Go back 12 years to Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. Two high school students unloaded multiple shotguns on innocent students at Columbine, killing 13 and injuring 8 more in one of the most devastating school shootings of all time. With such a horrific incident involving guns taking the lives of so many innocent students, it would make perfect sense to permanently ban guns from school campuses, right?

Well, according to both Texas and Utah, no. Both states are in the process of approving bills that would make it legal to carry firearms not only near, but also on a high school or college campus. Allowing such bills to pass would be nothing short of ridiculous, as it imposes much more of a hazard to students than a weapon of protection.

Honestly, there is practically no scenario in a high school environment where a gun could be a valuable means of protection. Rarely do intruders roll into a high school campus with any intentions worthy of being shot at by an armed student. Giving students the opportunity to bring weapons to a campus causes an utmost amount of danger to the rest of the students and teachers on the campus.

A high school is probably the worst environment possible to allow guns, as students are developing emotionally and struggle with their emotions at times. A decent amount of students are mentally unstable and battle depression—The National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center found that almost one in six teens had made plans for suicide. This was the case with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two delinquents responsible for the horrid Columbine massacre.

Columbine was not the only tragic school shooting in recent times—there was also the Virgina Tech shooting in 2007. In this shooting, Seung-Hui Cho murdered 32 students, and much like Harris and Klebold, he too suffered from mental issues such as anxiety disorders and depression. Giving a suicidal teenager the opportunity to carry around a weapon in a stress-filled environment such as a high school campus could not be any worse of an idea.

Students do not need guns to protect themselves; drills involving barricades are often practiced making guns useless in a scholastic environment. There is also much more danger than safety in handing a emotionally distressed teenager a weapon that can easily take away the lives of many innocent people with the simple pull of a trigger.