Imagine you’re a middle or high school student after all of the events at Parkland. Would you feel safe? I can assure you most students don’t, and neither do I. Quite honestly I do not feel safe at school especially after the Parkland shooting. I feel like we are just sitting ducks, Waiting. I believe that we can do something about this, but in the current state, I believe students are not safe at school.
On Wednesday February 14, 2018 a student at Parkland high school in Florida killed seventeen people and injured others. This shocked the nation, and really made a push for more security in school, and more control on the purchase of guns. After all, the shooter suffered from mental illness and was visited by the police on several occasions, but yet he was able to purchase an assault rifle. I’d rather not give my input on gun control, but that fact on its own is ridiculous.
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Students will most likely suffer from PTSD for the rest of their lives; families will always remember the tragedy that befell their loved ones. We must learn from our mistakes, and correct them in the future. This is why people have made a push for more security, and for good reason: to prevent this from happening in the future. Students should be protected at all times, and receive help if they need it. People have been blaming this tragedy on many different things: guns, police, the school itself, violent media, etc. We can’t be sure exactly what it was, it’s most likely a mix of some of them, but the best thing to do is to prepare for all of them, and hope for a better
So, the Lake County High School student body was told today by Jimmy Snyder, that we will be having a school shooting drill sometime in the month of November. Therefore, be prepared for it at any given time of the school day. These people know about the upcoming drill: Parents, Staff, Policemen, and the
...gun provided a convenient way for crime; people could get any dangerous weapons to endanger the safety of others. In the article, “At Least 9,900 People Have Died From Guns In The U.S. Since The Newtown Shooting: Slate”, Dominique Mosbergen pointed out that the number of mass shooting kept growing because of the lax gun control system. For example, 20 year old, Adam Lanza took several legal guns and went to Sandy Hook Elementary School after killing his mother. Besides that, he only spent five minutes to murder 20 children and six adult members of staff (Mosbergen). This school shooting in the United States completely shocked the whole world. At this point, many people had focused on the regulatory issues of guns. Mosbergen stated, “As the nation mourned in the wake of that unthinkable tragedy, many citizens and lawmakers raised their voices to demand” (Mosbergen).
As the generations of America’s youth continue to grow, so does the increase in violent crimes associated with each generation. Over the last decade, studies have shown that school shootings have increased by an astonishing 13%. Although this figure as a percentage does not seem like much, it makes one stop and think. Parents blame the video games and their violent behaviors for the influence on their children’s daily lives. Grandparents blame the child’s parents for not showing them the right way to grow up in the world. And then we have that child’s friends who say that this child just was not respected by their classmates, or perhaps even bullied into this violent nature. Regardless of the cause to this violent increase, many Americans do believe in a solution: gun control. Gun control is the situation in which the federal government would put a ban on owning firearms. Contrary to what many “hard-core” Americans believe, gun control would not necessarily ban them from owning hunting rifles or even personal handguns. It would simply limit the ownership of semi-automatic assault rifles, and other rifles of this nature. This does not contradict the Second Amendment of the Constitution which states that American citizens have the Right to Bear Arms. I believe in the constitutional Right to Bear Arms, and I am against any attempt to eradicate that right for any American citizen: however, I am for gun control in the sense of lowering the possession of semi-automatic and fully-automatic rifles.
The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, but only in cases of self-defense and hunting for food. However, the use of guns has drastically changed since 1791 when the amendment was implemented. Today, guns are not solely used in their intended ways. Since 2010, over eighty-seven school shootings have occurred within American grade schools, high schools, and universities, resulting in approximately 107 injuries and 109 murders of innocent students. The two most deadly shootings in the world occurred in the United States: the Virginia Tech University Massacre which left thirty-two dead and Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting which left twenty-eight dead. Each new shooting prompts a debate about gun control laws and leaves citizens wondering about the accessibility of guns; any United States citizen over the age of twenty-one that does not have any previous felonies is able to easily receive a gun license. Forty-nine out of the sixty-one school shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2012 legally obtained firearms. The statistics become even more outstanding: seventy nine percent of all shooters have been diagnosed with a mental illness or disability, including the Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shooters, Seung-Hui Cho and Adam Lanza. Cho and Lanza were diagnosed with mental illnesses and disabilities, depression and autism, respectively. Even so, they were still able to acquire the guns they needed because extensive mental health background checks did not and still do not exist; Cho purchased his own weapon and Lanza stole his mother’s guns. Although the case studies of Lanza and Cho are only two out of the many school shootings, they should be considered prime examples to illustrate the necessity to add stri...
On a sunny spring day in April 1999, a suburban school named Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado found itself under attack by two of its own students. (http://www.knowgangs.com) In less than fifteen minutes of the first lunch period on that Tuesday, two armed students killed thirteen and wounded twenty-one fellow classmates before they turned the guns on themselves - the most devastating school shooting in U.S. history. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only school shooting; about thirty-five students die every year from school shootings. This generation comes from violence, hatred, and ignorance- the three principal factors that cause school shootings.
How safe do you feel when you attend school everyday? Many students and faculty don’t really think too much about school being a dangerous place; however, after a couple of school shootings had taken place their minds and thoughts may have changed completely. On April 16, 2007, in the town of Blacksburg Virginia, a college student who attended Virginia Tech, opened gunfire to his fellow classmates. This shooting has been considered to be the biggest massacre in all of American history. There are many things to be discussed in this major tragedy. Some of them include the events leading up to the shooting, the timeline that the shootings occurred, the causes, and the significance in this particular shooting. The Virginia Tech is only one of the several examples of the horrible behavior and violence in our school systems today.
