In our society, American citizens live in fear because fear is constant in this day and age. Adding the ability for individuals to be able to freely carry firearms in public is only worsening the fear inside of us. By allowing people to openly carry loaded weapons, it raises the risk of a shooting in broad daylight, or even a mass shooting as we hear about time and time again. The United States should prohibit the ‘open carry’ policy entirely and make it illegal to go out in public armed because there is simply no need to carry a deadly weapon at all times because the possibility a shooting taking place significantly increases when one individual is carrying a firearm.
The ability to carry firearms in the United States needs to be abolished.
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Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting spree in their high school in 1999. The two boys illegally required guns, which led to the killing of 15 students and injuring another 21 students. In 2007, Virginia Tech student, Sung Hui Cho once wrote on an assignment in 8th grade that he would like to “repeat Columbine.” This same student went on to kill 32 students and injured 17. Just 11 days before Christmas in 2012, an armed man walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Adam Lanza entered the school with a semi automatic rifle, fatally shooting 20 students and 6 staff members. “It’s not if but when. A string of high-profile traumatic events spanning nearly 20 years has proven unequivocally that school crisis response is not a choice; it is inevitable” (Cowan). Shootings in schools across the country are becoming more and more common. In addition to the three of the deadliest school shooting cases in history, there are constantly reported cases of a student roaming the halls with a gun. In our society, it is unfortunate that parents are forced to worry that their children are in danger every time they set foot in their classroom. When they send their children to school every day, a school-shooting massacre is always a possibility. As long as American citizens are allowed to legally carry firearms in public, the possibility of a shooting will always be
Death is never an easy thing to understand, though maybe some comic relief will help you out; we have the 10 most ironic deaths ever to occur in history. It may be cruel to find these events to be entertaining, but these deaths deserve some recognition. Look at it this way: they will never be forgotten! Read on to find out how it all happen, and just be thankful it didn’t happen to you. Also, don’t forget to check back soon for our part two article, with the five most ironic deaths of them all!
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;
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.
As us Americans we are actually making the stereotype of we always carry guns around sound true to the rest of the world considering that, we are the “31% percent of all public mass shootings which at least four people are killed.” (TheWeek.com) But under a broader definition USA counted 346 mass shootings including shooting deaths of four or more victims in a 17- year period. The worst part about this information is this year we already have recorded 249 mass shootings in about 7 months close to the same amount USA counted over 17 years! This is a problem that must be solve for the safety in this country but also prevent more mass shooting from happening. “According to a Mother Jones study: Only 23 percent have been treated for mental illness.” ( Gallagher )
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.
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.
Imagine, a person is sitting in their classroom in college. He or she is focused on listening to the teacher, because he or she needs to pass the final exam in order to graduate. All of a sudden, an intruder charges through the door. The intruder pulls out a gun and starts blasting bullets throughout the classroom. There is nowhere to run and there is no way to fight back. Everyone is hit and on the floor, bleeding. This person is so close to graduating and starting a new life. Now his life has been cut short, because there was someone who illegally brought a gun to a school. Because the school had a symbol of “no guns allowed”. Because the intruder knew there was no one else could shoot back. Now imagine if that student, dying on the floor,
Violence in the United States is a major problem, but our politicians only want to focus on gun violence, and some of them believe the solution to ending gun violence is by preventing law abiding citizens from exercising their second amendment rights. Guns are easier to commit a crime with than other weapons, or without a weapon at all, but with an estimated 270 million guns the hands of citizens (11 facts), if they were the problem we would know it by now. It is undeniable that guns are responsible for a high amount of crime, but we already have tens of thousands of gun laws in the United States (How many gun laws are there?), that haven’t been able to curb gun violence. If the current laws were working, then maybe there would be a reasonable
Crime rate in the United States has been at an all-time high in the past few years. According to the Mass Shooting Tracker, there have been 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870. According to the gun violence archive, 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, and 26,819 people were injured. As you can see, 2015 was a big year with gun violence in the United States and since then nothing has changed, to this day we are still seeing these statistics for death by guns in the United States. Instead of the government focusing on gun control laws, I believe that they should look at different alternatives. Some of these alternatives could be to register citizens with aggressive mental disabilities and emotional instabilities and increase research for effective treatments and cures because in most of these cases the shooters have been found to have a mental disability. We can also abolish gun-free zones apart from schools, banks, mass transit hubs, hospitals, and government buildings so that concealed carry is legal in these zones. The government can enforce stricter punishments for crimes committed with a deadly weapon and more laws protecting citizens who are forced to use a firearm in self-defense. So, in the case of a civilian using
Mass shootings have become a common occurrence in the United States society and have brought our society's safety debate to the attention of American politics. Both sides of the debate agree that we need more safety precautions but neither side can officially agree on what is to be done. What can we do about the raging number of mass shootings? There is no definite solution for mass shootings but there are precautions the United States can take to try to overcome the overwhelming number of mass shootings occurring. Gun Control is a major topic in the debate of how we can keep our society safer but how is what remains a mystery but we can start with altering the second amendment, and having stronger gun laws and background checks.
There are many different types of school violence. The one that gets the most public attention is school shootings. The term school shooting is basically defined as an act where a student, school staff member, or intruder from the outside commits an act on the school campus. One of the most well known school shootings took place at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado. On a Tuesday April 20,1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, students at Columbine High School, took the lives of thirteen other students before taking the lives of their own. When we think of events like this, we have many questions that go through our mind. Thoughts like why did this happen, could it have been prevented, and how did impact the individuals involved just to name a few. There are probably several more thoughts that go through the minds of a nation when we hear about traumatic evens such as a school shooting.
This is such a huge problem as you may know. These days it is becoming way to easy for people to get their hands on guns. With people who are not in their right minds getting their hands on guns they are costing the lives of children. Gun control is becoming a huge issue. We need to find a way to help.
Throughout the last two decades, the number of school shootings and gun violence in schools have rapidly escalated. While the number of victims from a school shooting is always the most remembered and talked about information in the media, the largest thing that goes unmentioned is the collateral damage that is left behind with the friends and families of the victims. An article in the Washington Post stated that since the Columbine shooting in 1999, more than 187,000 students have witnessed a school shooting during school hours. Based off this statistic, that means more than the entire population of Eugene, Oregon have been frightened due to what is today one of the most controversial topics in our society today.