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Essay School Shootings in the United States
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Why? Why should parents have to worry about sending their child to school everyday? Why should students have to sit in class with thoughts in the back of their head like, what if that were to happen here? Why? The question everyone wants answers to is why do school shootings even happen. There is no single, certain answer to these questions. By finding out why school shooting occur, preventing them will be much easier.
1st Sub-topic: Where and why
60% of school shootings in the US happen in small towns. Research on earlier shootings showed the attack is on a school because that is the center stage in a small town, where the shooter can affect the entire community. School shootings are far more frequent in America than in other countries. Although school shootings seem to be on the rise, school is still considered one of the safest places. In 2012 out of all youth homicides, less than 2% occur at school, and this percentage has been stable for the past decade. In 2010, there were about 828,000 nonfatal injuries at school among students 12 to 18 years old. Deaths resulting from schoo...
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
Public mass shootings have increased at an alarming rate over the past three decades and have become a growing concern for the people of the United States. It has appeared that approximately every few months, media outlets report incidences of tragedy involving a sole gunman targeting groups of people with the intent to harm or extinguish life due to various motives. Recent research data indicated that over 80 public mass shootings have occurred in the United States since 1983. Some of the more recent shootings to date are: Marysville-Pilchick High in October 2014; Santa Barbara, California in May 2014; Fort Hood, Texas U.S. Army base in April 2014; Washington Navy Yard in September 2013; Sandy Hook Elementary, Connecticut in December 2012;
In the United States there has been, “372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870” (BBC). Some recent shootings in the United States, for instance are Sandy Hook, Antigo high school in Wisconsin where there was one death and two injured, Madison high school in Ohio where 4 kids under the age of 15 were shot and injured, etc. One shooting in particular that will be focused on is
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...
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.
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.
School shootings are still happening and we have to put a stop to it. We need to have these teachers prepared and ready to fight. Students to deserve to have their lives out to rest knowing something could have been done that’s why we need to have these teachers armed. This is a cold world if someone enters a school with a weapon teachers need to have their weapon ready too for the sack of their children. A school is a fun place to learn but to also keep safe. This is why teachers should be armed.
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?
From 1980’s till now, there are has been many school shootings. Many researchers have made many hypotheses as to why these occur. The most tragic shooting took place in Sandy Hook Elementary. 2. I believe that we should prevent shootings from happening in schools because schools are meant to be a safe education environment for students and faculty. There are many ways that school shootings can be prevented and the two most important ones are hiring more school security officers and having counselors help out troubled kids.
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.
In the article “Gun Control Can Prevent School Shootings,” Bennett shares the effects of gun violence in the past, present, and future. The Sandy Hook shooting occurred on December 14, 2012 when twenty children and six adult staff members were killed. Barely a month after the shooting, eleven of the families affected by the shooting went to meet privately with Joe Biden, and members from the Congress and cabinet. Bennett stated, “They were preparing to wade into some of the roughest waters in American politics: the gun debate.” President Obama gave a speech in Connecticut vowing to fight for change. And as Bennett put it, “Members of Congress started acting as parents instead of politicians.” Bennett explained to the families that they couldn't get rid of assault weapons or high capacity ammunition magazines, no matter how bad the shooting was. The families got angry and stated they did not want to know what they couldn't do, but what they could do to honor their children.
Parents and teachers need to be concerned of the lives in danger. “Since 2013, there have been at least 205 school shootings in America — an average of nearly one a week.” States every town research, a support fund for gun safety. This statistic could be your neighbor, children, or friends school down the street from home. Or, as a teacher this school could be the one you work in every day.
One important factor to look at with school shootings is where the shooter gets his weapon from. According to an article of school shootings and their relationships to gun violence, “Among shootings at K-12 Schools in which the shooter’s age was known, 70 percent (14 of 20 incidents) were perpetrated by minors” (54). This is a shocking fact because in the United States an individual must be 18 years old or older to purchase a firearm. This would mean that the minors illegally obtained their weapons from a source such as their own homes. “In the eight incidents where the source of the gun was known, three-quarters of the shooters used a gun they obtained from home” (54). This is one of the reasons why school shootings are a key topic in the gun control debate. It causes the public to form divided opinions over the subject of gun control. Many people believe that in order to prevent more of these shootings from happening we must take extreme measures to
"Our schools should be safe, positive environments, and having guns under teachers' desks or in closets only sends the wrong message to our children," said newly elected Mark Takano.
School shootings are becoming common place in the news as school violence is on the rise. Statistics state that 31.2 percent of parents said the leading cause for choosing homeschool over public school is “concern about the environment of other schools” (Burke, 2014). According to the CDC fact sheet Understanding School Violence, 12 percent of youth in grades 9-12 report being in a physical fight on school property while 5.9 percent reported that they felt unsafe at school and did not attend. Seven percent of teachers also report that they have been threatened or injured by a student (School Violence, 2013). While only 1 percent of all youth homicides occur at schools, violence does not need to result in a fatality in order to be a concern.