Ureste 1

Victoria Ureste

Professor Moore

English 1302

02 April 2017

Shootings in American Schools

In America, mass shootings in schools are becoming more frequent. People across the

country come out saying they have the answer and know how to stop shootings from happening.

Police officers and detectives blame the easy access to guns. Psychologists say it is a number of

different aspects in a persons life that adds up to the violent outbursts. Mass shootings in

American schools are caused by non-treated mental illnesses, stress, access to guns, and not

enough security on school campuses mixed together.

Children who have mental illnesses that go untreated are part of the reason that mass

shootings happen in American schools. Mental illnesses are becoming more common. Many kids

are born with mental illnesses. Now, technology is advanced enough to treat mental illnesses and

make sure that people with mental disabilities can make decisions like people who don't have

any mental disabilities. There are various mental illnesses. Each mental illness can have a variety

of effects on how people are able to function. Many mental illnesses cause people to have

irrational thoughts and feelings. Reports suggest that up to 60% of perpetrators of mass

shootings in the United States since 1970 displayed symptoms including acute paranoia,

delusions, and depression before committing their crimes. (Metzl, 240) When mental illnesses

go untreated people get tired of their bad thoughts and act out. Speaking to a national television

audience, Torrey, a psychiatrist, claimed that about half of mass killings are being done by

people with severe mental illness, mostly schizophrenia, and if they were being treated they
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would have been preventable. (Metzl, 241) In America, mass shootings happen often but not

too often at schools. About 5% of mass shootings in America occur at a school. So, all of mass

shootings at schools are committed by someone with some kind of mental disorder.

The limited amount of security on a school campus contributes to mass shootings in

American schools. All schools are gun free zones so even security guards do not have guns on

them which makes it harder for them to be able to stop someone coming on to a school campus

with a gun. There are way more students on a school campus than security guards which makes

keeping the students safe harder than if they was more supervision. In American schools there

are procedures for emergency situations. For an intruder, the students and faculty are taught to

hide and lock the classroom and make it appear as if there is no one in the room. Not everytime

will the students and staff have enough time to complete the procedure. While most lawmakers

agree that there is a real need for enhanced school safety, most legislative responses following

Sandy Hook have primarily focused on gun regulation. (Elliott, 532) The lawmakers know that

there should be an increase of safety precautions that should be taken to protect schools and the

people inside of them. Yet, guns are the main focus in this situation. The only laws that are being

changed are the laws about guns and who can have them. There are laws that make it so that

security guards on school campuses are not allowed to carry guns. They take this precaution so

that students or staff do not take the gun from the security guard and so students feel safe. A

student or staff member taking a security guards gun has never been an issue that caused a mass

shooting. A security guard can not fight off a person who has gun if the guard only has a taser or

baton.

Stress is a supplement to mass shootings in American schools. There are millions of

children in America going to school to get an education. These behaviors include policy
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violations, bullying, small acts of violence, and even planning of larger-scale incidents. These

factors all play into studentteacher ratio, and the higher the ratio, the greater the likelihood of

anonymity. (De Apodaca, 375) Teachers and school faculty do not have the time to individually

pay attention to each student. Students have many responsibilities and are told they have to

accompish everything they are asked to do. Students will feel like it is too much work and

throughout the whole process will compare themselves to others. Everything that students go

through takes a toll on them. The stress builds up, lack of attention from parents and teachers,

and students can have break downs. Osher, VanAcker, Morrison, Gable, Dwyer, and Quinn

(2004) provided a list of these factors that included environment (e.g., vandalism to the school

building is obvious, crowded and chaotic hallways during transitions), student behavior (e.g.,

extramural participation is low, strong social cliques are present), faculty and staff behavior (e.g.,

students may be scolded in public, student bullying is ignored), and school policy (e.g., PTA is

not active, teaching is not observed). (De Apodaca, 367)

Drug use constitutes mass shootings in American schools. Alcohol and drugs have cerain

negative effects on a persons body and brain. Such as, killing brain cells, fogging up the part of

your brain that makes rational decisions.Politicians, FBI profilers, and psychiatric authors

argued for the right to use mental health criteria to limit gun access, not just to severely mentally

ill persons, but also to drunkards, drugusers, and political protesters. (Metzl, 245) Drugs

can cause people to become violent. People on drugs are not in their right mind and lose their

cool easily. The negative effects of drugs and alcohol adds up over time, the more a person

drinks or uses drugs the worse the persons brain is going to be. The person is going to have a

harder time making easy and rational decsions than someone who has never drank alcohol or

uses drugs.
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Non-treated mental illnesses, stress, drug use, and not enough security on school

campuses are the reasons for mass shootings in American schools. However, means recognizing

that gun crimes, mental illnesses, social networks, and gun access issues are complexly

interrelated, and not reducible to simple cause and effect. (Metzl, 247) There are many reasons

for a mass shooting at a school to take place. There is not just one thing that causes a shooting to

happen. The FBI (OToole, 2000), although cautioning against the idea of a singular profile,

reported a number of personality and family characteristics commonly found in the backgrounds

of school shooters. These included personality traits such as poor anger management and coping

skills. (De Apodaca, 366) Students not getting enough attention and care from parents and

school staff can cause many issues in a student. Such as depression or make a person feel closed

off and isolated. Alcohol and drug use increase the risk of violent crime by as much as 7-fold,

even among persons with no history of mental illness. (Metzl, 242) Even if a student did not

have a mental illness, drug and alcohol use added to depression or isolation can cause a student

to become extremely violent. Mental illnesses are becoming more common and a wider range of

mental disorders are being put under the spotlight. All the stress, drug and alcohol use, poor

security precautions, mental disorders, and isolation a student goes through can cause them to

crack and become excessively violent.

Works Cited

De Apodaca, Roberto Flores, et al. "Characteristics of Schools in Which Fatal Shootings

Occur." Psychological Reports, vol. 110, no. 2, Apr. 2012, pp. 363-377. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.2466/13.16.PR0.110.2.363-377.
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Elliott, Rebekah. "The Real School Safety Debate: Why Legislative Responses Should Focus on

Schools and Not on Guns." Arizona Law Review, vol. 57, no. 2, May 2015, pp. 523-

550. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=lgh&AN=102813538&site=ehost-live.

Gius, Mark. "Gun Law and Crime." Significance, vol. 11, no. 2, Apr. 2014, pp. 6-8. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1111/j.1740-9713.2014.00732.x.

Metzl, Jonathan M. and Kenneth T. MacLeish. "Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics

of American Firearms." American Journal of Public Health, vol. 105, no. 2, Feb. 2015,

pp. 240-249. EBSCOhost, doi:10.2105/AJPH.2014.302242.