For the past couple of years the U.S has had the huge political issue of school shootings, but a new contestant has entered the ring, China and its school stabbings.

The United states has been a hot topic in global discussions with its huge problem of school shootings.  This is an issue that is so brutal and horrible that no school should have to go through it but no matter what the U.S public education has tried this issue seems to keep occuring.  Lots of the blame for these shootings were blamed on the U.S’s loose gun policies, but recently a new country is facing this issue, China. However, in China the issue isn’t guns its knives and the body counts are very close to as high as the United States.  This raises the questions will stabbings become in issue in the U.S, and is it the guns causing the high death toll or another factor?

One student that goes to a local high school believes that stabbings in schools won’t be a factor due to the fact that U.S schools are constantly increasing security,” No we have guns and definitely are prepared due to are past with school violence!”  Said Triton junior Josh Quintiliani This claim makes sense based on the fact that U.S schools are being trained on how to deal with gun violence and guns provide much more firepower, range, and overall are easier to kill with compared to knives. Another student that agreed with Quintiliani was Luc-Daniel, I think that schools already have strong defenses put in place since our primary issue is schools shootings and a knife is a lot less dangerous.

One interesting argument is the issue gun regulation or mental health?  One of the points this argument is based on is the fact that the death tolls of these stabbings were very close to being as high as the death tolls in gun violence cases in schools.  Triton junior Kyle Brancelone believes that guns are the issue, “Stabbings are definitely an issue but in my opinion it is unfair to compare them to guns since guns can cause way more damage to way more people in a much smaller amount of time I think the issue at hand is definitely still the guns, however adding more mental evaluations would definitely help.”

Despite the fact the Brancelone doesn’t believe the issue is mental health and that guns play a bigger role in school violence then knives do, and Quintiliani believes that knives won’t play a big role in school violence compared to guns Nei Hieken has a different opinion, “I think that no matter the weapon if someone is planning on doing harm to a school it is going to happen, therefore we should implement other means of stopping violence like mental health evaluation at schools and counselling.”  

So, what does this mean for Triton.  Well there have been some scares earlier in the year were police have have been involved in potential threats but all have been hoaxes.  Currently Triton has a lot of safety drills and procedures along with a school resource officer put in place if ever a situation does arise but, only time will tell if other methods such as a mental health evaluations will be added into the lineup in order to keep our school safe.