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Cause and effect of school shootings
Lack of security in schools
Cause and effect of school shootings
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In today’s world some students of all ages have experienced the tragedy and devastation of mass school shootings. Kids go to school in order to receive education; they shouldn’t have to worry about their safety. Today in America, there are numerous amounts of shootings that occur on school grounds. It has been recorded that “the number of school shootings in 2015 has climbed to 52, with 30 people dead and 53 others injured” (Rt.com). Schools need to step up their security and ensure the safety and well being of their student body. One of the most commonly known school shootings that has occurred took place at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999. According to History.com, “the crime was the worst high school shooting in U.S. …show more content…
In the investigation of the Columbine shooting, it was assumed that Harris and Klebold committed the killings due to the fact that students bullied them because they were apart of a social outcasts group that was fascinated by Goth culture. The same situation was concluded after the Virginia Tech Massacre; Cho was described as a loner who hardly spoke to anyone, and this isolation may have led to his decision to commit this murderous act. This type of isolation and discrimination seems to play a factor in these …show more content…
This term was selected to underscore the fact that these students were generally unknown by many school personnel prior to the shooting incidents” (Intervention in School & Clinic). These “invisible kids” are less likely to be known by teachers because they tend to be quiet or shy. In most cases, these kids are frequently known as outcasts and are bullied by their fellow classmates. “Furthermore, violence for these invisible kids seems, in some fundamental sense, to be a reaction to their own anonymity” (Intervention in School & Clinic). If teachers and faculty paid more attention to their students and how others are treating them, it can eliminate school violence. This goes hand in hand with Geller’s idea of a TSC
"Columbine High School Shootings." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 08 Sept. 2015. Eighteen year old Eric Harris and seventeen year old Dylan Klebold were two boys with a fascination of violent video games and music. These young men were known to be “goth” and were bullied all throughout their high school careers because of their different interest. In 1999, on April 20th these boys went into their high school with mixed emotions and a devious plan to get revenge. The two teens went into the high school with handguns and killed both students and faculty members, before they turned the guns around on themselves. This is a reliable source because it informed us of both previous emotion, and the aftermath of the tragedy with detail about the boys, the school and the lives affected. This source was relevant for me because of how thoroughly it described the shooting, and gave me background information as to why and how it happened.
April 20th, 1999, Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, experienced a mass shooting. Thirteen people were injured and more than twenty were injured. Twelve were students and one was a teacher. Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire on their high school for forty one minutes before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide. School shootings are notorious for making headline news but in 1999, school shooting were not as prevalent as they are in the present day. The media blew up on the catastrophe that was Columbine and many questions were raised, who were these kids and why did they do this? Speculation arose about why they did it. Maybe they were bullied for being goth and social outcasts or maybe they
These types of theories believe there is some type of defect of the mind and the way it works that is causing misbehavior. These theories have a range of ideas of the causes of crimes. They include mental disorders, issues during stages of development that influence future behaviors, and psychopaths. When applying these theories to school shooters there is a rage of directions that can be taken to explain the motivation behind their acts. One explanation could be that there is a mental disorder that is causing the individual to act out in violence. Depression, for example, could be used as an argument for these theories. Adolescences in school are going through arguably one of the most difficult times of their lives. If an individual has severe depression on top of it, this could be a cause for them to act out in violent ways. Other mental disorders could also play a role in why an individual decides to commit these acts of violence. Another explanation could be that an individual is a psychopath. Psychopaths have no conscious and they commit acts of violence because they have no sense of the harm that they are inflicting. If this is the case the individual is probably committing the crime to be noticed or for some sort of revenge. There are a variety of different explanations under the physiological theories that could be used to explain school shootings, but I believe that mental disorders play the largest role
This essay is going to talk about one of the deadliest school shootings that killed 13 students and injured several. On April 20, 1999 two teens went on a shooting spree killing 13 and wounded several more before turning the guns on to them killing themselves. The columbine shooting one of the worst shootings in U.S history raised a debate on the gun control and school safety. This essay is going to bring out the real cause of the shooters actions and apply two juvenile delinquency theories to them.
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. The history of school shootings has shown an increase in mass school shootings. The very first known school shooting in the United States occurred on July 26, 1764 in present-day Greencastle, Pennsylvania. As part of the Pontiac's Rebellion, four Lenape Native Americans entered the school house and started shooting, killing the schoolmaster Enoch Brown and about nine students.
School shootings seemed like a new phenomenon, but they occurred for the majority of American history. The first school shooting occurred On July 26, 1764, when a Lenape Indian shot and killed nine children and the school master of the Greencastle, Pennsylvania school (Galvin): as noted in Appendix A. Since 1764, the number of school shootings rose exponentially. In the 1990’s, eighty-six school shootings occurred and between 2000 and 2014, 110 shootings transpired since 2000 (Killam,2008). The development of semiautomatic weapons lead to an increase in deaths. A study conducted in 1990 found through the years of 1986 to 1990; 71 people died, 201 wounded, and 242 people held hostage by school shooters(Galvin). While the area a school serves as one factor in the number of violent acts committed per year, school shootings have not been connected to this. The schools in Chicago dealt with more violent acts, but Sandy Hook Elementary, a small city school had relatively few violent acts committed by students.
