School Shootings: More Or Less Guns
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It seems like United States of America has a unique problem related to guns. I certainly don't remember being taught at school in Israel or earlier in Ukraine about how to survive a potential gun shooting by a rouge student or other kind of terrible person. Here in Israel they do point us to the direction of a bomb shelter. So we would know where to run when a siren is heard. But that's about it.
Of course school shootings are not primarily an American problem. Things of that nature happen everywhere. It just seems like America has the worst statistic when it comes to it.
There are 2 solutions that people bring out. Both have their pros and cons. And today I want to show you what solution I would use to stop, or least, greatly decrease the problem of school shootings.
Solution 1: Introduce stronger gun control laws.
A lot of people in America are in favor of prohibiting guns. They believe that the safety is more important than freedom. Their argument can be understood in such a way: If it will be harder to get a gun, less people will have a gun. And therefor it will be less likely that a person with a gun will enter a school to shoot at other people there.
It does not guarantee anything pretty much. Criminals for example are banned to have guns to begin with. But they still get them regardless. And criminal types are those more likely to cause a shooting to begin with. And people who want to do something illegal will never care about a law to begin with. And if we saw from alcohol prohibition and then drug prohibition, as soon as something is prohibited, it just opens up an unregulated black market for it. So there is a possibility of it getting worse.
But mathematically speaking, less guns, means less people shooting those guns. So this might help mitigate the issue to some extend. At least according to people that support it.
Solution 2: Add more guns.
United States of America proudly states that it's a Free Country. Its constitution is very much a statement of Freedom. And one big part of it's constitution is the Second Amendment, or the right to own a gun. How much actual freedom there is in United States is debatable, but here we have a constitutional law ( set on the values of Freedom ) that is very much making gun control law proposals very unlikely to happen.
Of course this gun prohibition idea doesn't sit well with a lot of American gun owners. They enjoy their Second Amendment rights and do not want to be stripped away from them. So they defend an opposite position.
As we already looked in the previous chapter gun control theoretically might simply fail and might make it harder for non-criminal people to protect themselves from criminals. If you have a gun yourself and you are a law obeying citizen, that gun is an instrument of law. A device for protection against crime. Not a device for crime.
So the proposal of the opposite side is that schools should have armed personal. Perhaps even armed students. So when a rouge one tries to shoot people, those armed people could fight back. And in such balance the chances.
Pros and Cons
The first solution is obviously an attack on freedom. The second solution is more like a not very good attempt at fighting back the arguments of the first solution. While trying to present a case that will protect freedoms from being taken away.
Freedom is extremely important. The whole point of why school shooting are such a big deal, revolves around freedom being such a big deal. A person owns his body. It's statistically safe to assume that this person also doesn't want this body to be penetrated by bullets. And it safe to assume that a person doesn't want to be dead. And this freedom should be respected. If somebody pokes you with a knife, makes holes in you with a gun or kills you without your consent for it, it is a very gruesome violation of your freedom. Therefor it is a big deal to try and stop school shootings.
But from one side we have a solution that statistically will only increase bullets in the air. Therefor increase a chance of somebody being penetrated by one. And thus reducing freedom. And the other solution just reduces freedom to begin with. Something isn't right here. Somehow we arrived at a paradox.
There is got to be a solution that doesn't reduce freedom, but that insures safety of the child.
If we look at software on the other hand. We can see a similar thing. From one side there are those who want to harm users. Say, developers of computer viruses. Or say corporations that want your data. And there are proposed solutions for those. Apple for example proposes to reduce what software people can install by not allowing people to install apps outside of the official app-store. This is reduction of freedom. Similar to gun control.
Others propose using an anti-virus. A program that blocks bad things. Some kind of UBlock Origin. Which is fighting bad software with good software. But wait a second...
What about just using Free Software? Where you have the freedom and when you don't need to block nothing, because you control the computer...
I know!
Solution 3: Make schools not mandatory.
Kids are in schools in predictable times because it's mandatory for them to be in school in those predictable times. And this is obviously an attack on freedom that nobody ever noticed. Because paternalism is a bitch and likes to pretend as a good idea. But also it makes kids in schools at those predictable times a good target for those who want to make a lot of people depressed.
What I propose is not related to guns. Keep the second amendment. That is not what causes the problem. The problem is caused because we deny kids the freedom to decide whether they even want to go to school to begin with.
If we don't make schools mandatory, some kids will never go to school at all. But it's those who go and don't pay attention to the lesson anyway. At least they don't gonna feel like wasting time. But the most important is that if there will be a sense of danger. If the kids will be scared of the school, for lets say a gun emergency, they will not go there either. And therefor will not get shot.
Schools, if they would want kids to attend, will need to invest in making them feel safe. Adding more guards. Putting a proper metal detector. Perhaps, as a bonus, they can be open at strange hours. Perhaps different hours every day. Randomly selected every-time, to confuse anybody who plans a shooting. Or to just be publicly open like malls or supermarkets. But instead of selling sugar, they would sell knowledge to kids.
The testing system will stay the same. But the kids will no longer be pressured to study in a particular pace. Because they could study as quickly or as slowly as they want. Of course parents and perhaps the government would need to invest into programs to encourage kids to learn. But I don't think it will be necessary. At the moment kids do not want to go to schools because they have to. As soon as they will not have to, but it will be a thing to do to prove that you are growing up or something, schools will become much more popular. And in the same time much safer.
I think with every big problem we can look for violations of freedom that cause those. And attack those violations. Instead of creating new ones.
Happy Hacking!!!
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