School Shootings In America: Essay Sample

Introduction

In public discourse on gun control in the United States of America (USA), the conversation has traditionally been driven by questions on which types of weapons should be made available for sale to private citizens; who can purchase guns and who should be able to buy weapons. The Parkland school shooting that happened earlier this year has shifted the focus to protecting students while in school from a motivated gunman. President Trump signed into law the STOP Act that guarantees money from the federal government for schools so that security safeguards can be put in place to reduce the possibility of students getting shot while on school premises. The pro-gun control movement has conflated the wider issue of gun control and the specific emerging trend of school shootings that the public is currently worried about. As it shall be shown next, it is more likely than not, from studying how gun violence has been eradicated from inner-city schools, that the STOP Act will significantly reduce if not outright prevent the possibility of another school shooting happening again.

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It is at this juncture that it would be useful to give a historical account of how our legislators have attempted to deal with the issue of gun violence. The journey towards the STOP Act started back in the 1980s after the attempted assassination of President Ronald Regan. James Brady was shot in the head during this attempted assassination. After surviving, Brady went on to be a vocal gun control advocate. His efforts and those of other like-minded people led to the Brady Bill being tabled in Congress for debate(Webster et al 2014). It was opposed by some legislators on the grounds that because of the 2nd Amendment in the American Constitution, an American citizen's right to own a gun was absolute, therefore, the state cant enact laws to limit it in anyway whatsoever until the 2nd Amendment is done away with via a referendum.

Since the weapon used in the attack on President Regan and Brady was a handgun, the compromise arrived at was to limit the effect of the Brady Act to prevent a specific type of people from legally acquire a handgun. Accordingly, under the Brady Act, a handgun buyer has to wait for five business days while the FBI does a background check to establish if they are a public safety risk. Specifically, in this law that is still in force today, convicted criminals, people with a history of perpetrating domestic violence and people with mental illness can't legally acquire a handgun.

One year later, Congress introduced a 10-year ban on the sale to private citizens semi-automatic weapons and high capacity magazines. The statutory definition of a semi-automatic weapon was a gun that uses ammunition loaded into a magazine. A high capacity magazine was defined as one with 10 or more rounds of bullets. This move by Congress was informed by mass shootings a few years earlier were lone gunmen used weapons other than a handgun to go on a killing spree. In 1989, a lone gunman in the Cleveland Elementary Massacre killed 5 minors and wounded 32 others using an AK 47. In 1993, a lone gunman, in the 101 California street shooting incident killed 8 people in an office building before committing suicide. There was a strong public opinion at the time in favor of extending background checks to magazine loaded weapons which culminated in the 10-year ban in 1994.

This 10-year ban did not reduce the rates of gun-related violent crimes in America and nothing exemplifies this failure than the events that happened in the state of Colorado. On the 20th of April 1999, a pair of teenagers went on a shooting spree in their school killing about 12 students and teacher on the process. The basic assumption that strong legislation would reduce or prevent gun violence was in the eyes of many, debunked after the Columbine shootings. The two teenage killers violated over 20 state and federal laws to illegally acquire firearms that were later used to kill their peers.

Consequently, when five years later the ban on semi-automatic weapons lapsed, all attempts to put it back in place have been a failure. For example, after the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in 2012, Senator Diane Feinstein took the opportunity to make the issue of keeping students safe in school part of the wider discussion on returning the ban on the sale of semi-automatic weapons and high capacity rounds. Her efforts and those of the democratic party for the return of this ban and universal background checks ultimately failed. Early this year, the gun control debate shifted focus away from banning the sale of semi-automatic weapons and fixing the NICS to securing our schools after the mass shootings of 17 students on Valentine's Day commonly referred to as the Parkland shootings. In response to public pressure to do something, Congress passed the STOP Act which guarantees federal grants to public schools to strengthen their security so that they aren't a soft target for a motivated mass shooter.

In every study into delinquent behavior by children in the USA, it has been established that child abuse and neglect causes trauma to a child's psyche. This trauma is then manifested in criminal and antisocial behavior (Jung et al, 2017; Chauhan et al 2017). The Parkland shooter was a young man who showed symptoms of mental illness. His problematic behavior had already been brought to the attention of relevant authorities. In fact, the FBI got warnings from concerned people in his life that he was armed and he may have been planning to do a Columbine-style attack on a school almost one month prior to going on his murderous spree. Had he got the mental health screening and treatment he clearly needed, it is highly unlikely he would have gone on a shooting spree. In every study conducted regarding the use of metal detectors, armed guards and controlled movement within the premises of inner-city schools, it has been conclusively established that by hardening security, the chances of a Parkland style shooting are next to zero. This is why most if not all publicized cases of school shootings have happened at predominantly white schools located in suburban or rural America. There are clear benefits in borrowing lessons from inner-city schools on how to protect students from a motivated gunman with the specific intent to kill.

The counter-argument is that the STOP Act is inadequate because children are still left vulnerable to gun violence in other spheres of life away from school. Furthermore, the STOP Act and any subsequent measures to make a school safer are not adequate because gun violence also affects college campuses that are way more open to members of the public. Thus, the STOP Act and hardening school security is a diversionary tactic by the Trump Administration to avoid banning or restricting the sale of semi-automatic weapons.

Conclusion

Everyone agrees that children in school premises need to be protected from gun violence but conflating it with the wider public discourse is wrong. No cases of mass shootings have been reported in urban inner-city schools located in locations with security problems because they have layers of security that keep the violence on the streets out of the school campus. Borrowing lessons from these schools complimented with mental health screening for minors with behavioral problems, mass shootings in suburban and rural America can be eradicated.

Works Cited

Lott, JR. & Landes, WM (2000) Multiple Victim Public Shootings. Retrieved from: https://ssrn.com/abstract=272929

Webster, DW et al (2012) A case for gun policy reforms in America. Retrieved from www.jhsph.edu/GunPolicy

Chauhan, P., Schuck, A., & Widom, C. (2017). Child maltreatment, problem behaviors, and neighborhood attainment. American Journal of Community Psychology, 60 (4): 555-567

Jung, H., Herrenkohl, T., Lee, J., Hemphill, S., Heerde, J., & Skinner, M. (2017). Gendered pathways from child abuse to the adult crime through internalizing and externalizing behaviors in childhood and adolescence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 32(18):2724-2750.