Preventing School Shootings

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.

More than 30,000 people are killed by firearms each year in the US. Most of which are caused by handguns. Homicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-24 year-olds. Most reasons for gun violence are caused by video game influence, and issues of mental illnesses. Video games are one of the biggest causes of gun violence because of the majority of in game violence that occurs. Today’s children are more prone to violence due to video games and the violent movies, but then that leads back to the way they were raised. In today’s world, both parents work, there is no family time to teach their children the main differences between right and wrong. When most people don’t know who they are harming, it makes it a lot easier for them to cause harm.

Imagine the notion of being defenseless against an individual holding the purpose of wreaking mass devastation on the students and faculty inside of a school. In 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut endured a tragedy that carries historical significance to the notion of shielding those inside of a classroom in a worst-case situation. When twenty-six students had their life taken away during a school massacre, the thought of permitting teachers to carry handguns during class drew more consideration than ever. The safety of the students inside of a school facility may be in jeopardy as manifested in school shootings such as the ones which transpired at Sandy Hook Elementary School and Virginia Tech, where thirty-two students and teachers lost their lives (History.com). While many feel that presenting teachers with handguns may prove harmful to safety efforts, inflicting such standards would provide instructors and students equally with enhanced protection and overall security.

In order to solve the problem of violence in schools, we must first find out who the problem is. Being that not every teenager is prone to participate in such violent acts as what happened at Columbine, there must be specific environment imposed on a particular biology to turn a teenager into an Eric Harris or a Dylan Klebold. These are not normal, healthy teenagers, and they don’t just become killers overnight. They become killers because they are already deeply disturbed individuals who can be sent over the edge by all sorts of innocuous influences. Violent teens often have specific characteristics that put them at high risk for committing these crimes. These high risked students may display some of the following traits. First,

The idea of violence is instilled in everyone’s head in some way or another. From the time we are born we are equipped with the idea that we must react when we are upset. When someone affects us in a negative way, there is an idea in our minds that urges us to fight back or cause harm to that person. This idea of causing harm stays with us from childhood until we take our last breath. Since 2013, there have been 242 school shootings within America. Even worse, there have been over a thousand mass shootings in the country resulting in mass casualties. Most recently, one single man murdered fifty-eight people at a concert in Las Vegas, Nevada and injured over 240 others. Although the motive may have been different between these shootings, one thing remains the same for all of them, the act of violence.

A method of preventing school shootings would be to acknowledge risk factors that the student is facing. For example, bullying is a risk factor for school shootings. In a research study done in 2001 of 37 school shootings, it was reported that 75% of the school shooters felt bullied, threatened, or injured by others in which most of the shooters in the report had experienced long-term bullying and harassment from their peers (Duplechain & Morris, 2014). In addition, the authors do state: “School personnel too often accept that children get teased and bullied every day, because teachers, parents, students, and other adults have grown up thinking that bullying is a normal part of school life. It has easily become an accepted part of today’s school culture” (Ibid, 2014). The authors believe that schools view bullying as something that students should get used to. This does show how bullying is an issue in schools. It is not solely to blame in regards to school shootings, but is a risk factor for them.

“There have been 220 shootings on school campuses in the U.S. since 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 14, according to Everytown For Gun Safety, an advocacy group.” (Krishnakumar, Priya , and Len Degroot) Many people do not feel safe attending or sending their child to a public school where they are possibly subject to a shooting. School shootings were first initially brought to the attention of the public in 1999, Columbine was one of the first school massacres that was recognized nationwide. Because of the magnitude of the shooting there is an abundance of information online bearing information of the event. First off, the shooters had identified specific targets, athletes, minorities and Christians. The two shooters had planned the firing for over a year and thought out their whole strategy. (“Columbine High School shootings.”) There was no plan in place to react to this shooting, because nothing like it had ever happened before. Although if there was, we may not hear about Columbine to the degree we do today. Columbine still is the most well known shooting and the horrific impact is still notable today across the United States. In the eighteen years since Columbine in 1999 there have been hundreds of school shootings, ranging from grade schools to college universities. Obviously, school shootings are a big problem in the United States and hopefully in time with the proper precautions taken they will eventually be eliminated forever.

More than 270 gun sightings have been reported in schools in the year of 2016 (Mascia). Overall, more than fifty million kids walk into school with firearms everyday, but nobody knows about it. Why? Because most school officials do not have enough rights to search through students’ belongings if they have suspicion about something. Schools should have the right to search students’ belongings because of behavior, ownership, and safety.

School shootings are terrifying to think about, but there are ways to help prevent the massacres from ever happening again. The first known school shooting was at the Texas Tower at the University of Texas in 1966 where Charles Whitman shot and killed 16 people while injuring 31 others. Who would have known since that date that we would have more then 200 deaths on school campuses? The most storied shooting in the 90’s was probably the Columbine massacre where on April 20, 1999 Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 32 students and faculty before turning the guns on themselves. The horror scene from the day will always be remembered in many lives and will continue over the years. There were many other horrible shootings over the years as

On February 21, 2018, survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in addition to family members of the victims met with President Donald Trump in the White House. They shared personal accounts of how the school shooting had affected them and urged President Trump to makes sure that it will never happen again. While listening to the bereaved students and parents, President Trump offered his own ideas about how to prevent school shootings like allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons. At the end of the session. President Trump announced that he would make sure that their stories would not go unheard.

School isn’t a safe place anymore. Once it was just a place of learning and growth but recently it’s become dangerous as some people take advantage of this safe place to prey on the innocent. This is most evident in the numerous school shootings this year. To prevent more tragedies schools shouldn’t need a warrant to search student property; it’ll prevent violence, increase safety, and they’ll also be protecting the innocent.

Within 10 years, massive shooting seems to become more and more common and hot topic across the news, especially school massive shooting. According to CNN.com, “Columbine Shootings leave 39 dead or injured” (April, 1999), “Massacre at Virginia Tech leaves 32 dead” (April, 2007), “Twenty children among twenty-eight killed in an elementary massive shooting in Connecticut” (December, 2012), etc., similar tragedies repeated over the headlines across different newspaper and websites. School massive shooting is a severe social catastrophe, if we don’t solve this problem as soon as possible, it will threat the whole nation. The cause of these tragedies is controversial and various, but mainly caused by bullying, rejection from school, and mental

In 1994, two hundred million people own a gun privately, but today its between two hundred seventy and three hundred million people own guns. There have been more than ten firearms deaths per 100,000 people a year. "In 90% of gun crimes, the firearms has changed at least once since the original sale" (Bennet, 3). The topic of gun control can prevent school shootings have a history to consider, and there will always be both supporters and critics who continue to debate this topic.

Deterring crime is one of the most ways criminologists are looking to help determine what causes crime and how to decrease it. There are several different theories and traits that criminologists have discovered over the past two centuries that would make one commit a crime and the seriousness of crimes. School shootings in today’s society is becoming more frequent and it has people wondering why someone would want to go to a school and commit this horrible crime. This paper will talk about the general deterrence, trait theory, and choice theory concerning crime and ways to prevent a school shooting.

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.