Twenty-one weeks into 2018, our country has witnessed twenty-three school shootings in which one person was injured or killed. This total equates to more than one school shooting per week. Unfortunately, our minds have become conditioned to hearing about school shootings, and as a society we are not responding as we should. Everyone should have the right to go to school and feel safe. A school should be a place where students can relax, their only goal being to learn. Believe it or not, school security prevents students from learning fully. The public policy challenge I will discuss is keeping schools safe. There was a mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, leaving seventeen dead and fourteen injured. A few months after this shooting, a Pew Research Center survey was conducted showing that fifty-seven percent of American teenagers fear that a shooting could happen at their school. One in four students are very concerned about the possibility of this happening. This shows that more than half of teenagers are afraid, which seems surprising but not surprising given our past. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Over two hundred and fifteen thousand students have been victims of gun violence in recent years. For the students, these encounters traumatized them for the rest of their lives. Not only are they afraid in the school environment, but they are afraid when they have human contact with people. They begin to question the decency of any human being's intentions, even if it just means passing someone while you're walking on a sidewalk. When a person experiences a troubling situation, it is human nature to not see things in the same positive light that they had before. Students aren't the only ones affected by this worrying trend. Teachers are also very scared when it comes to shootings. Teachers on campus are at the same risk as students, if not more. When these shootings happen, most adults feel responsible for protecting children. An example of this is when the heroic geography teacher sacrificed himself to protect a group of students from a shooting at a school in Florida. Students go to school for the sole purpose of learning and without teachers this would not be possible. It is very unfair that educators who work in schools have to fear for their lives when they are only trying to teach. No one should be afraid of being killed while simply doing their job. In order to resolve what appears to be a series of unfortunate events, teachers have suggested that they be armed to protect students from these shooters. After a listening session at the White House, the president came to the conclusion that allowing teachers to be armed could pose more problems than long-term solutions. There has been a lot of backlash and discussion about whether or not educators should be able to carry a gun for safety reasons. Instead of granting this, schools are emphasizing how to handle shootings through active shooter drills and training. Teachers and people who work in education are increasingly aware of how to handle these situations when they arise. often. However, when an active shooter arrives and begins shooting on campus, no amount of preparation can do him justice. The median age of shootersschool is sixteen years old. These future adults often have a history of mental illness, family complications, poverty or abuse. The media plays a huge role in the motivations of shooters. Jamie Rouse is a seventeen-year-old who attended Richland High School before deciding to shoot up the school. His actions lead to the death of a teacher and a student. After being interviewed about the shooting, Rouse made it clear that he did it because the movie Natural Born Killers made the act of killing fun and easy. Millions of children routinely play violent video games; among these millions, there is a couple who feel inspired by the murder. These select few players enjoy killing, not for the satisfaction of simply winning the game, but it goes deeper than that. In our society today, people thrive on violence. Finding a way to balance violence in the virtual, technological world and the real world is something that must be discovered to prevent more innocent children from losing their lives. School shootings have led to a heated debate over whether stricter gun controls would help end school shootings. This discussion seems endless. Pro-gun Americans will argue that it's not guns that kill people, but rather people who kill themselves. They believe that the withdrawal of weapons constitutes a violation of people's right to express their rights. I believe that restricting guns will only drive away people who use guns for the right reasons and that those who are determined to use them for the wrong reasons will continue to grab them. People wanting to participate in a school shooting will find a way to obtain a gun, even if it is illegal. For example, people continue to acquire drugs knowing that they are illegal. Therefore, I do not believe that gun control should be the priority when trying to find a solution to this problem. I believe the central topic should be awareness of mental illness. Again and again we see these murderers suffering from some sort of mental illness. It is unfortunate that many of these shootings could have been avoided if society paid more attention to sick people. Their thinking is just not in the right frame of mind. Now, I'm not saying their actions are justified, but if people took this disease more seriously, I really think we would see fewer school shootings. One of the reasons people tend not to talk about their mental state is society's portrayal of these individuals. Some people fear being considered “weird” or “different” if they talk about their unhealthy state of mind. As humans, we have been trained since our youth not to speak publicly about our problems that might involve something negative that we are going through. The government could do a better job of making people feel like it's okay to talk about their problems. They could do this by creating more advertisements, magazines, advertisements and campaigns on the subject. Overall, if more attention was paid here, more people would feel like they're not alone and that's when we'll see a difference in the world. The best government approach to solving this problem of mass shootings in the United States is for the government to be honest with the people. No law can be passed to permanently stop shootings. Gun control laws limit the.