I Heard The Shot That Killed My Neighbor Analysis

‘It was the morning of April 20th, 1999. And it was pretty much like any other morning in America. The farmers did his chores, the milkman made his deliveries, the president bombed another country whose name we could not pronounce. Out in Fargo, North Dakota, Carry McWilliams went on his morning walk. Back in Michigan, Mr. Hughes welcomes his students for another day at school. And out in a little town in Colorado, two boys went bowling at six in the morning. Yes, it was a typical day in the United States of America.’ (Narrator 2002) In the documentary ‘Bowling For Columbine’ the director, Michael Moore uses a variety of techniques to position the audience to accept the dominant reading that America is gun crazy and a violent history begets violence.

In the 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine, American political activist and filmmaker Michael Moore sets out to explore the primary causes of the 1999 Columbine Highschool massacre, as well as the roots of gun violence in the United States in his trademark provocative yet satirical manner. Bowling for Columbine takes a deep and often disconcerting investigation into the motives of two Colorado student shooters, responsible for the deaths of over 12 people at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, and examines other gun-related issues as well. From obtaining free guns at a bank, to reviewing America’s violent history, and interviewing a variety of people, Moore demonstrates that the conventional answers of violent national history and entertainment, as well as poverty are inadequate of causing this violence, for other nations share the same factors without the same levels of carnage. In order to arrive at a possible explanation, Moore takes on a deeper inspection of America’s culture of fear, and violence in a nation with widespread gun ownership. Ultimately, the documentary implies that the high incidence of gun deaths in America is caused by the deadly combination of cultural paranoia and easy accessible firearms that is, to some extent, effectively established through rhetorical techniques of ethos, logos, and pathos.

“In that first year, my first way from my hometown, I was to become thoroughly familiar with the language of fear. At dark, shadowy intersection in Chicago, I could cross in front of a car stopped at traffic light and elicit the thunk, thunk of the driver-black, white, male, or female-hammering down the door locks.” (Ackley, page 185), as I read in this essay, he was not a gangster, he was studying at the University of Chicago. Even though he has had a good education, people around him usually think he is dangerous because he is

Dave Cullen uses specific words to help the reader visualize the shooting and intentionally uses different sentence structure to convey an informative tone. Cullen helps the reader to picture what happened in this beginning part of the shooting by describing how many kids, 500, were running, and for what distance, the length of the building. By giving key details, the author helps to reader to visualize what actually happened on this day in 1999. By using facts of the shooting the author appeals to reason as to how the Columbine shooting took place. He does this by giving the time of “11:24”-meaning the outside ordeal lasted only 5 minutes- and numbers of who was shot and how many times the guns were used. Cullen also shows the terror of the shooting by the use of the words “screamed” and “desperate”. The short sentence structure shows how rapid the events took place and the intensity of the moment.

He appeals to the horror-struck emotions that the reader has for the victims of this tragedy by quoting a student, Bree Pasquale, as she recalls, “‘And they didn’t care who it was and it was all at close range. Everyone around me got shot. And I begged him for ten minutes not to shoot me.’” Cullen utilizes this quote in order to create a feeling of dismay among readers and to lead them to the conclusion that the shooters were not targeting a specific group of students and that everyone was in danger. The use of this quote conveys total disbelief among readers as everything the reader once thought about Columbine is brought into question.

Sometime back in 2012, there was a reported tragedy that struck the elementary school at sandy hook, Connecticut. It is alleged that a man dressed in black walked into the school compound and opened fire disrupting the serene environment of the school. In the incident, after a few minutes, 26 people lay dead, 20 of them being young children aged between 6 to7 years. Among the grownups that perished were the school principal Dawn Hoch Sprung, and the school’s psychologist Mary Sherlock (Parmet, 2013). The killer identified as Adam Lanza a 20-year-old man also died. Found separately was his mother’s body, at a residence in town. It was compared to another incidence that had occurred in 2007, a similar event of shooting at Virginia where 32 people perished. The young were said to have been directed by their teachers into bathrooms and closets at the onset of the shooting. The incident occurred in

