At this point you have probably already heard of the Parkland Florida school shooting. It was considered the third deadliest school massacre in the United States. On February 14, 2018 Nikolas Cruz, a former student expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school, shot and killed 17 people and injured 16 more. After examining all the theories, I have decided upon the “labeling theory”. This theory discusses “how people can be labeled deviant after committing a deviant act, which can then lead them to carry out further acts that reflect that label”
For the article selection, I chose CNN “School shooter showed violence and mental instability at home, police reports reveal”. I was drawn to this article because it talked about the past delinquent
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Well the focal point in differential association theory is the process of learning deviant behaviors from people we interact with. Now this would not go with Nikolas’s situation because the only brother he has is younger than him, so he can’t learn any odd behaviors from him. Rational choice approaches to deviance would not go with it either because the theory says that “they calculate the costs and benefits to themselves”. Nikolas had absolutely nothing to gain from killing all those people. Sure, he probably knew what he was doing when he purchased the gun, but after the shooting it seems as though he didn’t have a plan of what to do or where to go next. Social control theory is not compatible with the situation either because this theory explains that “most people conform most of the time and do not commit deviant acts”. People obey norms because they’re making rational decisions and don’t want to be considered crazy. Strain theory is actually pretty close but still doesn’t hit every mark. This theory says that basically people have a goal they want to achieve but the way they want to do it, would not be considered socially acceptable. So, a loophole people might think of is, Nikolas had some sort of grudge over the people he killed. So, that would mean his goal was to hurt them in some kind of way, but obviously shooting up a school is not socially acceptable. This theory is ruled out because Nickolas used a smoke bomb and pulled the fire alarm to lure people out of classrooms, but with the smoke everywhere it was hard to see who was who, which means he wouldn’t know who he was shooting
The Sandy Hook massacre also, described as one of the deadliest shooting in all U.S history. 20 children and 6 adults were killed on December of 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut. (Connecticut) This massacre was the earliest memory I could recall on gun violence, not just learning about it but also watching it unfold and be told on news outlets all over television and social media. The Sandy Hook massacre shaped my generation by creating a more debatable topic on gun control in the United States. Through the Sociological point of view, gun violence can be understood by the functionalism, conflict, and symbolic theoretical approach. While trying to understand such event with such theories, we begin to unfold how society has shifted and changed over time, how we as a society view gun violence today and what we have done to prevent such act to happen again.
The current event Florida shooting caught my attention and eyes. On February 14, 2018 a shooting took place in Florida Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school. It was known as mass shooting seventeen students was victims in this incident and fifteen were admitted in the hospital still in critical conditions. According to the article, “Florida School Shooting: Suspect, Death Toll”, it stated Nikalas Cruz, 19 years old is responsible for the shooting. Nikalas Cruz, accept his crime and in his statement Cruz told police officer he was carrying extra guns in his backpack and he did shooting in the school hallways and school ground to target students (Segarra, L. M., 2018).
The research team’s questions for the most part were vague and there were irrelevant questions on the survey, which in hindsight made it difficult for students to understand the purpose of our survey. For example, on question seven: Have you ever been a witness to bullying? Students were confused if the research team was trying to ask if they’ve ever been a witness to bullying throughout their lifetime or just at Warner Pacific. The research team had a challenging time collaborating on how specific the questions should be. Our goal was to compare student’s high school experience to Warner Pacific’s Christ centered environment in terms or bullying. Overall the survey just wasn’t clear enough for students. Another question the research team felt that the question of ethnicity was irrel When people open up about their bullying experiences or behaviors that they were
Almost twenty years ago, on April 20th, 1999 just seemed like any other regular day of that time. Everyone went about their regular routine; parents going to work, children going to school, young adults going to colleges. But two high school seniors of Columbine High had no intentions of going about their regular days. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered their school with mind made of never leaving that school again alive but not before committing the most heinous and bloody massacre ever committed in the United States history. There has been bombing where the death toll was significantly higher than Columbine shooting. But what made this tragedy so terrifying was this was not any terrorist or radicalized person trying to avenge authorities; these were two teenagers killing their fellow classmates and teachers. Something that none thinks about, it was like a parent’s worst nightmare coming true. Eric and Dylan killed a total of thirteen people, students and teachers combined, and seriously injuring over twenty others . This shooting sent shockwaves across the country, but most evidently sent criminal justice community scrambling looking for answers into why these two boys did what they did? What happened that made them mass murderers? To explore these questions criminologists started applying crime theories to the both their present life and their upbringing.
