Analysis Of Malcolm Gladwell 's ' New Yorker '

Unfortunately, the notion of schools being a safe place is no longer a trend across American schools. Disturbing mass shootings in the U.S continue to shock the media. A school shooting is when someone attacks a school using a gun. The Secret Service says these shootings are "deliberately selected as the location for the attack". The reasons massacres occur in schools is because of poor security, violence in video games/media, and bullying. Shockingly the U.S. has the most school shootings than any other country in the world. According to the FBI, mass shootings occur, on average, every 2 weeks in the U.S. While the cause of school shootings are sometimes unpredictable, it is a growing issue and they need to be prevented. Most shooters don’t have mental issues, they have a plan to kill, so there is no singular cause that creates violent people. On April 16th, 2007, the most deadly school massacre occurred. Seung-Hui Cho killed thirty-two students at Virginia-Tech. As Americans, we no longer should turn on the news and witness these gruesome murders. We try to make sense of these murders, but it’s ineffectual. There are measures we can take as a society to help. The number one question in a school massacre is, "why would a person that has a capable sense of mind even do that?” It is our moral responsibility to fix these issues. In order to stop this problem, we need to find its roots.

Sadly, we have all heard about the high number of mass shootings that suddenly occurred during the last five years, but perhaps what really shook the nation were the shootings which involved children. One shooting which took place in Colorado Springs, wherein a man with a gun decided to walk into a Planned Parenthood clinic and began firing shots, killing three people and injuring nine. The people who were killed and injured were all innocent victims who died at the hands of an obvious mentally ill person. (Los Angeles Times, “Deadliest U.S. Mass Shootings”).

It appears as though the repetitive and unfortunate tragedies of mass shootings have become incorporated into the everyday life of American culture. We are forced to live in a heightened degree of fear, skepticism, and hesitation concerning our public safety. This phenomenon could reasonably occur in response to the vast ineffectiveness of the country’s current gun laws. Time after time similar misfortunes arise, yet few major changes are implemented to prevent them from reoccurring in the future. We cannot let this trend continue any further. Though some claim that increased gun control is useless and infringes upon the Second Amendment, it limits civilians’ weapons grade, obstructs those deemed unfit to wield such lethal weapons, and insures a greater level of security, thus it should be executed.

“Shooting massacres” in school settings, a new phenomenon within the past 50 years, are extremely rare events. Over 23 years, 1990-2012, 215 fatal school shooting incidents resulted in 363 deaths, equivalent to 0.12% of national firearm homicides during that time period …… Among these, just three shooting rampages – Columbine High School, Virginia Tech University, and Sandy Hook Elementary School – accounted for 72 (53.3%) of these 135 deaths. The frequency of random/ rampage shooting incidents in schools has remained within the narrow range of 0 to 3 episodes per year.” (Shultz, et al., 2013, p. 84)

Thirteen people were killed at Columbine High School in 1999, thirty-three died during the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, and twenty-seven people, twenty of whom were children no older than seven, were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 (Kirk). These name only a few of the larger and most well-known school shooting incidences. In total, 297 people have lost their lives due to school-based shootings since 1980 (Kirk). Although this number may be small in comparison to death by guns overall, these instances are completely unwarranted and it is likely that they could have been avoided or at the very least reduced. These people, college and high school students, teachers, and even children, might still be alive today if our

The occurence of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut. The gunman, was 20-year-old Adam Lana, who first shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. He then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School where he fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members. As first responders arrived, Lana committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. The shooting began at approximately 9:30 a.m. Sandy Hook was the deadliest mass shooting at a high school or grade school in U.S. history and the second-deadliest mass shooting by a single person in U.S. history, after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. This shooting yet again assured the nation that gun violence is still as big of a problem as it was back in the late 90’s when 27 teenagers got killed in another mass killing in Columbine, Colorado. We as a nation must stand up and oppose mass murdering because these actions are not only unjust but inhuman as well.  The increase in gun violence can be decreased by, identifying the regions in the country where the most gun violence occurs and restricting their access to limiting or monitoring the availability of guns and ammunition.

There has been an average of one school shooting every week in America since the Sandy Hook shooting. On the fourteenth of December, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, 20-year-old Adam Lanza not only killed his mother in her home, but also twenty children and six members of staff at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. This was to be the third deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. The Huffington Post reports that as of 2014, there have been over 200 school shootings. These have resulted in at least 94 deaths and over 156 serious and minor injuries. And, with an issue as emotive and contentious as the murder of school children, the question has been frequently asked: why do school shootings happen?

"I'm angry someone would do this to us. There are lives ruined, families ruined, and our whole school year is ruined" (Brackely 1). Casey Brackely, once a student that attended Columbine High School, remembers the tragedy of the horrific Columbine shooting that killed and injured many students. Mass shootings in the United States have been on the rise since the 1980’s, especially in the last decade. These shooters motives and profiles are almost all terrifyingly alike. Many of these shooters try to imitate and parallel the tragic shooting of the Columbine High School in 1999. These shootings have made peaceful organizations, such as an elementary school; become a place of violence and death. Currently, in the United States, an epidemic of

The dramatic shootings that make the news remind us that guns are not noble instruments of freedom; they are highly dangerous

The fear that something unpredictable can happen at any time has been injected into our society. Whether it be a terrorist attack or a school shooting, it’s practically impossible for anyone to see these incidents occur. Due to these situations, the media and corporations have our society almost paranoid. In Michael Moore’s documentary, Bowling for Columbine, we can see that our society isn’t one that is usually violent or dark, but it’s the fear the drives the American history of Gun issues and shootings.

The truth is, people don’t think much about it until happens somewhere near them ‒– beyond, of course, the ones who realize the growing plight of the country we live in and thus recognizing the flawed ways of our government and society. When you grow up in Negaunee, Michigan, the most stimulating thing to happen to oneself is journeying somewhere other than Negaunee, Michigan. It made everywhere else seem exciting and new, as you might expect. But until you become an active citizen of the United States, or even just slightly more aware of your surroundings, do you start to realize the harsh and cruel truth that is this country. There has been more than 350 mass shooting in America just this year.

Why do mass shootings keep occurring? One problem is that we are too vulnerable to violence.

In Thresholds of Violence by Malcom Gladwell, school shooting happen all the time. There is no way around it. But the question we need to ask is ¨Does each school shooting have a common idea or a pattern?” The answer is no. There is no pattern between any of the shooting because they're different people who have nothing in common. There has been 142 school shootings since Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. When a school shooting happens the police don’t check to see if there's a pattern. Their main focus to to detain the shooter or shooters, keep the kids safe, and help the wounded. So why does it even matter about whether or not there is a pattern. Between every school shootings or bomb threats, the only thing they have in common is that it is

Is cultural legacy to blame for the death of 228 passengers on board the 1997 Korean Air Flight 801 as explored by Outliers author Malcolm Gladwell? I agree with Gladwell that cultural legacies are powerful and persistent, as seen in Korean Air’s tarnished history. Although some cultural legacies are more impactful than others in terms of a person’s probability of success, at least a portion of someone’s many cultural legacies most likely have a great impact on their achievements. Therefore, a person’s cultural legacy should always, to some degree, be factored into a person’s chance of success.

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.