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Effects of mass shootings in america essay
Effects of mass shootings in america essay
Gun violence in america
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Each year, more than 200,000 children and youth under the age of 20 are killed and injured by firearms in the United States. Peers, family members and even policemen shoot thousands of young people. Countless young children and youth are survivors of gun violence and become scarred by the effects of such violence in their homes. Gun violence happens very often in America where young children and teens kill other people. It is very rare to find a shooting where the police kill their own people. On April 30 1970, President Richard M. Nixon, announced that the United States of America and South Vietnamese forces were organizing a violent attack against enemy targets in Cambodia. Almost instantly, anti-war protests erupted. One of these countless protests was at the Kent State University located in Kent, Ohio. After several days of protesting things got out of control, leading to the death of four college students and the injury of nine others. The outcomes of Kent state shooting, otherwise known as the May 4 Massacre, went beyond those who physically suffered. The accidents on campus reformed the way millions of Americans though about the war in Vietnam and the anti-war movement. Most students, across the universities and campuses of America, were heavily against the growth of war into Cambodia. It is almost certain that the death of the four students and wounding of nine others ignited revolution across the nation’s universities, colleges and high schools. However, this revolution was short-lived as school terms were brought to an end. The controversial roles of the United States of America in Vietnam filled students with resentment, which led to a tragedy at the Kent state university and eventually to a social change.
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After the events that had spread-out the night before, on May 2nd several students helped with cleaning up the mess that they caused in downtown Kent. The events had only led to “rumors of radical activities” and put the Kent State ROTC building as a main target for militant students (Kent Chronology). This action reveals that the student’s intentions were to take down the presence of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) building. This action strictly shows that the students do not want graduates of the ROTC program to go into military service and fight in Vietnam. They are trying to do the impossible to stop the involvement of the U.S in the foreign war. This persistence in the students led to a success “in forcing the removal of the ROTC from their campuses”(Kent Chronology). Following the cleanup, a curfew was put in place on the entire city of Kent
If school shootings form an extended riot, what exactly are the shooters rioting against? What do they aim to do? Riots are mainly fueled by chaos and they involve unplanned, impulsive havoc, the terror of unaccountable, collective action. Shooters, by contrast, tend to contemplate their attacks months in advance. “ Sometime before the end of the school year, my plan was to steal a recycling bin from school and take one of the pressure cookers I made and put it in the hallway and blow it up during passing period time” ( LaDue pg 2 of article). Many shooters plan meticulously, keeping journals, studying weapons and techniques, plotting the perfect mass murder. In this regard, they are about as far from riots as you can get. One can’t plan to riot or have rioting materials ready on hand for when an incident does or does not occur. Gladwell ineffectively uses Granovetter’s theory as it clearly does not apply to school shooters. And what kind of riot spans this stretch of time and space, showing up all across the country over nearly two decades, with no end in sight. Eric Harris said he wanted to “kick-start a revolution,” a bit of delusional grandeur, but in a sense, he did start one. The shooting phenomenon forms something like a social movement or community; it’s more enduring and more deeply entrenched in our culture
The 1960’s was a time society fantasized of a better world. However, the horrors of the Vietnam War soon became evident; the mass amounts of death occurring because of the war became a reality. It created a “movement”, especially in American colleges, in order to stand up for what they believed to be “right”. By 1970, many Americans believed sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake, however there were also various individuals becoming increasingly critical of the student antiwar movement
October 2002 was the beginning of what seemed like the longest three weeks in the Washington Metropolitan Area. No one wanted to believe that what was happening would change the lives of thousands. What appeared to be a random killing spree by an enraged lunatic, turned out to be part of a massive plan that claimed the lives of ten innocent people in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. When these shootings first began, they were believed to be linked to a white van or truck. It was later discovered that these shootings were being carried out by a man named John Allen Muhammad, and his teenage accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo, in a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice sedan.
