Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary School and NIU. All of these schools are connected in the most tragic of ways.

At each of these schools, and sadly many others, student lives were tragically ended through a senseless act of gun violence. After each of these tragedies, our nation came together to address the issue of how do we prevent this tragedy from happening again. What can we do to ensure our children’s safety while trying to get an education?

Currently, the most debated topic is allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons in school. The fact is, there are already 18 states where teachers are allowed to carry concealed weapons as long as they have written approval by either the principal or school board. Some schools in Texas are already implementing these rules and have teachers carrying weapons.

My question is this: Since when did the solution to keeping our children safe lead to placing our children in potentially more danger?

By publicly announcing that their teachers can and may be carrying a weapon, children have the potential to act upon one of the most common aspects of being a child: curiosity. What’s to stop a child from acting upon their curiosity when a teacher has their back turned to the class to write on the board or is walking around the room answering questions? What’s going to stop that child from going through the teacher’s desk looking for a weapon? What’s going to stop that child from hurting themselves or another student?

As well, do the teachers really need to be dealing with the psychological aspect of carrying a gun and being mentally prepared to use it if the time comes? They have enough to deal with as it is; do we really need to include that much more stress into their lives?

“Extraordinarily bad policy idea and unsafe,” said journalism instructor Jason Akst. “Is it constitutional? I don’t know, but I think it’s a bad idea.”

When I was in junior high school in LaSalle, Ill., we had a great security system: at 8 a.m. all the doors to the school were locked. Teachers regularly checked to ensure no door was left open, and the only way into the school was through the front entrance where you had to ring a bell to get in and had a camera right in your face so the school could identify you.

Then why is it that some schools are focusing more on arming our teachers than stopping the problem where it ultimately starts? Keep the problem outside of our schools. To me it seems all this talk about arming teachers is the schools admitting that there is a chance that a threat to our children could enter schools.

Why are we working on ways to prevent an attack in a school once it has started versus preventing an attack from even happening in the first place?