The Rampage: The Social Roots Of School Shootings

216 Words1 Page

In a masterly crafted and scholarly researched study of the Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, doctor Katherine S. Newman, takes a deeper look into the sociology of school shootings and concluded that gender, social class and bullying can affect and lead young children to these violent acts. Research on gender profile of the shooters suggests that in the culture today males’ masculinity is linked with violence, but that does not necessary mean that if one is a male they are a shooter. However, it has been proven that throughout the history of school shootings no female has acted in a mass killing using guns. For example, through Newman’s credible research,

Show More
Related

  • Understanding the 1999 Columbine High School Shooting

    1401 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • School Safety and the Tragedy at Columbine High School

    2605 Words  | 6 Pages

    Unlike most of the country, I knew about Columbine High School on April 19, 1999. I knew that the Columbine Rebels had a good football team, I remembered how they beat Cherry Creek for the 1999 football championship. I knew what Columbine's building was like from when I was inside it in January for a debate tournament. I had friends that went to CHS. We had gone on a trip to Hawaii together to learn about biology. The rest of the country found out about Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. They didn't hear about their football team, the debate tournament they hosted, or my friends, though; they heard about two angry students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, that went on a killing rampage killing 12 other students, a teacher, and themselves. The nation, the media, the killers, my friends, and me all have their own view of what happened that day. Many people tried to understand how something so terrible could happen, while the killers thought that the killings were a wonderful thing, and still other students were trying to comprehend that this tragedy had actually happened so close to home.

    Read More

  • The Parents' Role in School Shootings

    1204 Words  | 3 Pages

    When children commit a horrible act such as a school shooting their parents often look for someone or something to blame rather than looking at what role they, as parents, may have had in the tragedy. The often targeted entertainers, video game developers, teachers, drug companies, and writers are rarely, if ever, responsible for such tragic outcomes and, unfortunately, often become victims as a result of lawsuits filed in an attempt to place blame on them. The parents of dangerous children must be scrutinized and sued alongside every other entity being blamed for the heinous crimes that children commit.

    Read More

  • Today?s Youth, Tomorrow?s Frankenstein

    2206 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Theories Of Columbine Shooting

    1312 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Motivation Behind the Columbine High Shootings

    3724 Words  | 8 Pages

    In its societal context, the Columbine school shootings are not an obvious part of a discernible sociological pattern. We know that approximately 4,500 youngsters are killed every year in intentional shootings, with thirty per cent of that number probable suicides. That's almost 13 a day, the same number as were killed in Littleton (The Washington Post, April 25, 1999). The data on school shootings, according to the Center for Communicable Diseases, indicate that only about 28 per cent actually occurred inside the school and that one-third of the victims were not...

    Read More

  • Bullying and Mass School Shootings

    3834 Words  | 8 Pages

    Cho poked his head in the room a couple of times and looked around before exiting and entering a different room. The first shots were heard across the hall, in the hydrology class. It sounded like a nail gun or hammer hitting concrete blocks.

    Read More

  • History of School Shootings in US

    893 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On School Shootings

    1212 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • We Must Work to Prevent Mass School Shootings

    1409 Words  | 3 Pages

    Although no one can be entirely sure what motivates teens to commit mass shootings, there are theories that must be examined to develop solutions. One theory states that there are ten factors that contribute to the likelihood of a teen committing murder. These factors include an unstable home life, being bullied at school, obsession with violent entertainment, being suicidal, involvement with drugs or alcohol, involvement with gangs or cults, and mental illness. Usually at least four of these qualities are present in homicidal teens (Khadaroo). While many of these causes stem from home lif...

    Read More

  • Adam Lanza And The Sandy Hook Shooting

    536 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first thing people cling to in the wake of such terrible tragedies is a simple question: why? Why did the murderer do what he did? When did they develop the mindset that made them commit such a heinous crime? How could any healthy, functioning, moral human being perpetrate perhaps the greatest ordeal of death our society has ever known? They look for action, for reason, for some concrete absolute that can somehow lift the shroud of sorrow that has overtaken their lives in such an awfully tremendous — and yet, however simple this question may be, the answer is never clear, and it is never enough. In the absence of a grounded conclusion as to why school shootings occur — or homicide of any kind for that matter — many people seek answers in what is known — in the few things we can take away from all the innocent deaths, and the person who caused them.

    Read More

  • Should Guns be Allowed on College Campuses?

    1260 Words  | 3 Pages

    School shootings have altered American history greatly over the past two decades. From 1997 to 2007, there have been more than 40 school shootings, resulting in over 70 deaths and many more injuries. School shoot-outs have been increasing in number dramatically in the past 20 years. There are no boundaries as to how old the child would be, or how many people they may kill or injure. At Mount Morris Township, Michigan, on February 29th, 2000, there was a 6 year old boy who shot and killed another 6 year old girl at the Buell Elementary School with a .32 caliber pistol. And although many shootings have occurred at High Schools or Middle Schools, having more guns on those campuses would not be a good environment for children to grow up in. However, on a college campus, the pupils attending are not children anymore; the age range is from 17 to mid 20’s. Therefore they understand the consequences associated to the use of weapons and have gained more maturity. In April 16th, 2007, at Blacksburg, Virginia, there was a shooting rampage enacted by Sung-Hui Cho (23 years, from Centreville, VA) who fired over 170 rounds, killing 32 victims, before taking his own life at the Virginia Tech campus. Colleges and Universities would be a much safer place, for student and teacher, if guns were permitted on campus for self-defense purposes.

    Read More

  • Dave Cullen School Shooting Theories

    1752 Words  | 4 Pages

    The American culture has been tainted with school shootings that are becoming a sort of tradition found in America. Most twenty-first-century school shootings have taken inspiration from the Columbine shooting, an event that has left a remarkable imprint on the future of school shootings and made the ones responsible infamous among them. In fact, Dave Cullen explores this idea in his nonfiction novel “Columbine”, where he illustrates the story of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and how the Columbine shooting was orchestrated, how it was carried out, and the aftermath that ensued, along with the pair’s psychotic paths that led to that event. Cullen’s argument was Eric being the manipulate genius behind the organization of the shooting while Dylan, who was not as psychotic, followed Eric through the event. One of the many

    Read More

  • Mass School Shootings in America

    675 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Gender Segregation In Prison Essay

    446 Words  | 1 Pages

    However, for many children, because of the pressure to fit into specific gender roles, it is not the case. The Bully Society correlates the violence of school shootings to the pressure adolescents face to fit into a gender category. Children and teens “continue to feel forced to conform to a narrow set of gender expectations in order to be accepted” (Klein, 2), and school shootings become children’s means of conforming. The majority of school shootings are committed by males, taking place in predominately white, middle to upper class suburbs. In schools where shootings take place, one of the main parts of everyday culture is gender policing, “pressure to conform to gender expectations” (Klein, 4). Students hold more power in school by demonstrating hypermasculinity, the dominant male gender norm, through activities like sports, fighting, mistreatment of women and bragging about sexual exploits. Dominant students use power gained from their masculinity to bully, attack and taunt peers who may appear gay, less aggressive or fail to demonstrate manhood. The pressure bullied students are put under forces them to prove to their dominant peers and teachers that they are still a man, often through committing violence in the form of school

    Read More

More about The Rampage: The Social Roots Of School Shootings

Open Document