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Causes and effects of school shootings
Case studies of school shootings in america
Causes and effects of school shootings
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Recommended: Causes and effects of school shootings
Katlyn Kochel
Mrs. Wiest
English 132
6 February 2015
School Shootings The first school shooting dates all the way back to the 18th century (List). School shootings are becoming a devastating epidemic throughout the United States. Why do the teens resort to such violence? Maybe its because they are bullied and they feel there is no where to turn. The violence that the teens display is typically blamed on and is explained to be caused by many different events or factors, bullying being one of the main factors that cause school shootings. Bullying isn 't the only factor though. Relaxed gun laws, the wild west, mental break downs or illnesses, violent video games, and many other factors can be what cause school shootings to happen so often. The
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The Virginia Tech shooting, also known as the Virginia Tech massacre, was a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech, shot and killed thirty-two people and wounded seventeen others in two separate attacks, about two hours apart, before committing suicide. Another six people were injured trying to escape from the classroom windows. The attack is the deadliest school shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history and one of the deadliest by one single gunman worldwide. The attacks received international media coverage and speculation. It created an intense debate about gun violence, gun laws, gaps in the U.S. system for treating mental health issues, the shooter’s state of mind, the responsibility of college administrations, privacy laws, journalism ethics, and other issues …show more content…
There are more than one could count, and 1,000 different combinations. But what can the United Stated do as a nation to prevent these factors in the first place? It is heartbreaking having so many innocent people be killed brutally, but it is heartbreaking that not much of anything has been done to fix the problem or to help troubled teens. If these factors didn’t happen in the first place, would the school shootings rates drop?
Works Cited
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”Columbine High School Massacre." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 02 Feb. 2015.
"Concealed Carry in the United States." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2015.
"Do Violent Video Games Boost Aggression? Study Adds Fire to Debate." Fox News. FOX News Network, 25 Mar. 2014. Web. 04 Feb. 2015.
Ferner, Matt. "Craig Scott, Columbine Massacre Survivor, Revisits The High School And Remembers His Murdered Sister Rachel Scott." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2015.
"Gun Violence and Mass Shootings — Myths, Facts and Solutions." Washington Post. The Washington Post, n.d. Web. 02 Feb.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
Since 1980 till now, there have been many school shootings. Many innocent lives have been taken. Schools have become less safe. People blame either bad parenting or video games. Bullying is another factor as to why students end up shooting at schools and then ending their own life. It is so tragic and must be stopped.
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.
Many people believe that these shootings have occurred is because the availability of weapons in our society. This is not true. Guns have been in our society for hundreds of years. Before 1968 anyone could buy a gun through the mail with cash, and a hand-written statement that they were of legal age and without criminal record. (Bridgeman 14a) Yet in 1968, students didn't go to school and try to commit mass murder.
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.
One important factor to look at with school shootings is where the shooter gets his weapon from. According to an article of school shootings and their relationships to gun violence, “Among shootings at K-12 Schools in which the shooter’s age was known, 70 percent (14 of 20 incidents) were perpetrated by minors” (54). This is a shocking fact because in the United States an individual must be 18 years old or older to purchase a firearm. This would mean that the minors illegally obtained their weapons from a source such as their own homes. “In the eight incidents where the source of the gun was known, three-quarters of the shooters used a gun they obtained from home” (54). This is one of the reasons why school shootings are a key topic in the gun control debate. It causes the public to form divided opinions over the subject of gun control. Many people believe that in order to prevent more of these shootings from happening we must take extreme measures to
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.
Shooting someone that you go to school with is often not their first choice of action. Most school shooters are bullied victims themselves. These individuals feel that by them shooting is their last resort for piece. Shooters often feel at ease with themselves once they get payback on
School shootings is a very serious problem that is occurring around the world today. Many students each year are affected by this scenario. Students who are affected by this violence never end up the same. More than 26,000 children and teens have been introduced to gun violence since 1999. All students who have been exposed to this threat will never forget this tragic event.
News of horrific events overshadows everything in your day. “Three students shot dead in California”, “School shooting kills four in New York”. All of this tragedy, this loss of life, could be stopped if school officials took the necessary steps to conduct much needed searches of student materials. A very controversial topic in the United States is whether schools have the right to search student backpacks and lockers without probable cause and without student consent. The stakeholders in this are school officials and students. School officials are pushing for more control over what materials students have in their backpacks and lockers whereas students are asking for the right to refuse unreasonable searches. This is important because essential