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Essays on mental illness and mass shootings
Influence of parents on a childs behavior
The influence of parent involvement
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In the Frontline documentary Raising Adam Lanza, reporters Alaine Griffin and Josh Kovner from “The Hartford Courant” investigate the possibilities that prompted Adam Lanza to commit the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Lanza didn’t leave behind a trail. Lanza didn’t leave a diary, wasn’t socially involved (had no friends), and destroyed his computer that many believe have the answers as to what induced his character to murder 20 children, six adults, and his own mother. The documentary commenced with Griffin and Kovner exploring the life of Nancy Lanza who had been portrayed by the media as the person to blame for her son’s actions but also to be questioned on whether or not she truly was a victim. The reporters tried …show more content…
However, Peter had left the household in 2001, but still supported the family financially. In the book Criminal Behavior: A Psychological Approach by Curt R. Bartol discusses the parental and family risk factors of single-parent households. In the early studies it was concluded that delinquents are more likely to come from homes where parents were separated or divorced. In recent studies researchers have looked into the correlation of single-parent households, the quality of the parent-child relationship, economic status, emotional support available, and more. In the study of “conflict-ridden vs. conflict-free” it focused on the process rather than structure of family. Children from a single-parent home that are relatively conflict-free are less likely to be a delinquent than children from conflict-ridden “intact” homes. A stable, secure, and mutually supportive family is exceedingly important …show more content…
Adam would rather play violent video games such as “World of Warcraft” than Dance Dance Revolution with the other kids. In the class lecture on crime and video games, the meta-analysis by Anderson and Bushman (2001) violent video games vs. nonviolent resulted that violent video games increases the probability of physiological arousal and aggression-related thoughts and feelings. Playing violent video games also decreases prosocial behavior. Police have speculated that the shooting was caused by the violent video games he played. It was like he wanted to reenact
Scott Peterson was an educated man from California Polytechnic State University where he graduated with a B.A. in Agricultural Business. He was married to his wife Laci Peterson who was also pregnant with their unborn son. In December of 2002 Laci Peterson went missing in the Modesto, California area where she shared a home with Scott. Once the investigation of Scott’s missing wife started authorities began to suspect Scott as a suspect in her disappearance. In April of 2003 a fetus and a female torso that was missing hands, feet, and a head were found on the shoreline of San Francisco Bay. The San Francisco Bay area was where Scott was boating the day of Laci’s disappearance. The body was later identified as Laci Peterson and the fetus as Laci and Scott’s unborn son. Scott was also arrested in the month of April shortly after the discovery of Laci and their son’s body and was later sentenced to the death penalty. Over the course of this paper I will cover the whole event of the disappearance of Laci Peterson, relating it to a sociological theory, the impact the event had on our society and how the media had influence over this national event.
The tragedy that happened in Newton, Connecticut swept the world with a variety of emotions. Many individuals became angry or saddened by the tragedy. I think more of the individuals were angry of what happened to those 20 innocent children. Parents send their children to school thinking that they are safe but in this case ended in tragedy. I am going to discuss similarities and differences between two articles. I am also going to discuss how this shooting is a symbolic crime, how likely policy changes will be enacted and how unlikely they are to be enacted.
He also theorized that Adam shot his mother four times for each of them; himself, his mother, his father, and his brother. After the tragedy, the school was torn down and many gun-control debates heated up and schools greatly improved their security to prevent any more potential attacks. To this day, the motive of Adam Lanza, is still unknown, but the effects are still felt in the world today. When looking into the reasons that would cause a twenty year old young man to commit such a horrific act, the mental health of the shooter is nearly always the first thing to look at. Adam Lanza was indeed found to have suffered from multiple mental disorders, however there is no direct connection between Lanza's mental health and his decision to commit mass murder.
The article Adam lanza’s mother is an endearing and motivational article written down by a well-known playwright Liza Long, she talks about the story of a lady that struggle with her thirteen year old kid that is mentally sick. The article is attention-grabbing as it shades light to the lives entity of the relatives of the mentally sick people and furthermore the lives of the relatives of the mentally sick people. The author likewise brings our attention to the issues and difficulties that the mentally sick patients in the USA and also around the world face. The writer believes that the
On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old college student, shocked the nation when he perpetrated the deadliest shooting massacre in U.S. history. The violent rampage took place on the Virginia Tech University campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Cho was a senior majoring in English. Before turning the gun on himself and delivering a fatal gunshot to the head, Cho murdered more than 30 of his classmates and University faculty; numerous others were injured. In a strange twist, several days after the tragedy, a package determined to have been mailed by Cho during the shooting spree was received at NBC News in New York. The package contained photos of Cho posing with guns, as well as video clips and various pages of Cho’s writing. Portraying himself as a martyr avenger of the weak and defenseless, the targets of Cho’s angry ranting included wealthy students, bullies, Christianity, and society (Kleinfield, 2007). In the wake of tragedies like Virginia Tech, an automatic public response is to want immediate answers, explanations. It seems logical that something so extraordinarily awful and wrong must have been caused by an equally unusual and outrageous problem or anomaly. However, explaining heinous crimes of violence is not so straight-forward; understanding violent behavior involves multiple, and sometimes conflicting, theoretical perspectives and disciplines.
