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The School Shootings Epidemic in the United States
Throughout the previous 20 years our students, teachers, and parents have lived with the fact that acts of mass violence could potentially happen in any school. America’s weapon brutality presence, whether it be mass shootings, murders, ambushes, or gun suicides, has been tainting America’s schools. The failure of our leaders to address the main drivers of school weapon brutality from all aspects is having intense consequences for many American children. We need significant action to protect our schools that tend to what we think about gun violence in America’s schools and keep it from happening in any case. It’s the ideal opportunity for our leaders to embrace a multi-faceted methodology that gives the school network the tools it needs to mediate and anticipate school-based gun violence.
This report is focused on the different steps that the government could take to end this growing problem of gun violence in schools. The solutions are primarily focused on tending to students mental health, enabling teachers and law enforcement to intervene when students give indications they could be a threat to themselves or others, improving our schools’ physical security, and keeping firearms out of the hands of individuals who shouldn’t have them.
First, we need to focus on who are school shooters, What qualities, assuming any, do school shooters all have in common? Do we lump all of them into one group of remorseless, vicious, depressed people, or do they each demonstrate such evil for their own reasons? Despite the fact that the media makes it look like school shootings are turning into a regular occurrence, these acts are actually extremely uncommon. While no two culprits are identical, this raises the question of what causes these people to carry out these vicious acts of violence.
To generalize, school shooters are generally students or former students and teenagers to young adults. The majority of shooters have gone through traumas during childhood such as physical or emotional abuse, and unstable families, with abusive, absent, or alcoholic parents or siblings. These people have lived troubled and stressful lives and all of them suffer from mental illness, whether its previously diagnosed or not. Most of the mental health issues demonstrated by school shooters are something treatable that was never treated. In the NPR publication, School Shooters: What’s Their Path To Violence? Experts who have heavily researched the topic of school shootings discuss what they believe causes these people to conduct these vicious acts. Peter Langman, a clinical psychologist in Allentown, Pa., and the author of two books and several studies about school shootings expresses that nearly half of the shooters that hes studied have died by suicide during their attacks. So school shooters are generally suicidal but what makes these suicidal people homicidal? Langman believes that because these people struggle with their mental problems alone and lack a support system they start to feel like outcasts of society. This loneliness can turn into anger towards society and these people feel that they want to lash out against others in some sort of revenge act. These mentally ill, angry, and homicidal then turn to violence in the easiest way possible through firearms that are too easily available to mentally unstable people and people with the intent to harm others.
To adequately address gun violence in our schools, it should be recognized that there is a gun violence issue. There have been many ‘thorough’ school safety plans proposed in the course of the past 20 years. Few have successfully tended to the issue basic in all acts of mass violence: simple access to firearms by those who pose a threat. In Keeping Our Schools Safe: A Plan to Stop Mass Shootings and End Gun Violence in American Schools, Everytown, AFT, and NEA have all stated that they believe any effective school safety plan must involve a proactive effort to enact meaningful gun violence prevention policies that enable intervention before a prospective shooter can get his or her hands on a gun . These gun violence counteractive action arrangements work closely with school-based intercession strategies to intercede before a shooter ever gets to the school.
Typically, with most active shooter incidents in schools, there are red flags before the shooting ever takes place. For example, the Parkland shooting perpetrator exhibited many warning signs that he could, potentially, be dangerous. Almost 30 individuals were aware of the shooter’s dangerous behavior and law enforcement had been called to situations including the shooter on more than 20 occasions. Nevertheless, the shooter legally purchased the firearm he utilized during the shooting. He had never been charged with a crime and his mental health history didn’t lawfully restrict him from purchasing or having firearms. Records of the shooting show that law implementation and the shooter’s family had no legitimate system to address the shooter’s simple access to firearms. This is a prime example of why the United States is in desperate need of gun law reforms to keep guns out of the wrong peoples hands. I believe that policies and laws should be enacted to restrict semi-automatic weapons such as AR-15s and handguns which are some of the most commonly used weapons in mass shootings. In order to purchase a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun buyers should be required to take a psych evaluation and a thorough universal background check should be executed. This will positively affect the avoidance of school shootings as the restrictions would deter potential shooters from attempting to purchase these firearms. If someone fails and raises red flags on the psych evaluation they could be reported to the appropriate authorities and actions could then be taken to prevent any possible threat and the person could then receive the help that they need. There also needs to be bands on high-capacity magazines which serve little purpose to civilian uses of firearms. Nearly every mass shooting that has resulted in a high death toll was due to the help of high-capacity magazines that allow the shooter to fire dozens of rounds before having to reload. Without high-capacity magazines easily available shooters would have to reload more often which could give bystanders chances to escape or intervene. This lack of high-capacity magazines could also deter shooters from carrying out a shooting in the first place.
