Shots Fired On Campus: When Lightning Strikes: Video Analysis

Sitting through an hour-long lecture or waiting in line to speak with financial aid are some examples of an average day on campus. It is during these times when students are least expecting tragedy to strike. A student may hear a loud noise and think nothing of it until they realize that noise was the sound of a shooting rampage that has reached their area and by that time it’s usually too late. Campus safety is everyone’s responsibility and remaining on alert is the only way to ensure less people are victimized. One of the first, and most memorable, attacks happened on August 1, 1966. Charles Whitman, a former marine, took rifles and other weapons to the observation deck atop the Main Building tower at The University of Texas- Austin, then randomly opened fire on the surrounding campus and streets. Over the next 96 minutes, far longer than the average active shooter attack, he shot and killed fifteen people. Included in the death toll was one unborn child, and injured thirty-one others. The incident ended when police reached Whitman and shot him dead. During this event, civilians played a vital role in assisting first responders in the take down of Whitman and Allen Crum, a 40-year-old bookstore manager and retired Air Force tail gunner, accompanied police up the tower in pursuit of Whitman. While Crum was armed, it solely because officers handed him a firearm to assist in Whitman’s take down.

Since those horrible days in 1966 and 2007 there have been at least 6 other major shootings at American College Campuses. Among those six, a custodian shot and killed 7 people while injuring 2 at the California State University on July 12, 1976. Also involved in a horrific shooting, Douglas Pennington was a parent of 2 students of Shepherd University. He killed 2 people before committing suicide. Some say this is reason enough to prohibit the use of guns all together, but there is still a voice that rings out heavily across the Nation- nearly 3 million voices, to be literal. That voice is the N.R.A. (Jost, 2007, 126)

With backpacks in tow and pencils in hand, college students crisscross campus with stress of acing the test, hardly thinking about their safety. This was the case on a clear Tuesday at the University of Texas on September 28th, 2010. Students fled from a mask gunman carrying an AK-47 and shooting randomly around campus. Nineteen-year-old Colton Tooley, wearing a black mask, eventually killed himself in the library. Remarkably, no one else was injured or killed. (MSNBC) This was not the case in 1966 when 16 people where killed with 32 injured by a gunman in the UT clock tower. The debate still wages on to allow concealed guns to be carried on college campus in Texas despite a recent bill that failed to pass. The US Constitutional Second

That why the teachers should have guns some people may think that if teachers had guns than the teachers could stop the persons that came into the school looking to hurt people.Yet what people do not understand is that the odds of no one becoming hurt during the chaos of a teacher fighting off the shooter is that someone could get hurt if not careful. Not saying that it may not work the way people may hope it will, just pointing out that the odds of something going wrong is truly high. And there are a number of reasons why this could go bad real fast. Yes some could say this so call reasons can be fix in a flash. Sure the reason can be overlooked and may be easy to fix , but they can still happen.

Policies have changed since the shooting happened in Littleton, Colorado. Before Columbine the primary goal of law enforcement officers before and during a shooting was to set up a perimeter and await arrival of SWAT members (Erickson, 2001). This policy has changed in many states including Pennsylvania where police had been preparing for active shooters with local schools. Police are not able to wait the twenty minutes to an hour for SWAT to arrive at a scene which is why the state mandated that local police receive active shooting training (Coughlin, 2012). This response and a brochure that the Department of Homeland Security came out with are allowing schools a better chance of eliminating a shooter with less causalities and injuries. This brochure goes into to profile of an active shooter, how to respond to an active shooter, how to respond when law enforcement arrives, training staff for an active shooter, preparing for and managing an active shooter situation, recognizing workplace violence, managing the consequences of an active shooter, and lessons learned (DHS, 2008).

The mainstream media leads many to believe that mass shootings on college campuses are very common, and are in despite need of gun reform. This is actually false information, the truth is that campuses and other schools are among the safest places in America. According to recent studies, the actual homicide rates on campuses are one in one million, considerably less than the nationwide average of fifty-seven million. In addition, other crimes are still proven to be less likely to happen at colleges, rather than in common rural areas. And in most

“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.

