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According to a CNN, a survey of the nation’s teachers indicates that “nearly three-fourths of the nation’s teachers say they personally would not bring a firearm to their school if allowed, but most educators believe armed guards would improve campus safety.”

If we truly want to keep our children safer while they’re at school, metal detectors and armed security personnel are not the panacea. Our country needs to pull it’s paranoid head out of it’s red, white and blue ass and prove that lives are more important than guns. We wouldn’t need to look to the government for gun reform if people who own guns would treat that “right” as a serious responsibility. It isn’t up to the schools or the government to raise children who are less likely to become violent. It’s up to parents and guardians to show kids what being responsible and respectful mean. Empathy and compassion are learned at home, not in our Lord of the Flies school system.

Our society is failing to address the underlying causes of gun violence — ignorance, poverty, and inadequate mental health care. Forget the Christian Right and their bullshit family values. Stop listening to the inflammatory rhetoric of the fearmongers. We are losing the sense of trust and community that a society needs to flourish.

A better future is something we should all be working toward together if for no other reason than a united and sincere desire to be decent human beings.