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Contributed commentary from Jason Knight:

As our population has increased, so will crimes and threats of violence. This is the sad reality, and it is a trend in large cities and in cities like ours that have grown exponentially over a few short years.

School Resource Officers did amazing work recovering a gun and magazine from a student at Rossview’s backpack. This hit close to home for me as I have six kids in the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System. This scared many parents as it takes away that peace of mind parents have when they send their kids to school hoping they will be safe on school campuses.

This incident is apparently the fifth incident regarding a firearm on a school campus this year.

I am a pro-gun individual. I drafted and helped pass the Second Amendment sanctuary resolution for the City Council earlier this year and voted for the county resolution the previous year while I was still on the Montgomery County Commission. However, I also believe in responsible gun ownership. There is no reason or excuse for a parent’s child finding and transporting a gun in the home to a school. It is the parent’s responsibility to secure that weapon, bottom line.

We need to nip this in the bud fast. Counseling is one method. Holding parents accountable is another. However, metal detectors are a proven deterrent in schools. Roughly 80% of all school shootings are conducted by students. Metal detectors can help to identify who may have a weapon prior to them even getting inside the campus. If a metal detector was present during this incident, that weapon would never even have gotten inside in the first place.

Some arguments I have heard against metal detectors include costs associated with them. Metal detectors can range in price from $2,000 to $150,000. Being a fiscal conservative and mindful of taxpayer’s dollars, I would say saving a child’s life in this instance outweighs the cost of the equipment. There are possibly grants from state and federal sources that could be used to provide metal detectors for our schools.

The other argument I have heard is that of having a “prison feel” in our schools. My usual response is that it’s better than the feeling of losing a child. Having lost a child myself in 2007, it’s definitely not a good feeling. Besides, we protect our county offices, our airports and other places with metal detectors; why not our children? Having grown up in Brooklyn, New York, schools were the safest place to be.

Let’s keep our kids safe; let’s get started on the process of implementing metal detectors in our schools.

Jason Knight