Persuasive Essay On Gun Violence

Between 1996 and 1997, 6000 school children were expelled for bringing guns to school. (http://www.handguncontrol.org/) In April 1999, two boys in Littleton, Colorado went on a rampage at Columbine High School where 12 students and a teacher were killed. Almost 20 other students were hurt during this incident. They turned the guns on themselves after the shooting was over. Then in May, a 15-year-old boy opened fire at Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia injuring six students.

Together, the Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook school shootings resulted in seventy-seven deaths. Gun related school violence continues to occur and has become more frequent in the recent years. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed one teacher and twelve students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado on April 20th, 1999. In the shooting, they injured twenty other students before they turned their guns on themselves. Columbine, one of the first school shootings, caused a progression of gun-related violence in schools.

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).

The lives of everyone in the town of Springfield Oregon changed on May 21st of 1998. A quiet boy named Kip Kinkel became known as “The Killer at Thurston High” after killing both of his parents, murdering two classmates, and severely injuring 24 others. There are many factors in the 15 year old boy’s life that led up to the horrific events that occurred on that day. The same factors that influenced the tragedy in occurring could have very easily insured that it never happened to begin with. On May 20th of 1998 Kip Kinkel was suspended from Thurston High for possession of a gun in his locker.

He mainly targeted two first-grade classrooms close to front of the building, where he shot twenty students between the ages of five and six and also six adults. After authorities made their way into the school, he realized that he was discovered and he fled to a nearby closet and shot himself in the head (Altimari 2013). Threat The biggest threat to our homeland security after this incident was 27 innocent lives were massacred by LEGAL weaponry readily available for anyone to get their hands on. That led to the American public asking many good questions about homeland security including, are we [Americans] being too lenient and making it too easy for bad guys to obtain guns? Since it is easy for bad guys to legally get guns, are we just making it harder to protect the homeland?

He took the gun to school, pulled it out of his pocket, and shot a girl in his first-grade class. She died on the way to the hospital.” (Lunger, Big Bang: The Loud Debate over Gun Control) As he shows innocent children are being killed by other innocent children just because a gun was lying around. There is no way to go around it. Innocent children killed because there is no gun control. Not convincing enough?

The second attack only lasted about 10 minutes before the gunman committed suicide by sho... ... middle of paper ... ... No evidence shows that Cho specifically targeted any victims. In 2011, Virginia Tech was fined by the U.S. Department of Education for failing to issue a good, campus-wide warning that there had been a murder, the gunman was still killing and that he was armed. Shapira, Ian and Jackman, Tom. “Gunman Kills 32 Virginia Tech In Deadliest Shooting in U.S. History.” www.washintonpost.com. The Washington Post, 17 Apr.

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.

Street gangs and prison gangs are a true problem and burden that haunts not only the US but also the World. Gang violence is triggered by itself because it is inevitable to take place due to the gangs’ very small tolerance for disrespect. Many efforts have been put forward to stop the monstrosities cause by the unrestrained men and women who are intimidating everyone who they surround. Gang violence affects the whole United States and not just a certain group. Maybe someday there will be a cure to the killings and violence cause but unfortunately we do not have the solution.

Over the past twenty years, there have been at least three major school shootings that hit the media. The most recent school shooting that caught the media’s attention was located in Newtown, Connecticut. A young man by the name of Adam Lanza, walked into Sandy Hook elementary and walked through the hallways and classrooms with an AR-15 and multiple glocks to massacring innocent young, children and teachers. Before showing up to the school, he walked into his mother’s room and shot her in the head four times. Lanza killed twenty children and also killed six teachers.