On the morning of October 1, 2015, emergency responders went to Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon to a horrific scene. A 26-year-old man, whom will remain nameless due to the senseless act of violence he committed, opened fire at Umpqua Community College killing nine people and wounding another seven. The casualties of this heinous crimes were not all college aged students, “Those killed are Lucero Alcaraz, 19; Treven Taylor Anspach, 20; Rebecka Ann Carnes, 18; Quinn Glen Cooper, 18; Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, 59; Lucas Eibel, 18; Jason Dale Johnson, 34; Lawrence Levine, 67; and Sarena Dawn Moore, 44” (CNN). Police say he had three weapons on him at the school shooting two of which were handguns and the third being a “long gun”. The shooter was in the Army for one month before being, “discharged for failing to meet the minimum administrative standards” (CNN). The shooter easily obtained access to Umpqua because he was enrolled in a few courses. The shooter suffered from mental health issues and had sought treatment but not before committing such a heinous act of violence. …show more content…
On a very dark day in America, there was one beam of light in the form of heroism.
Chris Mintz is a thirty-year-old army veteran who happened to be in the same building of the shooting. After the shooter came to the classroom Mintz was in, he barricaded the door so that the shooter could not get into the classroom in order to save the lives of everyone in that room. The shooter preceded to shoot him three times, while on the floor Mintz pleads out to the shooter, “It's my son's birthday today” (CNN). With no remorse, the shooter fired two more shots into Mintz. Police caught up to the shooter because Mintz slowed him down dramatically and that is when the shooter took his own life before being handcuffed. Without the help of Mintz who knows how many more people could have
died. Conflict Theory is the ideology that the wealth dominates the poor through exploitation. Conflict theory relates heavily to the Oregon college shooting because the shooter has had a history of mental illness and often felt isolated based on his writing, “The writings include feelings of anger about being isolated and unable to form relationships” (CNN). His isolation and anger was a direct response to his own country discharging him from the army because he failed to reach the administrative minimum standards. The elites of the nation set these standards so when he was discharged it was really this nation’s elite saying he is not good enough to represent this nation leaving him nowhere else to turn ultimately isolating him. Functionalism in plain English is if one does not fit into a certain part of society, they will have a spot in another part because in functionalism there is a destination for all. This lack of functionalism was the main reason the shooter carried out this vicious attack of Umpqua College. The shooter felt a sense of isolation after being discharged from the army. From his perspective, society pushed him out because of his mental illness making him feel like the only way to make an impact in society is to slaughter numerous civilians. Symbolic interaction is how our personality/actions change based solely on our interactions with other humans socially. Symbolic Interaction was completely over the head of the shooter because of his illness he hardly ever able to interact socially with others efficiently. The lack of symbolic interaction was because he sought out treatment for his mental illness but never received the proper help for him to conduct himself in a civil manner in society leading to his anger for not mesh with the society and ultimately the shootings.
"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.
The deadliest school shooting to have ever happened in the United States at a high school or grade school, happened less than two years ago. On December 14th, 2012, Adam Lanza, who was twenty years old at the time, shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, four times and then brought firearms to his former grade school Sandy Hook Elementary, and fatally shot twenty children and six adults. Then the shooter put his own gun to his head and fatally shot himself. All of the children were between the ages of six and seven years old, and all six adults who were shot and killed were females who worked at the school. Lanza's father believed that if he were there himself, his son would have had no trouble shooting and killing him too.
Tragedy hit the docks of Everett, Washington, Sunday November 5, 1916 which would be known as “Bloody Sunday.” On November 5, 1916 the Everett Massacre was the culmination of labor trouble which had been brewing for months. It was one of the bloodiest single episodes of labor-related violence in the Pacific Northwest.
"In October 1997, a 16-year old in Pearl, Mississippi, first killed his mother and then went to school and shot nine students, two fatally; in December 1997 a 14-year old went to his school in West Paducah, Kentucky, killed three students and wounded five others; in March last year, two boys, aged eleven and thirteen, killed four girls and a teacher outside their school in Jonesboro, Arkansas; the next month a science teacher was shot dead, allegedly by a 14-year old, at a school dance in Edinsboro, Pennsylvania; last May in Fayetteville, Tennessee, an 18-year old student allegedly shot dead a classmate in the school car park; two days later, in Springfield, Oregon, a 15-year old opened fire at his high school, killing two teenagers and wounding more than twenty (police later found that his parents had been killed at home) ("Lesson"). On April 20th of this year, two teenagers enter their school and open fire, killing 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives.
