Research Paper On 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.

The problem with society, is that people tend to wait for the problem to occur before making a change. Troubled children and teens have always existed but unfortunately now we’ve entered into an era where shootings are no longer just seen in action movies, it has now become a reality in our schools. Why do these children end up killing their classmates and why the number of school shootings in America have increased in the past several years? These articles try to give some kind of explanation into why these tragic accidents occur. As well as preventions that teachers, parents, and the community as a whole can partake in. This paper will focus on these two main ideas or themes.

The effort of this paper is designed to provide an audience with the basic framework in preventing, reacting to, and recovering from a school shooting. By analyzing the crisis of a school shooting, this paper will lay out the practical steps in preparing schools, communities, and local agencies for a tragedy that has already shook many communities across the nation. This paper will also follow the steps necessary to implement and evaluate a school shooting preparedness plan. In concluding this paper, school staff, local agencies, and families will be able to take the practical steps towards providing a safe and comfortable learning environment for students.

In the United States mass shootings has been a problem for the last few years especially school shootings which occurs often in the country. Why in this country? Well statistics shows that the United States has 31% of all public mass shootings from 1966 to 2012. Although, the percentage has gone up for the last five years. There is a higher risk of dying at school than at any public places. The government and the president of the United States are not treating this problem right and it has become a phenomenon in the country. According to the blog “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother: A Mom’s Perspective On the Mental Illness Conversation In America” by Liza Long, she discusses her struggles with her mentally ill son and states the lack of help she was getting. She addresses the Sandy Hook incident in Newtown, Connecticut to relate it to her situation and how she fears her son might lead to murderous attack like the Sandy Hook shooting. Many of the causes that lead to school shootings are; lack of gun control, mental health & bullying, and definitely lack of protection at schools.

“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)

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?

Mass shootings have become one of the most fearful events that could happen in elementary schools, high schools, and College campuses. These violent actions committed by a number of individuals have happened for many years and will continue happening unless prevented. Individuals like James Holmes opened fire in a Colorado movie theater, killing twelve individuals and injuring twenty, John Sawahri shot five students dead in Santa Monica College also injuring four individuals. However Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold executed the most horrific act of school violence in United States History. These two individuals managed to take the lives of twelve students, a teacher and managed to take their own life in the process. This act of crime has spread through America, leaving no one safe.

"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

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.

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.

In the past few years, school violence has gone up significantly. This leaves people with the question of, what is the reason for this? Many sources say that one of the reasons is social isolation with teens. isolationism is one of the main factors to school shootings because being ostracized, neglected, abused, bullied and devalued in societies are its foundations. Social isolation over prolonged periods of time leads to the deep entanglement of negative emotions.

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.

Recently, school shootings have been a nationwide concern and problem to solve. More because of the beliefs society has claimed the problems are. Those opinions include and are not limited to: he was mentally ill, he was a loner, and he rarely spoke. Making those claims are giving us a hard time measuring the signs that lead to school shootings. More so when there continues to be a society that is completely lacking in morals, and those victims are those adolescents that have lost hope due to our dishonesty. So, if we are not paying attention to these children and not focusing on what is happening to them while we are present. Know that these kids are the group where technology has advanced in today’s day. Being the case, parents like school

In Littleton, Colorado, April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed thirteen people and wounded more than 20 people at Columbine High School (History.com 1). This act of violence affected many people directly. The families, friends, classmates, and school faculty were directly affected by it because they personally knew the victims and the shooters. This massacre is still an important event to remember to this day. Many people can learn from what happened and the causes for this act. Schools in the United States have also been greatly affected by it by enforcing school to not tolerate disruptive behavior and bullying (4). Because of the Columbine shooting, there have been quite a few changes with schools and security (Criminal Justice Degrees Guide 1). Since the massacre, security at schools has heightened to the point where schools have installed metal detectors and security cameras (1). Here at De Queen High School, like in many other schools, have installed security cameras and have hired cops to patrol around the school in order to attempt to keep the school as safe as possible. The shooting at Columbine High School has by far been one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history that have made a great impact on many others.

All Americans remember too well the morning of April 12, 1999, when two enraged students opened fire at Columbine High School. This act of violence resulted in not only their own deaths but the deaths of many other innocent students and one teacher. However, this was not the first instance of violence in schools. There have been many other occasions of violent behavior among school age children, some as young as eleven years old, the past few years. We should carefully consider some possible causes of these tragedies, so we can seek a way to end them. Promotion of violence, neglect of troubled children, and lack of parental involvement in their children's lives are all factors that could lead to violence in schools.