The psychological approach is made up of many theories. The social learning theory, the social control theory, and the social identity theory. They all apply to The Columbine Shooting. According to Ronald L. Akers and Robert L. Burgess’s Social learning theory differential association is learned criminal behavior. Criminal behavior is often learned from interacting with certain social groups in person or via the internet. Criminal behavior is easily learned by individuals being introduced to techniques of committing the crime and specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes. According to with today’s technology on the rise school shootings can be understood by societal concern of the increase of violent video games
“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)
Throughout all of the world, political and social divides plague societies and their views on current events. Media blames groups for disastrous occurrences, whether religious, racial, or otherwise; however, the root of the problem does not lie in groups but in individual people. Nikolas Cruz wreaked havoc on a community after he decided to kill seventeen people at his former high school. Since that tragic display of internal evil, many additional threats have risen across the country. Trouble teenagers feel enabled to terrorize their schools with threats because the tragedy Cruz created has awoken their savage instincts.
Rampage-style school shootings are rare and tragic events. Although measures of prevention have become more advanced, school shootings have increased in frequency over the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Here in the United States, they have become especially prevalent, with 63 shootings just this year (Acevedo). The aftermath of rampage shootings leaves gaping holes and questions in communities. People try to heal and seek closure at their own pace, but the biggest question most are left with is “why”? In Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, Katherine S. Newman seeks to answer this question. She lays out her research and methodology for studying rampage shootings and comes to the conclusion that shootings are not spontaneous, but rather the build up of psychological issues and negative sociological situations within a student’s community that causes them to seek to regain power over their own lives through a rampage shooting. The story Rampage builds out of the narratives of shooters and their victims along with national data and trends is important because it highlights the places that our societies fail in providing a safety net for deviant students and their peers.
"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
Not all, but a majority of the students are cold-blooded killers. And shooting fellow students is often not their first choice. In fact, most school shooters are victims themselves, and shooting fellow students was a last resort. They feel as if no one is listening and this is their only way of
It is without a doubt that there has been an increase in violent crimes in schools throughout recent years. School shootings continue to become more and more common, especially in North America. Safety concerns for any and all students and staff in schools are at all all time high due to the high number of fatal and non-fatal occurring incidences. Since 2013 to the present, it is estimated that the United States has seen approximately 205 school shootings. Weekly, that is a shocking one shooting on average. Many of these shootings have resulted in the injuries and deaths of multiple of students and staff members. (Everytown Research, 2017) Evidently, school shootings are tragic events that affect so many more people than just the victims. However, these events are also interesting to look at from the psychological and sociological point of views. Through much research, it can be concluded that school shootings are a complex problem that are caused by a mix of improper brain development and societal and media influences which motivate school shooters to emerge. Psychological factors may include struggling with mental illnesses and/or abuse that leads to damaged brain development. Additionally, being bullied and/or the role of the media are examples of sociological factors.
In Psychology, there are perspectives and approaches that are looked into when trying to understand how the intricate human mind works. These perspectives are respectfully derived from different ideas and time periods, exemplifying different ways of thinking. These perspectives include: sociocultural, biopsychological, psychodynamic, behaviorism, cognitive, and humanism. These approaches are critically essential in solving something as serious as murder, or simply even why someone acts the way they do. There are many instances where there will be shocking news stories about people committing murders—people that are so unexpected to do such harm. However, when the six
Over the past couple of decades, school shooting have seemed to occur often-- continuously shocking the nation and reminding everyone that no community is exempt from such horror. One main contributor of this hysteria is found within the media. At the catalyst of this hysteria, lies the horrific Columbine shooting in 1999. Since then, school shootings have received ample coverage-- some argue that this has romanticized school shootings, others argue that is has provided condemning coverage of the often insane perpetrators. In the first year after the Columbine shooting, over 10,000 articles were written about the event, likely setting the stage for the nationwide desire for constant coverage of such events (Elsass et al, p. 445-446).
This theory has a different focus than typical theories; in this theory, conformity is emphasized, specifically, with the focus being on the reasoning behind why people conform and obey society’s rules, instead of why people deviate from norms. This theory operates under the basic assumption that delinquent behavior occurs because of a person’s bond or tie to society being weak or non-existent. There are four elements that make up this bond: attachment to others, commitment, involvement, and belief. Thus, the stronger the bond’s element, the less likely a person is going to engage in crime; likewise, the weaker the element of the bond is, the more likely a person is going to commit crime. Also, all four identified elements are said to be connected and interdependent, so a weakness in one element will more than likely lead to weaknesses in the other elements. In other words, these elements control a person’s level of conformity; crime control stems from one’s ties to conventional society. This theory also assumes that people are born naturally selfish; however, this is not a born tendency or trait. Rather, this means that the motivation for crime in society is evenly spread out since everyone has the same inclination for crime. Similarly, under this theory, the way people are controlled by society through these bonds is
Theories of Deviance are limited in their ability to explain deviant acts if one adopts the view that these theories are universal. There is no universal, right or wrong theory, rather each theory provides a different perspective which only "fully makes sense when set within an appropriate societal context and values framework" .