Australia does not have an overt gun culture, well, nothing like the US. We have no rights to bear arms, conceal weapons or “packing heat” just in case. So this kind of sign makes no sense to most of us. It’s bizarre and a little scary.
But in the US, versions of this are increasingly being erected outside schools with the support from the gun-toting teachers, the students, the parents and the local community. When it comes to protecting their students and staff, these schools are going out all guns blazing (bad pun).
“Please be aware that the staff at Medina ISD may be armed and will use whatever force is necessary to protect our students,” this sign reads. Others popping up around Texas have similar wording. They don’t call it the wild west for nothing.
The local media covering the sign proliferation has also asked the local school management and parents about what they think, and they didn’t come across any resistance.
The Medina school’s superintendent Penny White thinks the sign will be an excellent deterrent.
“I think that anybody who might have a thought about harming someone in mind might think twice about it,” she told local TV station KSAT.
A mum of two young sons who was interviewed had this to say: “Schools have been a target for, for lack of a better word, crazy people, and I’m perfectly fine with it.”
It’s an interesting way of thinking that arming people is the way to reduce gun violence, crimes and deaths. When you look at the US statistics, it kind of tells a different story. Here are the 2015 ones:
332 mass shootings, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker,
13,473 people died from gun injuries – more than 1500 were “unintentional”.
A toddler shoots someone about once a week.
And then there are these statistics:
So many people die annually from gunfire in the US that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country.
There about 300 million guns in the US held by about a third of the population.
But this is probably the only number these Texan school communities are hearing: In 2015 there were 64 school shootings.
So how do the US gun crime stats compare with Australia’s, where there are much, much, much stricter firearms controls in place.
Here are a couple telling direct comparisons:
In 2014 Australia experienced 1.02 gun deaths per 100,000 people. In the US, this number was 10.54.
In Australia we have 15 guns per 100 residents, putting us at 41st in the world. The US has 89, making them number one.
Seems a no-brainer that a proliferation of firearms leads to more deaths. So let’s hope we never see signs like these outside our schools.
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