The Massacre At Virginia Tech

Over the past 30 years there have been a lot of events that have had an impact on the development of crisis intervention. One that really sticks out is the Columbine High School massacre. This event occurred on April 20, 1999 in Littleton Colorado. “On this very sad

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.

How safe do you feel when you attend school everyday? Many students and faculty don’t really think too much about school being a dangerous place; however, after a couple of school shootings had taken place their minds and thoughts may have changed completely. On April 16, 2007, in the town of Blacksburg Virginia, a college student who attended Virginia Tech, opened gunfire to his fellow classmates. This shooting has been considered to be the biggest massacre in all of American history. There are many things to be discussed in this major tragedy. Some of them include the events leading up to the shooting, the timeline that the shootings occurred, the causes, and the significance in this particular shooting. The Virginia Tech is only

Mr. Cho Seung-Hui, a 23 year old South Korean student at Virginia tech shot 32 people and himself on April 16, 2007. This incidence of shooting has been claimed to be the deadliest shooting rampage in the history of America. During his childhood years, Cho began to show signs of mental health issues and had been identified of having "selective mutism." He had problem socializing with people and thus was known as a student who merely kept to himself. Ever since Middle School, Cho began to show violence in his writings and got the attention of the teachers. He was prescribed some medication and eventually symptoms of violent and aggressive behavior began to abate. Even though, teachers had reported Cho of having mental issues during his time at Virginia Tech; no such attention was paid to his odd behavior. Cho had quit taking his medicines that were prescribed earlier and thus he was not put through any medical intervention. In 2005, Cho had been identified as a dangerous person rendering him ineligible to purchase a gun under federal law. Despite all of that, he still managed to purchase two guns that were used in the Virginia shootings.

On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old college student, shocked the nation when he perpetrated the deadliest shooting massacre in U.S. history. The violent rampage took place on the Virginia Tech University campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Cho was a senior majoring in English. Before turning the gun on himself and delivering a fatal gunshot to the head, Cho murdered more than 30 of his classmates and University faculty; numerous others were injured. In a strange twist, several days after the tragedy, a package determined to have been mailed by Cho during the shooting spree was received at NBC News in New York. The package contained photos of Cho posing with guns, as well as video clips and various pages of Cho’s writing.

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.

“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)

As stated before mass shootings have increased drastically throughout the decades. Just within 2017, the number of mass shootings are 293 with several deaths and injuries, (“Gun Violence Archive”). Within the last 10 years, the deadliest mass shootings have occurred in America history, (CNN). Recently in Las Vegas, Nevada held a music festival for people to enjoy and listen to music, but a shooting changed the evening for many. A man was in an hotel near the event and shot down towards the people and killed a total of 58 people and injured at least 200, (CNN). The Orlando shooting was right behind it with a total of 49 dead, (CNN). Since this has become a part of our everyday lives, we rarely hear about all the mass shootings that kill not even into the double digits.

On May 4, 1970 at approximately 12:24 PM members of the Ohio National Guard shot at and killed several unarmed Kent State University students. These students were protesting President Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia. While some of the students who were shot at were actively protesting at the time of the shooting, others were simply walking by or casually observing the protest from a distance. How could an appalling incident like this occur? What possessed the members of the Ohio National Guard to shoot at unarmed students?

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

The proposal to the problem focus on mass shootings specifically, not gun violence in general, although the potential solutions to mass shootings would do much to prevent gun violence as a whole. Mass shootings represent a mere 2% of gun-related deaths, yet the sheer horror, shock, and scale of carnage tend to capture the public’s attention so much more so than the typical shooting homicide or suicide, which are seemingly ubiquitous in news reports these days. The big issue with solving the problem of mass shootings is the variety of factors involved with the shooters’ motivations to kill.

The occurence of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut. The gunman, was 20-year-old Adam Lana, who first shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. He then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School where he fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members. As first responders arrived, Lana committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. The shooting began at approximately 9:30 a.m. Sandy Hook was the deadliest mass shooting at a high school or grade school in U.S. history and the second-deadliest mass shooting by a single person in U.S. history, after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. This shooting yet again assured the nation that gun violence is still as big of a problem as it was back in the late 90’s when 27 teenagers got killed in another mass killing in Columbine, Colorado. We as a nation must stand up and oppose mass murdering because these actions are not only unjust but inhuman as well.  The increase in gun violence can be decreased by, identifying the regions in the country where the most gun violence occurs and restricting their access to limiting or monitoring the availability of guns and ammunition.

"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

On October 1, 2017 America was, yet again, devastated when Las Vegas suffered the United States worst mass shooting. One man killed over 50 people and injured 527. After he was finished firing from the 39th floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort, he committed suicide. His name was Stephan Paddock (Yan and Park). When most people think of a mass shooting, they think of a terroristic act or someone shooting at a large group of innocent citizens, like Columbine High School or Sandy Hook Elementary School. In actuality, most people do not realize that whenever two or more people are injured or killed by a gun, it is considered a mass shooting. These “mass shootings” happen every day in America and they are one of the leading causes of death in

In the past decades there has been an increase of violence in the schools. This increase causes fear among students, teachers, parents, and all Americans. The deadliest act of school violence was the massacre at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, when a student opened fire and killed Thirty-two students and teachers while wounding seventeen. On April 16, 2007, Seung Hui Cho, opened fire on two students killing both of them. He then fled the building. Police responded to the first incident and determined it was an isolated homicide and that the gunman fled the state. Two hours later, Cho returned with two handguns and entered Norris hall which was filled with classrooms. He chained