When 2 young men, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, went on a shooting spree in Littleton, Colorado, killing 15 people, including themselves, there was a public outcry for censorship of every type of entertainment and changes in gun laws despite Eric Harris’s journal entry titled, “Last Wishes” asking that no one be blamed, other than himself and Klebold, for the massacre (“As You Were”, par. 2). After the 1999 school shooting now simply known as Columbine, a “Newsweek” pole showed that, “about half of all Americans want to see the movie industry, the TV industry, computer game makers, Internet services and gun manufacturers and the NRA make major policy changes to help reduce teen violence” (Alter, par. 1). According to Dave Cullen in his article “Let the Litigation Begin” several lawsuits were filed against the parents of the two boys responsible for the shooting spree claiming that Harris’s and Klebold’s families, “breached their duty of care” by allowing their sons to amass a cache of illegal weapons (Cullen, par. 5). Although the boys’ parents denied such allegations, they settled out of court for $1.6 million (Cullen, par. 5)...
The United States will not soon forget the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut that came just two weeks before Christmas last year. This tragic event resulted in the death of twenty students and eight adults. Although the event shocked the nation, rampage shootings are nothing new. Over the years, many families have lost loved ones to these horrific events. As a result, these mass shootings such as the one that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary caught public attention leading to a push to find the cause of these events. Out of this research a variety of possible causes came to light consisting of arguments stating that high school bullying, availability of guns, mental illness, violent movies and video games are the cause of mass shootings. However, these researchers and debaters tend to ignore the role of massive media coverage in the increase of copycat shootings in the United States.
One of the most horrific tragedies that could ever happen in one of our nation’s elementary schools occurred on December 14, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut. Around 9:30 a.m. a heavily armed lone gunman, blasted his way through a window located to the right of the front door of Sandy Hook Elementary school using a Bushmaster .223 caliber rifle. It only took six .223-caliber bullets to shatter enough glass to create a hole big enough for him to enter through. The name of this lone gunman was 20 year old Adam Lanza, a former student at Sandy Hook. In addition to his rifle, Adam also brought with him, two pistols (a Glock and a Sauer); which he kept inside a pair of military-style cargo pants he was wearing. He was also wearing a utility vest that contained ten magazine with thirty rounds each in its pockets. Once inside the school he entered the school’s main office and nurse’s office. He did not see the staff members who had been hiding, so he headed back out into the hallway.
Experts argue that no one is predestined for a life of crime. They believe that influences such as repeated abuse, extreme neglect, poverty, media violence, and easy access to guns play the major role in molding children into criminals. The father of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer wonders, "If potential for evil is in the blood that some of us pass on to our children" (Seifert 23). In the quiet New York town of Savona, Eric Smith, age thirteen, intercepted four-year-old Derrick Robie on his way to a park recreation program and offered to show him a shortcut. Hesitatingly, Derrick set off with Eric.
Countless serial killers have had an abnormal childhood; many people believe this is where the catalyst of events starts. It is proven, that more often than not, serial killers have either lived in an inhabitable home, had lackadaisical parents, or could have a different frame of mind. This being said, when one hears about mass murderers or serial killers, the first question that pops into a person’s head is, “What were they thinking?” For all a person knows, this could be the killer’s normalcy.
A seemingly normal school day in Newtown, Connecticut, who knew that it would turn into one of the most devastating days of they would ever experience. About 2 years ago, students at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut were involved in the most devastating event of the year. According to an article by the Huffington Post, a mentally troubled man in his twenties named Adam Lanza shot 20 children and six staff members, with his mother’s weapons. His mother had apparently grown up with guns and thought it would be good to have in their house. Prior to driving to the school, he even shot his mother, but his motive is unknown. He drove to the school leaving a 12-gauge shotgun in the car, walking towards the school, he shot through the front entrance. “Lanza moved toward two classrooms of kindergartners and first-graders,” police said. Within five minutes he managed to kill 20 students ages 6 and 7 and six adults. He had fired more than 150 shots from a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle. When police started to arrive he shot himself in the head, taking his own life. This incident was the deadliest mass shooting at a grade school in the US; in total 26 lives were lost.
Welfare contributes to crime in several ways. First, children from single-parent families are more likely to become involved in criminal activity. According to one study, children raised in single-parent families are one-third more likely to exhibit anti-social behavior.(3) Moreover, O'Neill found that, holding other variables constant, black children from single- parent households are twice as likely to commit crimes as black children from a family where the father is present. Nearly 70 percent of juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes, as do 43 percent of prison inmates.(4) Research indicates a direct correlation between crime rates and the number of single-parent families in a neighborhood.(5)
Studies indicate that positive parenting, including normative development, monitoring, and discipline, clearly affects whether children will become delinquent. Adequate supervision of free-time activities, whereabouts, and peers are critical to assure that children do not drift into antisocial and delinquent patterns of behavior. Surprisingly, little is known about normative and moral development with the family as they relate to delinquency. Single-parent families, and in particular mother-only families, produce more delinquent children than two-parent families. Research indicates that parenting practices account for most, but not all, of the ...
...ng up in a single-parent home (usually female-headed) is seven times as likely to be a delinquent. The rate of violent crime and burglary is related to the number of single parent households with children aged twelve to twenty. (1)In a new study of 72 adolescent murders and 35 adolescent thieves, researches for Michigan State University demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of teenage criminals live with only one parent. Fully 75 percent of those charged with homicide had parents who were either divorced or had never been married at all.( 5)
What people must understand is that properly raising a child does not rely on the structure of a family but should be more focused on the process When a topic such as this one has a broad amount of variables it is impossible to simply link these problems to only having one parent. In the article, “Single-parent families cause juvenile crime”, author Robert L. Maginnis states, “Children from single-parent families are more likely to have behavior problems because they tend to lack economic security and adequate time with parents”. The simple statement that raw criminals are products of single-parent adolescence is absurd. What this writer must understand is that it can be extremely difficult for one parent to raise a child by themselves for many reasons. A single-parent must work full time to be able to afford to provide for themselves and their child.