New GUN Debate Rocks Congress – Here’s The Issue

(USNewsMag.com) – In a video, Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican, and New York Representative Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat, argued only days following the Nashville school massacre that killed three pupils plus three adults.

Massie said that teacher-carry schools had never had a shooting at the school. Bowman declared loudly and often that more firearms cause more fatalities.

After tragic circumstances, voices and tempers increase. In such instances, the desire to act is almost irresistible.

Over the last several decades, the amount of weapons in America has skyrocketed, with more firearms than people there are. Federal crime figures reveal that firearm murders declined 40% during 1993–2018. Gun-related nonfatal incidents fell by 71%.

The 2020/21 school period has the most shootings in schools with victims this century. Long-term patterns reveal no growth in instructor, employee, or pupil suicides or murders.

The government found that through 2009 and 2020, the incidence of nonfatal victims of crime, including violence and theft, for children between the ages of 12 through 18 dropped from 51 for every 1,000 pupils to 11 pupils, making schools safer.

Representative Massie’s claim that schools with teacher-carry have never experienced a shooting in school is correct. A RAND Corp. study conducted in January 2023 indicated that instructors and school security personnel had accidentally discharged guns. RAND identified no reliable evidence on whether teachers being armed would raise or decrease gun violence across eight distinct areas, including suicides and attacks on schools.

Most schools are either gun-free or employ severe rules about who may carry, and many schools have armed staff despite scant evidence that they discourage violence.

The 2018 Florida Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre showed how many warning signals police, social workers, and school officials overlooked. Also, the police require improved training.

Saying that school safety officials need to improve is extremely unsatisfactory, but it may be the best choice, particularly if the haste to do anything means doing something we already understand is counterproductive, impossible, or both.