Firearms in Higher Education

In recent years, active shooter incidents have taken the lives of many innocent students, faculty, and staff in the school system. In the past 13 years alone, there has been over 160 such incidents in the U.S. (Blair, Martaindale, & Nichols, 2014). In an attempt to combat these situations, society has started the legislature process of passing or trying to pass laws allowing for students and staff to carry firearms on college and university campuses. The process shows a hope of reducing the number of casualties and the time it takes for law enforcement to arrive. Although the theory does seem to make sense, what is not looked at are the issues that may arise from allowing such measures to be passed. These issues include students, barely adults, now being allowed to carry guns on campus and in dorms. Society must take a closer look at these issues and understand why it would be more important to push stricter gun laws and provide more training for law enforcement to handle these situations. Officers are already in the stages of learning new techniques and strategies to combat active shooter situations, such as ALERRT training. This type of training will assist in the foundation people already have in handling these types of situations. Officers will be better equipped to respond and give training to the public, in order to better prepare citizens. If society can take more time to not react, it may better help all the issues and see that firearms should not be allowed on higher educational campuses.