At Gardena High School in L.A. on Tuesday a bullet discharged from a gun a 10th grade student was carrying inside his backpack injured two students. One of the victims was a fifteen year old girl who has had to go through emergency surgery and at the moment is in criticial condition. The other victim was a 15 year old boy who suffered a neck wound, but is now considered in stable condition. When the shot occured, the student said, "sorry," and made it seem like it had been an accident. He was taken to the police station as the school was put into lock down. A friend of the student said he brought the gun to school to protect himself from fights. Many law enforcement agencies responded right away to the scene and had originally said three people were shot and they did not know who the shooter was. The school has a security policy of checking bags and backpacks before entering the school, so it's a mystery as to how the student got inside with a gun. The best guess is that not every student is checked because the searches are at random. Kids and parents at the school say there is a lot of racial tension. One parent says, "there's usually fights everyday, you're going to see blacks against whites and whites against blacks every single day," and "spanish, whites, Samoans — they don't care what race. Every day there's a fight." Gardena is ranked as one of the district's lowest performing high schools. About 35% of its students drop out. The principal had made it his goal back in the fall to create a dicipline committee, as behavioral problems at the school are nothing new.
It's always scary to hear of a school shooting, or any shooting for that fact. The nation continues to mourn over the tragic shooting in Tuscon only a little over a week ago, and now here's another story of the misuse of a gun. It almost seems like a day cannot go by without hearing another similair news report. Obviously, something needs to be done with gun control because what we have now is not working. I understand there are very practical uses for a gun--hunting, the military, policemen for protection. However, overall I think they are an evil weapon. I personally would never want to own one, in fact, I never want to touch one. Too many people who are not fit to carry a gun seem to be able to get ahold of one way too easily. The mentally ill, for one, are especially scary. With a gun they may kill themselves, or countless other people as well. The way gun laws are now make our country very unsafe. My suggestion would be that in order to get a gun a person would need to have a throughall background check and also pass a gun safety course. I think this could greatly help cut down the number of shootings that occur today. As for a solution for the high school mentioned in the article, I think they should mandate that every student be checked before entering the school. This may take extra time and extra money to hire more security people, but in the end I think the safety of the school would be greatly inhanced. I also think that an escourt service should be set up for the kids who have a dangerous travel home with gangs roaming the streets. If they had a police office walking with them, I think it would cause any gang member to think twice before attacking. Gun control has been debated and talked about for years and years and years, and little seems to be done about it. I really hope that this time something will.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41138365/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
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