On the 29th o April, 1977 Captain Cook, commander of a British fleet, landed on the eastern shore of Australia, in an attempt to claim the land under the name of Britain. The land was to be claimed by Britain as a land where the British government could send convicts; in an attempt to ease the struggle in the over flowing prisons. Upon Cooks arrival, he was ordered to follow three rules of claiming a foreign land. They were;
On February 14, 2008, Steven Kazmierczak took less than two minutes to open fire on a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, killing five, injuring eighteen, and finally taking his own life. Although he had a history of mental illness, Kazmierczak had been given the Dean’s Award, the highest honor an undergraduate of NIU can receive, attended graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and sought counseling for his mental illness. From the outside, it appeared that he had taken control of his life, described as “being so nice he must be a mass murderer” by faculty members at NIU. To say the least, his killing spree and subsequent suicide came as a shock to those who knew him, and it is difficult
On March 24, 1998 in Jonesboro, Arkansas five people were murdered and ten people were injured. The fifteen were victims of an act of gun violence when two young Westside Middle School students decided to attack their school with firearms. Mitchell Scott Johnson born August 11, 1984 age 13 at the time of the shooting and Andrew Douglas Golden born May 25, 1986 age 11 at the time of the shooting. Johnson and Golden were both charged with five counts of murder and ten counts of aggravated assault. Both served their time in the juvenile justice system because in order to be waived to the adult system in the state of Arkansas the offender at the time must have been at least 14 years old. The two severed their time in Alexander Arkansas at the Arkansas Department of Human Services. Johnson was released after seven years on his 21st birthday in 2005. The same went for Golden after serving nine years.
The columbine massacre the day where no one is safe in school or out of school. The columbine massacre is about two students named Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris both seniors 17 years old both two weeks before graduating they killed 12 students, one teacher, and 21 injured to their shooting on April 20, 1999. Both Dylan and Eric were some believe they were bullied by the sport teams in their school so they planned to kill the people who bullied them and other mostly anyone who gets in their way but that wasn’t really why the FBI he said that there target was everyone no one in pacify we will not get in to more details now. Dylan and Eric were both intelligent boys with solid parents and a good home and both had brothers younger than them. They played soccer, baseball, and both enjoyed to work on computers. Both boys were thinking on commit suicide on 1997 but instead started to plan a massacre in 1998 a year before it happened. Then the two boys had got into some trouble for breaking into a van on January 30, 1998 trying to steal some fuses and wires for bombs for them to make, but they got caught in trouble. So the court put them in a program called the juvenile diversion program, but even if they were there they were still planning the massacre and the court also put Eric in some angry management classes and people believe it worked but it didn’t he just did it to look like it work and both boys made it look like they were really sorry but they weren’t. Dylan and Eric both really hated everyone in their school and the court as well after they got caught breaking in to that van that’s when they really started to plan the massacre more and that’s when Harris started he’s journals no one really knows way but they didn’t hate a hand...
Summary: Adam Goldman’s NY Times Article, “Texas Church Shooting…”, published in Nov. 8 2017, describes what allowed the gunmen to cause so much damage. One of the main reasons described is “ the Air Force admitted on Monday that it had failed to forward information about him to the national database” which is why he was able to purchase weapons even though he had been convicted of domestic abuse. The shooter also spent time in a psychiatric hospital when he was serving in the air force. He was a “high risk patient” with “girlfriend issues” who was flaunting his purchase of multiple weapons. In 2015, the shooter tried to get a license to carry a handgun but was unsuccessful because of previous animal cruelty charges.
The history of school shootings has shown an increase in mass school shooting. 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. Only two students survived the massacre (“History”). Since the 1700s the United States society has changed in many ways. Schools have become more than just one room school houses and each grade has its own teacher. Furthermore, the problem of school shootings has not decreased but rather increased over the years. On the one hand, reports from the Centers for Disease Control showed that in general school violence decreased from 1992 to 200...
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.
There have been many horror stories in the news about mass shootings at schools. The public, and even the president of the United States, is asking if anything can be done to prevent these tragedies. There are many theories on why students kill their peers at schools; these range from increased violence in video games and movies to bullying troubles at school. Almost always, the perpetrator suffers from some form of mental illness (Khadaroo). Because of this, motives for these crimes are extremely difficult to discern. Although the theories for the causes of this dilemma are tenuous at best, the effects are very perceptible. Can anything be done to prevent these massacres? School shootings are a complex problem that cannot always be prevented, but there are a number of actions we can take to reduce the frequency and extent of the damage caused. These actions include placing more restrictions on firearms, creating detection programs for shooters, hiring more counselors for unstable students, and placing guards or police in schools. School shootings are a serious problem, and a solution is needed in order to prevent these calamities.
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.
School shootings have been a crime for quite some time, in the past three years they have unfortunately become a more common issue. On April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, a school shooting occurred (“Columbine”). This shooting was done by two teens who attended Columbine. The teens’ reasoning behind committing such crime is due to the fact that they were bullied by students of Columbine High School. This was a very tragic event for Columbine High School. With 13 people killed and 20 wounded, it left a mark on the community. After the two teens went about this shooting, they committed suicide. School shootings are a very serious matter, and for years following shootings like Columbine, the atmosphere of the school, as well as the community, is damaged. The Columbine High School shooting is labeled the worst shooting in United States History (“Columbine”). Schools never fully mend from tragic events like school shootings; however, there is more prevention that can be done to reduce the chances of school shootings happening.