How safe do you feel when you attend school everyday? Many students and faculty don’t really think too much about school being a dangerous place; however, after a couple of school shootings had taken place their minds and thoughts may have changed completely. On April 16, 2007, in the town of Blacksburg Virginia, a college student who attended Virginia Tech, opened gunfire to his fellow classmates. This shooting has been considered to be the biggest massacre in all of American history. There are many things to be discussed in this major tragedy. Some of them include the events leading up to the shooting, the timeline that the shootings occurred, the causes, and the significance in this particular shooting. The Virginia Tech is only one of the several examples of the horrible behavior and violence in our school systems today.
To begin with, there were several events leading up to the shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech. Cho Seung Hui, 23, an English major from Korea, was identified as the person responsible for the shootings (New York Times). Many students and faculty members described Cho as a very quiet and lonely person who very seldom said anything. He always had a very depressed look to him as if he had someone really close pass away. It seemed as if no one really knew who he was or what he was about other than just walking by him or seeing him in class. Cho attended professor Nikki Giovanni’s creative writing class and it wasn’t long before she began to question some of his work (Washington Post). Cho’s work seemed to be very morbid and worry some of his classmates up to the point that his peers quit attending class because they began to be scared of what he could be capable of. Cho’s writing was so dark a...
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... which happens to be closer to home for the people attending Rend Lake. Honestly it scares the crap out of me knowing that at any time someone could just start shooting people at random. There have been several of things in school shootings that need to be closely examined. Some of these include the way people act while attending school and if anything may be fishy, the several different patterns these killers seem to be using, their family background, and their media influences. We must also look at what the significance of this tragedy could further entail, such as what could possibly happen again and just how comfortable you really feel with students and teachers being armed. School security around the world should buckle down and put an end to school shootings before, yet another repetition of the Virginia Tech massacre takes place and claims even more lives.
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
This was a very informative article. I was unaware of all the deaths in result of gun violence. I didn’t realize that people who worked for the government or who was in congress were often targets. In order to fully get rid of gun violence in schools, each and every school should have metal detectors that can detect weapons and always have security guards on duty. By doing this, parents are more comfortable with sending their students off to school. Taking this step in every school around the world would definitely cost lots of money but it will honestly be worth it. After all the school shooting we’ve heard about, we’d definitely be saving plenty of lives just in case an incident does happen. I went to highschool in a rough neighborhood and
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...
As the world recovers from recent school shootings, people wondered why these events have occurred. They are focused on drug use, violent society, video games, bullying, and mental issues to try and explain an unexplainable event. The idea that a person would shoot others for little or no reason gave little relief to the survivors.
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 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.
Although most security measures passively make schools safer, it is not nearly enough to prevent an individual who intends on creating mass violence from completing his or her task. State representatives, national organizations, school staff, and parents need to come together to figure out the most reliable ways to prevent an active shooter situation from occurring in their schools. One solution that has been active is many schools have partnered with local law enforcement agencies to provide a police officers to patrol school grounds....
Well they are not hard to find in Wheelers essay he uses several facts to show that schools have been shooters primary targets. Whether the shooter is affiliated with them or not. All shooters want is somewhere they can find essay targets, unarmed student, young children, weaponless teachers. Several school shootings are given in Wheeler’s essay. Wheeler mentions that in April of 2007, thirty – two people were murdered at Virginia Tech. This was not the only shooting wheeler mentions that took place in a school. Buford Furrow’s murderous invasion in August of 1999, took place are the Los Angeles Jewish day-care. Wheeler introduces cases where guns became the hero in what could have ended like many other school shootings do. In 2002, a homicidal Virginia student was stopped for shooting more of his classmates when another student held him at gunpoint. At the Pearl High School, Luke Woodham was stopped, when the schools vice principal, Joel Myrick got his colt .45 out of his truck and pointed it at the young killer. Wheeler states that we had the opportunity to protect our schools when House Bill 1572 was introduced into the legislature. The bill would allow all concealed-carry provisions to be extended onto college campuses. Unfortunately, the bill was denied wheeler says, by a bunch of naysayers, this included the Virginia Tech itself. This just shows that we as citizens had the chance to protect not only ourselves, but our children and we just denied it.
One concern mentioned about guns was the fact that campus police will not know who the shooter is within the chaos of an emergency. In this scenario, all members of the school will be panicking. Students will run in different directions. The officers will not know where to search. Skorton
On the morning of October 3, four people were shot within a span of approximately 2 hours in Aspen Hill, and other nearby areas in Montgomery County. Another was killed that evening in the District of Columbia, just over the border of Silver Spring. In each shooting, the victims were killed by a single bullet fired from some distance. The pattern was not detected until after the shootings occurred on October 3. Fear quickly spread throughout the community as news of the shootings circulated. Many parents went to pick up their children at school early, not allowing them to take a school bus or walk home alone. Montgomery County and District of Columbia schools declared a lockdown, wit...
Did you know that there has been an average of 1 school shooting every week this year? We are barely 11 weeks into 2018 and the tragedy of school shootings have been sweeping the country from California to Virginia. There are teachers in multiple states that are authorized to conceal weapons on their campus. Some students feel safe knowing that their teachers hold a gun, however some may think their lives are in danger.
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 ...
“That could never happen in my school.” This is one of the first thoughts that goes through a students mind when they hear about a school shooting. The fact is though, it can. School shootings can happen at any school at any time. Lack of security is only a small part of the problem. The major issue lies in the low morality of students and warning signs overlooked by administration.
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.
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.