Particularly during the Vietnam War, tensions had been brewing over civil rights and pacifist movements, often headed by young people or students who felt that the government were not listening to their opinions and interests. With the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, racial tensions came to a head, sparking riots and animosity towards the government, who some perceived as countering or hindering the civil rights movement. The police and National Guard reacted violently to these riots, and in the case of student protests, many of which were peaceful, such during as the 1970 Kent State ‘Massacre’ where four were killed and nine injured during an anti-war demonstration. This was particularly damning as unarmed students were killed, and the reaction was immense. The Kent State ‘Massacre’ made it clear that to many social dynamics, the police, and by extension the government, were becoming the
President Nixon created a public atmosphere in which students who opposed the war were fair game for those who supported the government. In the week following Kent State, construction workers rioted on Wall State, attacking antiwar protesters and sending many to the hospital, some permanently crippled. It was reported at the time, a day or two after the deaths, President Nixon called the parents of the only slain student known to be a bystander- he was a member of ROTC- to express condolences. The phone never rang in the other parents' houses. The message couldn't have been clearer: they had it coming.
What happened at Kent State University? This is a question that many Americans were asking following the crisis on the Kent campus. In the days preceding May 4, 1970, protests, disruption, and violence erupted on the university grounds. These acts were the students’ reaction to President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. The events surround the deaths of four students in Kent, Ohio are disorderly and violent. In the government’s investigation after the shootings, the officials made several recommendations to students of the future. As the massacre is looked back upon, there are several key events that set the tragic day into motion.
In 1970 the nation was in its highest state of controversy. The generation gap that had begun to form in the sixties was now more of a ravine. The youth of America was finally standing up and raising their voices in protest against all the problems that plagued the country they would have control of in years to come. There were many events that helped in feeding the flame in the hearts of Americans. One such event was the Kent State University incident. It is an event that touched the nation and made such a profound mark, and yet it only lasted for thirteen seconds. In the thirteen seconds the Ohio National Guard, along with the rest of government by association, established themselves as the new enemy. All eyes were on them, scrutinizing their every move, pointing out every mistake they made. Interestingly enough, most don’t even really know exactly what went on in those thirteen seconds, but they knew that it left four students dead and nine injured at the hand of the National Guard, so that was enough to strike the hearts on millions. Still today, twenty-nine years later, we still don’t really know what went on. Who fired the first shot, and were they provoked? Was it necessary for the National Guard to be present on this typically calm college campus in the first place? And why did it have to end in such tragedy? There are so many questions, and so many misconceptions about this incident, and like any controversial issue, there are always two sides to the story.
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
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.
In order to fully understand the circumstances surrounding the Kent State Massacre, it is important to back track several days and establish a timeline of events leading up to the massacre. On April 30, 1970, then-President Richard Nixon announced to the American public his decision to send US troops into the nation of Cambodia. The first protest against this decision was held the following day, May 1, on the campus of Kent State University. However, due to class schedules, the protest had to end prematurely, with the organizers agreeing to reconvene and continue their protest on May 4. That evening, things got out of control when several hundred people launched violent acts in the street surrounding Kent State. The police arrived within an hour to quell the violence; however, in that brief period, many fires were set and looting was rampant.
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.
I was watching TV with my friends kids and attempting to find a movie they might enjoy. Unluckily for the children I had to pass by consecutive news channels. At first I passed by quickly through the first three channels but then I noticed the rest of the news channels that I did happen to glimpse had headlines saying school shooting. I couldn't help but watch the news for a bit to fully understand the situation. I discovered that many young children at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut had been shot and died. I was saddened because of those children and parents who had to live through that experience.
A series of shots being fired in the near distance can be heard. A crew of ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks are seen speeding down the streets while blaring their sirens to warn people to move out of the way rapidly. Then, crowds of people are seen running down the street franticly. Sounds of earsplitting yells fill the air. Their eyes are filled with tears of fear and terror. They look as if they were running for their lives. There is a wave of worry and curiosity that washes over everyone’s face as they stand there from a distance watching it take place. There was a sense of wanting to run towards the chaos to see what was going on. But the panic of the people running gave off the feeling of “Warning! Do NOT come this way!” What was happening? Later that night, the news reports that another mass shooting took place earlier on in the day. In the 21st century, many crimes involving mass shootings are the main focus of the public eye in the media. With the technology of the 21st century, investigators are able to look more into depth of the criminal’s background to see if they have a history of mental illness.
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.
Gun control is both a crime issue, as well as a safety issue. It can range from moderate to extreme. Gun control goes as back as the 17th century where Japan was using guns for war making as to current tragedies occurring in schools. Guns have never disappeared, they have only multiplied in numbers to numerous amount of guns, ranging from small to big. Gun control isn't only a problem but it can also be solution depending on how it is being used and the person using it. Gun control can be controlled with many methods but in the end it matters how the person is going to use the weaponry.