Wayne Lapierre's Speech On School Shootings

School should be a place of peace and opportunity, but gaps in the system of gun control threatens the safety of faculty and students. School shootings have killed a total of 297 lives, young and old (Slate Magazine). Gun control has been a continuous nationwide debate for many years. It seems that no one wants to take a stance against guns unless they are personally affected. In order to take control of the matter and prevent more incidents from continuing schools need to change. To achieve a safe environment in schools need to educate faculty, safe and students, heighten security, and assess mental health issues.

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.

An evolving and highly debated problem that continues to grow in our society, is the gun control epidemic. Gun violence in America is a national epidemic. Many people carelessly take advantage of Gun use and manipulate the tool without much thought to any repercussions. Many lives have been loss due to people legally or illegally obtaining guns and taking matters upon themselves to be executioners in holding other people's lives in their hands. Specifically, ongoing gun violence in schools have become a horrific catastrophe. It is putting student lives at risk, in a place that is supposed to facilitate a certain level of safety for the students. According to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, there was 558 gun incidents in 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)

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 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.

Guns are becoming one of the top issues in the newspapers (The Monroe Evening News). There have been 394 incidents of students bringing guns to school in the United States since 1998 (Sutton). Legislators say that the law cannot prevent the tragedy of the fatal shootings in the schools

School shootings are terrifying and a big problem in today’s society. Schools have added lockdown drills, bullet proof glass and metal detectors. School should be a safe area for children to learn instead of fearing for their life. Instead of buying metal detectors and hiring more officers, there is a much easier solution in order to decrease and prevent school shootings. We have to be more alert about securing weapons at home and being aware of suspicious behavior at school in order to keep children and faculty safe.

“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?

"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

In the United States of America the right to bear arms gave birth to a phenomenon called the “gun culture,” the term coined in 1970 by a historian Richard Hofstadter, which describes America’s heritage and affection for weapons(1). Not only did gun culture become an inseparable part of American democracy, but also it is considered to be synonymous with independence and freedom, the most important values for American society. Even though the crime rate and murder rate in the U.S. is higher than in any other developed country, U.S. citizens oppose every attempt made to pass gun control legislation(2). However, it may sound like a paradox, but the crime level in the most liberal states, when it comes to gun ownership, is the lowest in the

    The first recorded school shooting in America dates back to 1764, during Pontiac’s war. Since then, hundreds have occurred, claiming many lives. In the modern era, the rarity of these events has been steadily decreasing, which may be a cause of the confusion that surrounds gun laws and regulations. The new debate over this issue in likely due to one of the worst school shootings in recent years- Columbine High School shooting in 1999. Since that event, over 150 shootings have occurred on school campuses. To deal with these tragic occurrences, the government has opened the debate on gun laws and regulations. But this debate often leads to officials being unable to make up their minds or whole groups of people

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 a 225-page study by the National Rifle Association, the idea of having armed guards in schools is argued that it could possibly lower the rate of tragic shootings. In this study, led by Asa Hutchinson, he points out an incident where a high school principal retrieved his .45 caliber from his vehicle and stop a student who was trying to flee from the school after he had shot two and wounded 7 other students (Finn paragraph 6). This school shooting is one example of many that have happened throughout history where armed personnel was present and helpful in the detainment of the shooter.