One of things the United States of America is known for is how many of the people love their guns. With gun ownership rising among the population, the worry for mass shootings has increased. According to the gun violence archive the numbers from mass shootings have increased by quite a lot over the past 8 years. In 2014 there were 214 mass shootings whereas in 2020 there were 611. 

The control debate can be traced all the way back to the time of revolutionary war, when the second amendment was written, it wasn’t very clear what it stated. Some believed it was trying to state that guns should only be used in a militia in act to stand up to the government if it is corrupt. Others thought it was put in place to protect civilians’ right to bear arms. 

The debate on guns is very controversial; you have those who are totally against any form of gun control and see it as a form of tyranny, whereas there are those who want strict gun laws and some even want guns banned as a whole. Guns can be very dangerous and a lot of the time the owners don’t always know how to properly care for them. 

When owning a gun it is vital to keep it in a locked safe out of touch from young children. You should not keep a loaded gun near a child, and this has happened multiple times where the child becomes curious and either hurts themselves or someone else by accident. 

When going through the process of purchasing a gun, the owners should be expected to learn how to properly care for them and keep themselves and others around them safe. Gun owners should have to go through a number of precautions when storing their firearm. 

One of the biggest fears parents have when sending their children to school is that they might not see them again. When we hear about school shootings we think “oh that could never happen to me” or “that’s so unlikely of ever happening here”. Now that may be true that it doesn’t happen all the time, it should still be a concern of teachers and faculty members. 

Unfortunately with the world we live in, students not only in other schools across the nation and even in our own school district have to go through Alice training. Last week at Clear Creek Amana High School students were taught how to participate in an Alice drill. They were told how they should barcade doors and what to do in case of an emergency. Students were expected to take this seriously and be active thinkers in this drill.

Teachers at CCAHS have been participating in the ALiCE drill for quite a while now. Ryan Paulson the dean of students at CCAHS stated “Trainings started before the Covid shut down so they have been going on for a few years now, but for obvious reasons the process had been interrupted. This year we were finally ready to implement it with students.” Paulson also mentioned how students and teachers did an excellent job in participating in the ALiCE drill and really engaged in the learning of these new strategies to protect themselves and others around them. 

The CCA district plans to keep having students participating in ALiCE drills as a way to take extra precautions if an emergency were to ever occur at the school. Schools and parents should not have to worry about the students not returning home, due to someone else’s poor choices.