Red Flag Laws are an important intervention tool that can be utilized to avoid potentially dangerous situations. At the point when family or law enforcement is made aware that a student or someone else is a threat to themselves or others, and that the individual owns firearms, they can go to a court and request from the judge a civil restraining order. These Red Flag orders, usually known as extreme risk protection orders, must be given after a particular legal determination is made that an individual represents a danger to themselves or others. They also contain solid due process protection to guarantee that an individual’s rights are accounted for while also considering the safety of the public. When a request is granted, an individual is required to give up any weapons they have and is denied from purchasing new firearms. This restriction is temporary, typically lasting one year.
This still leaves the massive mental health issue found in school shooters that causes them to purchase these weapons with intent to harm. To help solve this issue teachers should be trained to be able to identify students who are struggling mentally or might be having trouble at home so they can help the student or alert the appropriate authorities that this student is having issues so that the student can receive the help they need via Red Flag laws. This will hopefully end the possible threat that the person faces to themselves and others. All schools should also implement a tip line so that if students believe that another student is struggling or is a potential threat they can be reported and the possible problem can be addressed and handled properly before anything bad happens. In Ellen Cranleys article, How to Stop Shootings in America: 10 Strategies Proposed to Stop Gun Violence, and How Likely They Are to Work, Cranley cites a program implemented in Germany after a spike in school shootings that trained teachers and students to look out for what they call ‘leaking’ behaviors that might indicate that a student is planning a violent attack. After seven months of the program being in action at least 19 high-risk cases were identified across the country, Such activities may have anticipated assaults like the Parkland mass shooting by Nikolas Cruz, who had posted compromising messages on his Instagram account about murdering himself as well as other people before the assault.
We have covered measures that we believe would be effective in preventing and minimizing school shootings and now will list some measures that would not be effective.
The idea of arming teachers to prevent mass shootings would not work. Studies have shown that more guns result in more gun violence. Although teachers who carry firearms would be required to take safety courses it cannot be expected of teachers to put their lives on the line like law enforcement officers and be able to perform under that much stress. Also, the liability if a teacher happened to be mentally unstable and was able to inflict harm on students or others with a school-issued firearm would be too high. There is also the possibility that if a student knew where a teacher kept their firearm this could raise the risk of a school shooting where a student literally acquired the weapon from the school.
Utilizing the extensive arrangement laid out in this report, lawmakers and schools can avoid an active shooter situationand gun violence in generalin their schools. These solutions have proven to be powerful and exhibit thorough techniques that work by giving a point of intervention at all levels of a shooters escalation to violence and by creating a system where people with dangerous histories cant easily access guns. Directed gun violence anticipation arrangements can predetermine when a shooter is planning on getting their hands on a weapon. The school-based procedures work to predict when a shooter is showing indications that they may become violent. In conclusion, these security strategies have proven themselves to be the final opportunity for law enforcement and members of the community to intervene and guarantee that schools are properly prepared to deal with any students who may become violent.
It is also important to consider the government strategies that have not proven successful. For example, arming teachers serves just to place children in greater danger. these methodologies are broadly bolstered by specialists and upheld by proof. Our pioneers must make mindful moves to guard our schoolsand this report offers them a structure for doing so.
- Chatterjee, Rhitu. School Shooters: What’s Their Path To Violence? NPR, NPR, 10 Feb. 2019, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/02/10/690372199/school-shooters-whats-their-path-to-violence.
- Cranley, Ellen. How to Stop Shootings in America: 10 Strategies Proposed to Stop Gun Violence, and How Likely They Are to Work. Business Insider, Business Insider, 5 Aug. 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-stop-gun-school-shooting-america-2018-11#banning-violent-video-games-9.
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