School shootings are some of the most horrific incidents that can take a community by storm. It can be hard to fathom how children can be capable of such horrible acts, such as killing their fellow classmates. Many people have tried to come up with explanations on how these terrible acts have occurred. These explanations have ranged to biological factors to how the way our society views violence. In this essay I will explain how some theories could explain these events and how they can help deter it from happening again.
First theories would be the biological theories. In these theories it is assumed that there is something biologically wrong with the individual. This can include a variety of things such as structures of the brain that are
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These types of theories believe there is some type of defect of the mind and the way it works that is causing misbehavior. These theories have a range of ideas of the causes of crimes. They include mental disorders, issues during stages of development that influence future behaviors, and psychopaths. When applying these theories to school shooters there is a rage of directions that can be taken to explain the motivation behind their acts. One explanation could be that there is a mental disorder that is causing the individual to act out in violence. Depression, for example, could be used as an argument for these theories. Adolescences in school are going through arguably one of the most difficult times of their lives. If an individual has severe depression on top of it, this could be a cause for them to act out in violent ways. Other mental disorders could also play a role in why an individual decides to commit these acts of violence. Another explanation could be that an individual is a psychopath. Psychopaths have no conscious and they commit acts of violence because they have no sense of the harm that they are inflicting. If this is the case the individual is probably committing the crime to be noticed or for some sort of revenge. There are a variety of different explanations under the physiological theories that could be used to explain school shootings, but I believe that mental disorders play the largest role …show more content…
These theories believe that society has a huge effect on the reason crime is committed. The theories in this category include among others the social learning theory and differential association theory. These two theories I think play the biggest role in the reason why school shootings happen. In the social learning theory it is believe that learning occurs through imitation and differential reinforcement. Imitation involves modeling behavior after being observed in others and differential reinforcement which involves conditioning a person’s behavior based on reinforcements and punishments. This could play a role in school shootings in a couple of ways. One could be the increase of violence that children are exposed to. If children witness violence, whether it be on video games or in person, and they do not see any punishments associated with them, this could lead them to engage in behaviors similar to the ones they have witnessed. Other way could be how school shooters have been portrayed in the media in the past. The shooters name is usually front and center of most reports, this could cause a person to commit these crime in hopes of becoming some sort of famous. Differential association believes behavior is learned through social interactions. Since children are exposed to so much violence in the media they could come to believe that it is the norm, and is the best way to deal
Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Adam Lanza, Steven Phillip Kazmierczak, and Seung-Hui Cho all have a few things in common, they are all school shooters that have killed and injured a combined total of 149 human beings and are or were believed to be avid violent video game players, who also committed suicide immediately after carrying out their attacks. To the public, school shooters seem to share a direct connection to playing violent video games and that playing them leads to violent behavior. Violent videogames have become a highlight in the media and national debate for this very reason but, there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of a causative connection between participants of violent videogames manifesting violent behaviors. The media provides biased information that misleads citizens into believing that said link is well established and accepted. I argue that parents should make responsible and well informed decisions in regards to their child’s videogame activities in spite of the lack of scientific research.
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
The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, but only in cases of self-defense and hunting for food. However, the use of guns has drastically changed since 1791 when the amendment was implemented. Today, guns are not solely used in their intended ways. Since 2010, over eighty-seven school shootings have occurred within American grade schools, high schools, and universities, resulting in approximately 107 injuries and 109 murders of innocent students. The two most deadly shootings in the world occurred in the United States: the Virginia Tech University Massacre which left thirty-two dead and Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting which left twenty-eight dead. Each new shooting prompts a debate about gun control laws and leaves citizens wondering about the accessibility of guns; any United States citizen over the age of twenty-one that does not have any previous felonies is able to easily receive a gun license. Forty-nine out of the sixty-one school shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2012 legally obtained firearms. The statistics become even more outstanding: seventy nine percent of all shooters have been diagnosed with a mental illness or disability, including the Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shooters, Seung-Hui Cho and Adam Lanza. Cho and Lanza were diagnosed with mental illnesses and disabilities, depression and autism, respectively. Even so, they were still able to acquire the guns they needed because extensive mental health background checks did not and still do not exist; Cho purchased his own weapon and Lanza stole his mother’s guns. Although the case studies of Lanza and Cho are only two out of the many school shootings, they should be considered prime examples to illustrate the necessity to add stri...
