The Dangers Of School Shootings

This world seems to be falling apart, going crazy, or even taking people away out of the blew. One of the main reasons behind that is school shootings. It tends to happen when people think they are taking their kids into a safe environment. School is supposed to be safe, full of kids talking to their friends, teachers, and maybe petting the psychologist’s dog just saying “hi” to the dog. For the longest time school shootings have been climbing, occuring more and more. Everyday, bad things happen which show how humanity is cruel. (table1, Mass Shootings Per Year) this graph is showing how the numbers every year change. Since the year 1982 and 2016, the numbers really do change drastically.

The lack of school surveillance plays a big role for school shootings. Author of the book Rampage: the Social Roots of School Shootings, Katherine Newman states that “Failures of surveillance systems that are intended to identify troubled teens before

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.

High school shootings have been occurring all over the country. All incidents leading to one or more deaths: Jonesboro, Fayetteville, Edinboro, Pearl, Moses Lake, Grayson, Olivehurst, Bethel, West Paducah, and many more. It will never happen to me, you could say, well, it could.y Behind school shootings students spend one hundred and eighty days per year at school, they spend so much time getting an education, but is the environment they’re in actually safe? There are many causes of school shootings and so they are effects.

“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)

Thirteen people were killed at Columbine High School in 1999, thirty-three died during the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, and twenty-seven people, twenty of whom were children no older than seven, were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 (Kirk). These name only a few of the larger and most well-known school shooting incidences. In total, 297 people have lost their lives due to school-based shootings since 1980 (Kirk). Although this number may be small in comparison to death by guns overall, these instances are completely unwarranted and it is likely that they could have been avoided or at the very least reduced. These people, college and high school students, teachers, and even children, might still be alive today if our

School shootings are defined as being a mass shooting which involves a gun attack on an educational institution. The first known shooting in the United States happened during the 1700s. Four Lenape American Indians entered a schoolhouse near present-day Greencastle, Pennsylvania. The schoolmaster, Enoch Brown, was shot and killed along with several other children in which only two survived. There have been hundreds of shootings since, and more specifically there have been at least 156 school shootings in America since 2013. School shootings are not a thing of the past, and they will probably still continue into the future. To prevent mass shootings in the future schools must have new safety measures in place, and certain steps such as gun control and easy access to mental help can ensure the safely of citizens here at home.

“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.

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?

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

Since 2013, there have been 175 school shootings in America. That is such a horrible number to hear. There's been so much activity on school shooting that it doesn't come as a shock when one happens. As Obama said after the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, where a gunman went on a rampage and murdered at least 10 people, “ Somehow this has become a routine.” All shooters have a motive and it has to do with their life at home, how they were treated at school, and how their mental health is.

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.

Unfortunately, school shootings and threats have become more common throughout the past 18 years. One of the first major school shootings that brought attention to gun violence in America was the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. According to the U.S. History website state that two teens, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, went on a shooting spree throughout the school. After killing 12 students and one teacher, the boys then killed themselves. During the investigation on the boys motives, investigators came to the conclusion that most likely the shooting was connected to bullying because the boys were members of social outcast groups, and violence in video games. It is unfortunate that bullying may have been the cause of this awful event in history, but it is even more upsetting that school shootings like these, have happened again at an even worse

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.

Everybody can agree that school shootings are immoral, cruel, and barbaric. There is no way to justify a deed so atrocious. But not everyone can agree on what could be done to wage the war against shootings, especially school shootings. Some say arming teachers, parents, and faculty will remedy the problem, while others say arming society will cause further complications. Albeit it could be argued that commonplace people are not yet prepared to handle such hazardous weapons, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages because allowing concealed carry is one of the many keys to slowing school shootings along with a gun safety training.