A study found that 30% of mass killings and 22% of school shootings have been inspired by previous shooting, the main possible reason of the media coverage of these horrific events. “What we found was, in ones that didn’t get a lot of media attention there was no contagion, and in the ones where we did see a lot of media attention, that’s where we saw the contagion,” Towers says (Kutner, 2015). In a study of nine school shootings in Germany, Dr. Meloy and his colleagues found that a third of the killers had ''consciously imitated and emulated what had happened in Columbine.'' Other mass killers have visited Columbine or written online of their admiration for the two perpetrators there.
Lauren Coleman author of the Copycat Effect says,” Whenever
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A well adjusted individual will not turn into a mass murderer no matter how many times they have seen a school shooting on the news. Fox says that all other factors including life circumstances and personality has to be there also. He says that the copycat effect influences the form and the timing but not the motivation for murder. James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston, says schools are preferred targets for those wanting to vent their rage at society in general. It takes a vulnerable, disturbed, suicidal and homicidal individual to want to mimic a previous school shooting. But beyond that, several factors are at play. Abe Worenklein, a professor at both Concordia University and Dawson College, tells forensic psychology students about the "mean world syndrome", when news reports devote so much attention to extremely rare events like school shootings, they begin to appear normal and common to fragile minds, breaking down the cognitive barriers that would normally stop them from committing such acts themselves. “Fifty per cent of the news on a given day can be about the Dawson or the Amish shooting," Worenklein said. "The media sends a message that this is what a lot of people do, even though it's the rare exception. While 99 per cent of people will identify with the pain …show more content…
There have been at least 94 gun-related deaths and over 156 people injured as a result of more than 200 school shootings since Sandy Hook, according to data from Every town for Gun Safety, which tracks gun violence and other shootings on school grounds. The Sandy Hook school shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children between six and seven years old, as well as six adult staff members, before killing himself. Prior to driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother at their home. Adam Lanza was himself a student of earlier shootings. He studied the columbine school shooting and the shooting that happened in Norway, where 77 people were killed. This shooting also brought out copycat shooting like the killing of nine people at an Oregon community college. Before opening fire, the gunman, Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, had uploaded a video about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Anyone interested in the mechanics of such killings can reconstruct them easily through a quick Internet search of news reports, websites and social media. One website lists rampage killings around the world. The gunman who killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora,
With this in mind, some major shootings in the United States have been the Aurora, Colorado movie theatre, the Newton, Connecticut elementary school, and the Santa Monica shooting. The most recent shootings were in Springs, Colorado, and in San Bernardino, California. All of the shooting mentioned above have left over five people dead or injured. As time goes by mass shootings seem to occur more frequently in the United States. Many say that the media has a big role in promoting mass shooting. That might be true, but if someone is mentally stable it is doubtful they will be influenced to do what they see on TV. Maybe people who are mentally ill might be motivated to copy what they see on TV; therefore the media should have that in mind.
Sandy Hook is an elementary school in Connecticut that was invaded by a shooter, Adam Lanza. Twenty-eight people were shot and killed, twenty of them being children between the ages of five and ten. Before Lanza arrived, he shot and killed his mother who was a teacher at this school. The article was published the day of the shooting to the Washington Post. The article was written announce what had actually happened during this tragic event. The article was directed towards parents with kids and adults to inform everyone on the catastrophe and to hopefully make schools as safe as they could possibly be. Additionally the author also states that this is not the right time to try and discuss the gun control laws.
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. He also theorized that Adam shot his mother four times for each of them; himself, his mother, his father, and his brother. After the tragedy, the school was torn down and many gun-control debates heated up and schools greatly improved their security to prevent anymore potential attacks. To this day, the motive of Adam Lanza, is still unknown but the effects are still felt in the world today.
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 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 deaths of twenty students and eight adults. Although the event shocked the nation, the 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.
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.
In December 2014, an elementary school was attacked by an armed gunman. The shooter’s name was Adam Lanza. He killed twenty first graders and six faculty members before he took his own life in favor of being arrested (CNN).... ... middle of paper ...
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?
On December 14, 2012 Adam Lanza, a 20 year old with asperger’s syndrome, shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut . According to the final report by the states attorney’s office he got in the school at 9:30 AM in the morning and shot the principal and the school’s psychologist that went out to the hallway to check loud bangs they heard. He then moved on to class rooms where innocent children were learning and started shooting and by 9:40 AM, just ten minutes later, he took the lives of twenty six people, including twenty children age twelve and below and six adults, before taking his own life (State Report on Sandy Hook Elementary shooting).
On April 16th, 2007 Cho had created one of the most deadly school shootings in America. ( "Virginia Tech Shootings Fast Facts." CNN.) It was unfathomable to think that in the close future, America would encounter many more detrimental school shootings. This is including the shooting of elementary students in Newtown, CT where Adam Lanza had shot and killed 27 children and faculty. Lanza had been known to have significant health issues that had kept him from living a normal life. (Sanchez, Ray, Chelsea J. Carter in Atlanta, Yon Pomrenze in New York, and The CNN New York Bureau Staff. ) Both of these shooters had killed themselves shortly after their attacks. School violence has become a nation-wide issue.
The information Is backed up by many statistics and laws that have been proved true by many sources. Matt Bennett is cofounder and senior vice president of Third Way, an organization devoted to develop stricter gun laws. The source has mainly facts describing causes and effects of the Sandy Hook shooting. This article was written in 2013 but the same issues brought up in the article are still around
America will never forget the atrocity that is Sandy Hook. Once known as a peaceful school, Sandy Hook Elementary is now known as the site of another school shooting, one which resulted in a young adult slaughtering twenty children and six adult staff members (Chaney and Robertson 74). The perpetrator, Adam Lanza, shocked the small town of Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. He acted on his frustrations; murdering his own mother and slaughtering innocent children and civilians. Bewildered, the nation began the attempt to search for clues explaining the perpetrator’s motives. As typical, investigators concluded that Lanza was another troubled young mind; he had a variant of Down syndrome which socially alienated him, and his single mother, an active gun enthusiast, seemed to only make matters worse by allowing Lanza to preoccupy himself with shooting range practice and video games.
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.
With the media shining so much light upon this topic, it is evident that mass murders in the United States of America are more frequent and deadly. In fact, studies have found that the USA has more mass public shootings than any other country (Christensen). These numbers have only been increasing in the past decades. This is shocking because the USA holds only 5 percent of the world’s population, but as a nation, contributes to 31 percent of mass murders (Christensen). Although these murders continue to be a rare phenomenon, weak gun laws, the need for fame, and issues with societal views are the main causes of the increase in cases.
“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