The influences that are most common in youth that result in using a gun to commit a crime are mental instability, and bullying. Bullying has become a very hot topic recently because we have seen so many people result to going to school with a gun to try to scare the person that is bullying them or we have heard of suicides by these same kids. Bullying can also cause some other issues ...
The United States will not soon forget the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut that came just two weeks before Christmas last year. This tragic event resulted in the death of twenty students and eight adults. Although the event shocked the nation, rampage shootings are nothing new. Over the years, many families have lost loved ones to these horrific events. As a result, these mass shootings such as the one that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary caught public attention leading to a push to find the cause of these events. Out of this research a variety of possible causes came to light consisting of arguments stating that high school bullying, availability of guns, mental illness, violent movies and video games are the cause of mass shootings. However, these researchers and debaters tend to ignore the role of massive media coverage in the increase of copycat shootings in the United States.
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.
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.
Young adults are not just creating this school violence, kids as young as twelve are committing acts as dangerous at their own school shootings. In Sparks Middle School in Nevada, twelve-year-old Jose Reyes had taken his parents hand gun with him to school. He had shot 2 children and killed a teacher that was also a war veteran. He then turned the gun on himself ("US School Violence Fast Facts." CNN). Many other incidents had occurred as early as 1927 to present day. Many of these shootings include the principal and certain classmates as the target. Simple disagreements between classmates can trigger a response that creates the such violence.
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.
Gladwell implausibly suggest that we should think of school shootings as a single “slow-motion, ever-evolving riot”( Gladwell pg. 7). Gladwell concludes from this that the riot has solely caught on because boys who wouldn’t have thought to shoot up their school now have a group to join, a model to follow. However he is wrong, Gladwell does not effectively prove his claim as he constantly contradicts himself in his article, he also has a lack of logos and poor use of ethos. He does not persuade me that Granovetter's theory describes school shooting accurately, the way riots work simply does not fit the typical school shooters criteria. School shootings or bombings take meticulous planning and premeditation opposite from rioting and all the erupted sudden chaos that involves before it takes
Most of us learned when we were very young that we should not judge by appearances. But, in the aftermath of massacres in schools everywhere, a sane person has to take seriously what the material world shows - and pass judgment. After all, a lack of judgment and subsequent action may lead to further youth violence.
“The more energy they have to gin up to execute their plan, the harder it will be to do so” (Newman). When “Would be shooters” are faced with a challenge they most likely don’t go through with their plan. The dedicated shooters are those who intend on finding guns and shooting people, those who have the drive. “Totally dedicated shooters” are the type of people who wont give up whether the guns are accessible to them legally or illegally. Dedicated shooters have a plan of action and intend on going through with it. These types of people likely suffer from mental illnesses. “The abnormally high level of school shootings in America is not solely a gun issue a mental health issue, or a media issue, but rather a problem caused by a combination of mental illness problems, social inequality, gun control policies, and the structure of schools”(Gupta, 2016). Structural inequalities in the United States cause stress, which lead people to turn to radical measures. Factors such as economic change, racism and social changes cause constraints on behavior. Mental health is also a leading factor to school shootings. “Metzl and MacLeish’s research shows that up to 60 percent of mass shootings in the United States since 1970 involved shooters displaying symptoms of mental illnesses—including paranoia, depression, and delusions—and the evidence suggests that
When looking at the crisis that comes with school shootings most people turn to the media, the media often times has incorrect or one sided views of these school shooters by exclusively excluding them due to mental illness .School shooters shouldn’t be excused exclusively in terms of their mental health because school shooters are also perpetrators of bullying. In the case of many school shootings over the past years, most of the talk and commenting from the media always portrays them as the victim and even in some cases even try to make the assumption that other students should’ve been wary of this specific student mainly based off the fact that they seem them as someone who has
No one can really give a definite answer for why school shootings actually occur. We look for clues and patterns to help to look inside the mind of those who do go into schools to kill others. First let us look at the Columbine shooting. The two reasons that were most believed in why Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed thirteen students and their own were because they were bullied and wanted to get back at the guys who hurt them throughout high school. The other reason was we would never know. It was just a freak thing that could not be explained. The two killers wanted to be legends. They wanted to cause the most deaths in American History. They did wire the bomb properly so they were not able to kill as many people as they had planned. The bomb in the cafeteria would have killed at least six hundred people. The survivors were supposed...