One of the most eye opening school shootings was on April 20, 1999 in Littleton, Colorado. Thirteen students were killed and twenty wounded in the middle of the day while attending school at Columbine High School. Two armed students opened fire just outside the building, then moved inside and gunned down more students and faculty members. This rampage lasting for just under 45 minutes. The students then turned the guns on themselves and ended their lives. The police did not show up in a reasonable time, which lead families to file lawsuits against the police department and the school. There was only one resource officer in the high school, during this time. He was located in the parking lot to watch kids drive in and out. One of the parents of the victims said, "There was no one in that school that had a gun other than the two killers, and ...
It is a sad time in American history when one can easily recount recent school shootings in their own area. This ease stems from a sharp increase in the number of firearms brought into elementary and middle schools across the country, with an intense focus on the issue beginning after the shooting of 20 children from Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. Most school shooters are male, white, and often upper middle class. They are also more, often than not, under some type of mental stress that is causing them to create this type of violence in our communities. In fact, many school shooters are never suspected of doing any harm to their peers and teachers until it is much too late.
Family environment and the press are two major influences resulting in the recent tragic school shootings. As much as society continues to focus the killing rampages on factors such as television and music, what children are exposed to in reality contributes to the violence. The most recent school shooting in Michigan involved a six-year-old first grader who killed a classmate with a .22 caliber pistol. The news coverage had vanished after two or three days, and I was left wondering what had happened. Considering the fact that the media wore the Columbine incident out, I wanted to know why they did not pay more attention to this school shooting. As evidence did arrive, it was discovered that the child lived in a household where cocaine, heroin, and many other illegal drugs were commonplace. Also in this “home” guns were easily accessible to the child. Children growing up in this type of environment certainly are likely to be held accountable for future violence. Even though I am against the news media presenting too much school violence, Americans should have been deeply disturbed by this shooting because of the child’s young age. The Michigan shooting should have enlightened Americans to the dilemma we face in this country. Two weeks after the Columbine High School shooting, information on the mass murder was still being broadcast on television. The press was feeding young viewers ideas on how to kill their classmates. News was reported how the teenage murderers acquired information regarding building bombs, obtaining guns, smuggling guns into the school, and proceeding to kill their classmates. A mentally unstable teenager could simply watch these news reports and write a book entitled, “How to Slay Your Classmates”. This onslaught was ridiculous and the news coverage should not have been permitted to continue for countless weeks. Society has determined three reasons on which to blame the shootings. First, the nation blamed it on television’s violent programs. Following that, Americans gave the music recording companies the evil eye as well as attacking the gun manufacturers. All of these reasons involve material objects that are unable to think for themselves. Televisions and CD players do not control themselves, people control them. Finally, boundaries controlling the television programs children view should be set by the parents. The same explanation applies to firearms. How can it be a gun’s fault that a person killed another human being?
(2002). Retrieved November 1, 2013, from Illinois: http://www.illinois.gov/ready/plan/Documents/PreventingSchoolShootingsSecretService.pdf School Violence: Data & Statistics. (2013, February 22). Retrieved November 1, 2013, from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/youthviolence/schoolviolence/data_stats.html Inc., P. E. (2012). Timeline of Worldwide School and Mass Shootings.
"A Brief History of NRA." A Brief History of NRA. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2015.
Schools were once traditionally viewed as a safe place for children, teenagers, and adults. The educational setting coupled with community involvement gave no reason for violence to occur in schools. As years progressed, the occurrence of violence in school shocked communities across the nation, calling for state lawmakers and school districts to produce a solution to prevent these acts from occurring. Events such as the 1999 school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado urged schools throughout the U.S. to increase their security measures with more stringent policies and procedures while spending millions of dollars on security equipment from security cameras to metal detectors. While schools increase their safety measures to prevent another major incident from occurring, such as a suspect with a firearm (active shooter) from entering school property, some of the security measures have not been effective. An example is the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, where the shooter was able to bypass a locked door which is one of the security measures the school had in place, making personnel visiting the school required to request entrance into the building (Barron).
If someone were to rely solely on television media, it wouldn’t surprise me if he/she thought that America’s schools were being taken over by these so-called “juvenile super predators.” The American people would assume that every quiet kid who gets picked on is going to turn around in school one day and start unloading his newly acquired firearms on his peers. This is hardly the case. While there may be an occasional “super-predator,” the media has highly over publicized these rare, extraordinary events.
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.