weapon on a campus, because of statistics having shown that