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

On April 20, 1999 the worst school shooting in the history of the United States occurred at Columbine High School in Colorado. The atrocity was committed by two of the schools very own students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Still to this day, the ultimate question that has been asked of this terrible event is “Why?” Why would two incredibly intelligent, nice, and popular boys decide to commit such an unspeakable crime? In the novel Columbine, Dave Cullen attempts to shed some light on the inner workings of the boys minds. Cullen describes Eric Harris as quite handsome with “all his features proportionate, clean-cut, and all-American”(6). On the other hand, Dylan Klebold is described as “meek, self-conscious, and authentically shy”(7). As

In the Newspaper article, “Building a Safe Chicago” written by the Chicago Sun-Times, underlines the meaning of violence and describes how people in the community fell as they live in fear because of the violence caused in their neighborhoods. The article states, “What we do know is that several of our neighborhoods are and have been experiencing persistent and disproportionately high levels of violence. It ripples through families and communities and should be a matter of concern to every Chicago resident” (Chicago Sun-Times). These people live their lives with an unknown fear today. Everyday they question their safety as they live in the city. As this connects to schools, students should feel safe at school. The classroom is meant to be a safe environment where they can learn about the world as well as themselves. When school’s are attacked by shooters or even by bullies students shut down and become fearful of their education. The Sisters of Mercy live up to this concern as they work towards their goal of ending violence. They have hopes of keeping the world safe and finding ways to make the community a safer place to live. In conclusion, the Sun Times stand against violence in hopes that one day as a community we can end violence all

Throughout the past few years, there has been tension in Los Angeles between the neighborhoods. In an originally African American enclave, a Latino gang intimidated original inhabitants to leave Compton, California in a violent trend seen in recent years. In January of 2013, the friend of a newly residential Compton family was both physically and verbally abused by 4 Latino men in efforts to scare away the black family that had just moved in. The men of the Latino gang “called him a ‘nigger’, saying black people were barred from the neighborhood’” and “jumped out, drew a gun on him and beat him with metal pipes” (LA Times). Thirty minutes after the 19-year-old family friend managed to escape into the house, a crowd of as many as 20

Nevertheless, Susan family, in contrast, which is a traditional family, members include a father and a mother, and her biological son, Dylan. It is true that Dylan will have a better life than Kevin, ironically, he became a person who “could shoot someone” (Susan, par 1). According to his mother, “as a young child, Dylan made parenting easy” that means that Dylan has been a good guy. So a reason why made him change like this, “could shoot someone”. After this, looking back his background, he had parents who have enough good condition for caring their child carefully, he also had a good environmental growth, as well as full educated. In generally, Dylan would like other ones, acept these common things to develop his own ability, but he did not,

Jaclyn is an assistant professor of public justice at the State University of New York at Oswego. The author’s research interests focus on school and mass shootings in the United States regarding crime statistics, media representations, security and prevention, legislative responses, and other important considerations that impact individuals and communities struck by these tragedies. Jaymi Elsass is a professor in the Criminal Justice Department at Texas State University, San Marcos, TX. Also, she is a lecturer and doctoral candidate in the School of Criminal Justice at Texas State University. Her primary research interests include episodic violent crime, moral panics, fear of crime, and juvenile delinquency. Mark Stafford is a professor at

BOOM! Gunshots between these two gangs were heard back and forth. It was a silent mall till these groups got here. After a couple of hours, everything was silent. This time, it was the Bloods time. Especially since bullet Bilal got those headshots. Well, he is the only one that can be skilled and brave to do that at GMG. Out of all of them, he was the one with the different flashback.

When we think of violence, we often reflect on an image the news has portrayed. We think of gun violence, robberies, or some other brutal attack that has left one dead or seriously injured. It is common to assume that this is often occurs in low income, poverty stricken areas. A description is provided of substance abusers, broken families, racism, and a host of other reasons why violence occurs. Sometimes, in the majority of cases, this description is correct.

When you tune into the news, how many of their stories are actually good news, involving happy events? Most of them today involve burglaries and break ins, shootings, killings, deaths and so on. In reality, many believe that the media distorts crimes. Media, such as the news, gives the impression that crime is increasing, and becoming more violent than it already is. Wilson, B. (2012), also explains that violence portrayed in the media also has an affect on children, they start to develop fear and anxiety from the stories or images that are being portrayed. The media is very selective when it comes to what it wants to show. For example, an individual news channels can also choose what stories are told to the public. For example. Kathryn Steinle, who was 31 years old, and living in san francisco, and was out at lunch with her father, was fatally shot in the upper torso by an illegal immigrant. She