Over the past few years there have been many incidents when children bring guns to school and shoot their fellow classmate(s) and/or teacher(s). The most recent and probably most tragic happened in 1998 at Colombine High School in Colorado when a group of students entered the school and murdered several students and a teacher. The first thing that everyone wondered once they finally heard the news is how the children got the guns? Supporters of gun control believe that if there were harsher gun laws, a lot of the school shootings would have never taken plac...
Today in the United States many people argue over the fact of guns being legal or illegal. There are people using guns for personal safety and there are others who use them for crimes, as well as for other situations. Firearm deaths in the United States have slowly been decreasing from year to year with all these bills getting passed to promote a safer country than ever before. Guns are the main weapon for youth suicide, school shootings, and for committing murder. In 2010 there were 2,711 infants, child, and teenage firearm deaths. As in school shootings and in committing murder, studies show shooters often had multiple, non-automatic guns, shootings were planned, most youth tell before shooting, shooters have a history of being bullied or threatened, shooters have mental issues, and shooters have done suicidal gestures before (Gun Control with School Shootings). Although there are people who use guns for murdering, there are also those who oppose guns being used without the proper requirements. 85% of all respondents to the survey supporting requiring states to report people to national background-checks systems who are prohibited from owning gu...
Two students killed and thirteen others left wounded, six schoolmates shot by fellow classmate, 13 people dead and 23 wounded in a High School, Four girls and a teacher are shot to death and 10 people wounded during a false alarm in school…Those were the headlines of all newspapers at one time or another. High School shootings have been occurring throughout the United States. Why is it that a student would come into their school and open fire? Why is it that no one notices the signs before the incident? How is it possible that they were able to bring the firearm into the school? Those are some questions people need answers to, especially those concerned with what will happen next.
Gun control recently has rapidly become an even further controversial topic due to violent acts against the public by troubled individuals. How were these attacks allowed to happen? As stated in Framing Health Matters article, “In the United States, popular and political discourse frequently focuses on the causal impact of mental illness in the aftermath of mass shootings.” (.1) This issue unfortunately remains so overlooked that media sources only offer it attention after a tragedy. Not to mention the impact these situations have on the society. No normal person decides to harm people solely due to the fact that they can obtain a weapon easily. To be able to move forward with these irrational decisions the
The shootings that have happened in the schools throughout the Unites States over the past few months have created a great divide among Americans on what we should do as a nation to prevent further shootings from happening. Many people believe that imposing new laws on purchasing weapons by requiring background checks, holding adults responsible for the actions of their children and requiring gun locks on weapons to prevent children will stop these massacres in our school from happening. There are many issues that need to be looked at in order to decide which laws are necessary.
Gun violence has reached an all-time high. After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, widespread concern forced legislators to take a second look at our gun laws. When twenty children and six educators were gunned down, many citizens were outraged and begged authorities to pass more stringent gun laws because with fewer guns, there could possibly be fewer incidents involving gun violence. Many people believe that the widespread availability of guns is making society unsafe. Each year, nearly 100,000 Americans are shot, 32,000 of them die, 47 children are shot every day, and eight of them die, according to the U.S. News Digital Weekly. In order to solve this problem, more stringent background checks should be required by all applicants, restriction and enforcement on the sale of guns at gun shows need to improve, and the availability of automatic weapons should be limited.
In recent years, tragedies have been visited upon schools across the country. From Kentucky to Oregon to Colorado, the notion of schools as safe havens has been shattered by the sound of gunfire. These acts are not limited to any geographic regions or family backgrounds, nor do they have a single catalyst. Those who have committed such heinous acts have done so for different reasons, at different times, in different schools. But these acts of school violence have at least one thing in common- they have spurred all of us to take a look at what can be done to better protect children and teachers at school. Protecting our children is not simply a matter of public policy. It is a matter of strengthening basic values, of teaching children right from wrong, of instilling in them respect for others. We each have a responsibility to work to end youth violence and to keep schools safe for children and for those who teach them. Youth violence in many schools has reached universal proportions. It is not only happening in our high schools, it has also made its way into our elementary and middle schools. Everyone seems to have a different perspective on why there is such a problem with school safety. Some say it is the parents’ fault, some say it is the media, and others blame the schools. Yet, the question still remains. What can be done to make schools safer for the children and staff? One thing we need to do is learn to listen to our children and observe their behavior. According ...
The issue of school safety has become a controversial topic in the United States, due to tragic acts of violence occurring on a daily basis. American citizens should never have to cope with the negative impact of school violence, no matter how often they hear about the tragedies (Jones, "Parents" 1). In the past, schools were viewed as a safe place for children to get an education. Recently, the concern over violence in schools has taken a toll on many parents, school administrators, and legislatures (Eckland 1). Studies have shown that there are over 3 million acts of violence in American public schools each year. Not all occurrences are serious and deadly, but they occur on a daily basis throughout our country (Jones, “School” 6). This has caused many parents to worry about the well-being of their children while they are in class. This has also led to an increase in questions and concerns by parents and guardians. Many people have asked, “What are you doing about safety and security on my child’s campus” (Schimke 2). School violence is the cause of elevated worry and fear for their children, and school districts should enforce better security.
On the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a day does not go by without talking of the violence coming into schools from the streets. Patrick O'Donnell, a reporter for the Plain Dealer wrote a story on a high school in Strongsville where the school virtually shut down classes due to Internet threats of violence made on the school by an 18-year-old boy. Though the student is charged with misdemeanor counts of aggravated menacing and inducing panic among the students, how can we as abiding citizens of society reduce and even eliminate such violence in schools? Furthermore, last week, seven students were suspended at South High School in Cleveland and one of them was arrested after a sophomore threw a chair that knocked out an assistant principal because of a brawl between students. (Reed, 2005) School is meant to be a safe haven for children, a place where you come to learn and not to plan-out who your next victim will be.