Essay about Violence in America

Barbara Dority author of “The Columbine Tragedy: Countering the Hysteria”, illustrates how society becomes hysterical after a teen commits a mass school shooting. The Columbine shooting occurred April 20, 1999 in Littleton, Colorado. It was caused by two adolescents Eric Harris and Dylan Kledold, collectively killed 13 students and wounded 23 others. After the Columbine shooting, society looked in every direction for who is to blame for such a horrendous act of violence caused by teens. Dority expresses how society tends to panic, and take away the youths’ pleasures such as video games, music, and the very basic rights young people have. While society posit that media or Goth music is the catalyst for teen violence, it is not the media or Goth who are to blame for teen violence.

     Ever since the terrible tragedy at Columbine High School, there has been a numerous list of recent school shootings in America. Youth violence is a major issue in today’s society. Many people dread what causes adolescents to be so violent, committing horrible crimes.     

Teenage gun violence is caused by individuals between the ages of 13- 19. This type of violence is at an all-time high. It is becoming a serious problem, especially with such a rapid growth of violent technology displaying more troubled teens leading to more teen deaths involving the

School shootings, gang violence, drive by shootings, murder, and thousands of acts of violence are committed every day. Members of our society criticize their own people for this violence while they continue to sit back and do nothing about it. These acts of violence have many contributing factors. Violence in our country today is escalating because we don't control the distribution of the guns sold. There are not enough restrictions on guns sold legally. The illegal purchase of guns through the black market is out of control. There is not enough education on the usage and storage of guns.

Violence in America America is a violent nation. Many people think that America is full of freedom and democracy. Do these people actually see what happens in America? Do they see the violence in schools, the crime in our society? Most likely, no, these people have loosely seen our society, the violence and the frauds that plague America's history as well as the present.

Once I got a full understanding of what made one a superpredator, I turned my attention towards the public 's view of the criminals. The article, Moral Panics, discusses moral panics in regards to teenage violence. Beginning with the discussion of moral panic in colonial times, mainly based on religion, to evolutionizing to the Civil War, the Cold War and so on to modern times. The second half of the twentieth century focuses mainly on the problems of drug use and then mentions from there the incline of other types of crime: child abduction, school shootings, and mass murders. Further emphasizing on the problems that occur, Youth, Guns, and Violent Crime, suggests that yes, superpredators were the main cause of the violent outbreaks in the 1980s and '90s, however there were multiple factors that caused juveniles to create such an epidemic. Factors such as: more accessibility to handguns created teen fights into

Violence, one of the biggest problem in the world right now, especially in America, where the gun control law are barely enforced, every citizen is at constant risk, considering the amount of people in this country that own guns. Crime and violence are rapidly becoming the prime epidemic in the U.S today, but what can we do to ensure our future generation’s safety?

A trend analysis of juvenile homicide offenses shows that since the mid 1970's, the number of homicides in which no firearm was involved has remained fairly constant. However, homicides by juveniles involving a firearm have increased nearly threefold. In addition, during this same period, the number of juvenile arrests for weapons violations increased 117 percent. When guns are the weapon of choice, juvenile violence becomes deadly.

Researchers have found that adolescent murders tend to be not only violent, but extremely violent. One teen murderer stabbed his victim forty-six times (Kreiner 41). Josh McDowell, in his book Right from Wrong says, “Today’s youth are not playing loud music and wearing radical hairstyles; they have graduated, it seems, to a level of adolescent aggression, promiscuity, cynicism, and violence that bristles the hair on parents’ necks” (McDowell 6). The most significant change in the youth has been in their attitudes. The new generation is more inclined to resort to violence over trivial issues or for no apparent reason. Violent juvenile crime is now a national epidemic and is predicted to get worse. The group most associated with juvenile violence in America is males aged fifteen to nineteen. Statistics show that this segment of the male population will increase by 30 percent by the year 2020 (Grapes

Teen Violence is a big dilemma in today’s society. Violent behaviors usually start from family and peers, as well as teens observing it at there neighborhoods or communities. These behaviors are reinforced by what youth see on television, on the Internet, in video games, movies, music videos, and what they hear in their music. When children are disciplined with severe corporal punishment or verbal abuse, or when they are physically or sexually abused, or when they witness such behavior in their home, it is not surprising that they behave violently toward others. Teen Violence has had such an impact in our youth today that it leads many destructive things and that’s why we have so much violence today.

From the graphs above it is evident that there was an increase in crime during the 1970s. A contributing factor of this could be that half of the United States households had at least one gun. The easy availability of guns for people in American caused more fear than safety. There were not strict laws against guns during this period, which made crime rate grow. There’s also a dramatic increase in the early 1980s and late 1990s in both violent and murder crime. Another factors that contributed to this increase of crimes in the early 1980s is when the usage of cocaine spread all over of the United States. Cocaine was no longer thought of as the drug of choice for the wealthy people of America. Also by looking at the graphs and data it shows that

The books Child of the Dark by Carolina Maria de Jesus and Testimony by Victor Montejo describes the lives of two individuals from different societies. In both of these societies there was much hardship and violence. The two main characters who wrote these books describe life through their point of view and explains the hardship and challenges they had living in a society filled with violence.

     Violence has spread rapidly and has affected many innocent civilians in various urban cities and towns across America. According to a 1992 poll by Newsweek out of 1,000 people surveyed, 50.4% backs and 29,9% whites fell victims of violent crimes. (Graham) More and more people are becoming victims of such crimes that can easily affect a mass amount of people, fortunately, there is a less amount of innocent civilians of homicide and 52 white males out of 100,000 were victims of homicide (Graham). Soon, kids will kill each other and society in the future will be completely washed out.

In the year 2000 there are many problems with society. One of the biggest and most controllable is the issue of violence. Although we are subjected to violence everyday by simply turning on the news, other forms of violence for entertainment can be censored.

In the 1990s, as crime was continuing to rise at a steady rate, American leaders soon realized they had a crisis on their hands. In response to this, President Bill Clinton released a bill in 1994 aiming to take extreme action in combatting crime. This bill included many actions such as increasing the amount of police officers, more funding for cities’ law enforcement programs, and enforcing