School Shootings
by
Adam Williams
for
Mrs. Carver
English
Introduction:
School shootings seem to be more and more common these days. What are the causes of school shootings? What leads a person to decide, one day, to take a gun to school and to blast away at their classmates? What can be done to prevent school shootings from happening, and if one does occur, how can people reduce the risk of more deaths?
What society can do to help and what is not being done:
The perpetrators involved in the school shootings seem to always have mental issues of some sort, but they are still able to get a gun. One way to prevent school shootings is to have tougher gun control regulations. For example, nobody that is deemed mentally ill by a psychiatrist should be permitted to have a gun. When they are seen in firing ranges shooting manikins after a teacher has said they are mentally un-sound they should have their gun taken away from them. This approach could be a very effective method of preventing these types of events; however the perpetrators cannot afford to spend time with a psychiatrist. Usually the perpetrators are students and their families are poor.
There are several factors that contribute to these kinds of events that are entirely thrust upon the perpetrators, one of which is bullying. Bullying makes these peoples’ lives miserable making them think that they have nothing left to live for. If they are going to die then they want to go out (for lack of a better term) with a bang. If some of these bullying kids were not so hostile to their victims, there might be less incentive for the bullying victims to kill others. If students generally were more welcoming and were trying to help the perpetrators, they might have someone to love, which would also stop them from killing their class mates.
Society also plays a big role in school shootings, not because they are encouraging them, but because they seem to always have a...