Has anyone yet thought of a way to keep them from happening? To name a few mass shootings that could have had a different outcome if a concealed weapon would have been on campus would be easy. I would not have to name any because on most school campuses the security or School Resource Officers are supposed to have a weapon on them at all times to ensure that the school and the children inside are safe. But there are some that needed someone with a concealed carry to step in, like Columbine and Sandy Hook. These two events have many things in common. But the most looked at would be that they all are supposed to have some type of security. But on that day the security failed to do its job. It is easy for people to say that it is the shooters fault and people come up with excuses like “He is mental” or “he has problems”. Not to be rude but we all have problems. That does not mean that is is okay for people to shoot innocent people just because they are “mental” or have problems, because at the end of the day those children have families and their families will be devastated because of what that shooter did. To talk about Columbine, On April 20, 1999, two teens went on a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide. The crime was the worst high school shooting

In the year of 2015, there were approximately 23 college campus shootings (Sanburn). While walking to class, students should feel safe and secure at all times. Because of the current gun control laws, it is hard to feel that way. There have been too many college campus shootings that result in an uneasy feeling while walking through campus, and that is simply not okay. The violence that is being caused each day because of guns has become unbearable. There have been several different occurrences in the past year of mass shootings in different areas. Guns are making everywhere an unsafe and risky place to be. Gun control is an issue that needs to be addressed during this election because these weapons are adding too much violence to the world and are the reason for the end of

Columbine High school 12 students and 1 teacher dead, Thurston High School 2 dead and 25 wounded, Sandy Hook Elementary 20 children and 6 teachers dead, Virginia Tech University 32 dead and 17 wounded and Umpqua Community College 9 dead and 9 wounded. After the Thurston shooting happened, we took necessary precautions so we would be prepared for an incident like again. Yet Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, and Umpqua happened anyway. Even though we implemented ALICE training in order to be safer, hiding with entries blocked won’t be enough in some cases especially if the police take a long time to get to the school and stop the shooter. There are a couple ways that would not only make the school safer but also stop the shooter quicker so we can save more lives and not have to wait for the police to arrive. One solution we can do is give teachers and staff that haven’t had any experience with guns at least basic training in the use of guns

Are mass shootings preventable? Can human beings safely leave their homes without questioning if they will return alive? On September 24, five people were fatally shot at a shopping mall in Burlington, Washington.

According to youth services officer Marc Kelley, prevention is the most important step. He believes it is important that students report threatening behavior in order to prevent an active-shooter-situation.

There are a few ways to prevent these horrible tragedies. But first we need to get rid of the gun free zones that tell shooters that there is no resistances in this facility. Second we need to encourage teachers to become concealed carry

A literature review of gun violence prevention is being undergone as part of this submittal. This research is important because gun violence has been a plague in the United States and the United Kingdom, among other places, for much of the recent century or two. This violence takes on two major forms. The first is general gun violence that is perpetrated as part of gang violence, robberies, burglaries, crimes of passion or spite and so forth. The other major form, which is both quite uncommon but very poignant and affecting when it happens, are school and other mass shootings like Columbine and the very recent Sandy Hook. There have been a decent amount of other school shootings and work shootings, but those are far and away the most notorious. Both were effected by very mentally ill teenagers or young adults that decide to go out in a bloody and perverted blaze of glory before they took their own life.

In my opinion, guns are the best way of protecting oneself. A woman walking through campus might have pepper spray at the most to defend herself. When it comes to gun vs pepper spray, the gun will win. The possibility of a victim having pepper spray or mace is threatening to a rapist, but a gun is even more so. Pepper spray is almost silent when used and if there are multiple attackers, the spray may only stop, or slow down, one of them. A gun, on the other hand is loud and lets anyone near it know its been shot off. A gunshot on a college campus is not going to go unnoticed; someone is bound to hear and come to check out what’s going on and hopefully be able to help the victim. Guns are the best means of self defense. A classroom full of students are sitting ducks to someone with a gun. They know the students and professor are not armed and they are the perfect target if the shooter wants to kill a lot of people quickly.