Argumentative Essay: Are Schools Still Safe?

The Columbine High School shooting, which occurred on April 20, 1999, remains one of the most infamous school shootings in American history. The two shooters, Eric Harris, and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and injured 24 others before taking their own lives. The shooting sparked widespread shock and horror and prompted a national conversation about school violence and safety. In the years since the shooting, a great deal of research has been conducted on the shooters, their motives, and the factors that contributed to the shooting. The two shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, of the Columbine school shooting, were very different people based on their emotions, plans, and motives for the shooting.

The book “Rampage The Social Roots Of School Shootings” written by Newman et al, offers many different views and theories behind the issues of Rampage school shootings. In this paper I will give the reader an in depth overview and evaluation of the aforementioned book. Offering researched based reasons to why these school shootings actually happen. They explore the communities of Heath and Westside, the grounds of two horrific acts of rampage shootings by Michael Carnell, Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson. They explain various angles of there research such as identifying an issue, how signals given by children can be misinterpreted, the effects of social capital and how mental factors play a role in the acts of the shooters.

I believe the biggest misconception I had about school shooters is their feelings, or what I assumed is a lack of. What I have learned about the feelings of school shooters is that there is typically a guiding factor or initial issue that festers in someone. Said issue causes this person or group of people to act out. From what I have observed, these students typically have the brightest futures yet remain the most misunderstood of all students. Most of these students who carry out shootings killing themselves in the end, giving them a lifetime worth of attention they were clearly seeking without any repercussions for their actions.

Violent criminals know that currently schools are gun free zones, and can use this factor to their advantage. Rather than falling victim to an attack on the school; teachers could protect themselves and their students. Students could feel much safer if their teacher was armed. Students would feel more safe if they knew they could be protected from an attack from an intruder or another student. Criminals know that teachers currently are not armed and could potentially see schools as a target.

19 years ago, the Columbine School Shooting. 11 years ago, Sandy Hook elementary school shooting. 6 years ago, the Virginia Tech shooting. Just last year, the Las Vegas shooting that killed 58 and harmed hundreds other. Just last month, the Stoneman Douglas high school shooting, that killed 17 and emotionally and physically harmed dozens more.

This article has great viewpoints, use of argumentative reasoning, and shows what truly happens in the hallways of a school shooting. The main person he explains is Eric Harris, who killed over two-thousand students and faculty in a Colorado high school in 1998. He set off bombs all over the school and used a semi-automatic

Evidence shows they were planning for a year to bomb the school in an attack similar to the Oklahoma City bombing (Columbine Shooting, 2018). "Harris was described as the callously brutal mastermind, while Klebold was a quivering depressive who journaled obsessively about love and attended the Columbine prom three days before opening fire" (Columbine Shooting, 2018). Police have been trained more thoroughly for school shooting now that they are happening more often. They are putting the police through real scenario situations of an active-shooter. After this school shooting occurred many schools promoted a zero-tolerance policy for disruptive behavior and threats of violence from students.

Over the years, school safety has become more of an issue in the United States. Many have argued over the possible solutions for school safety. But through all the others, the only feasible solution is the use of metal detectors. Metal detectors have been known to increase safety when placed in an area that could be threatened. Metal detectors can protect schools from violence, especially from school shootings.

Symbolic interactionism illuminates fundamental elements that attribute to school shootings. According to Jeanne Ballantine and Joan Spade in their book, Schools and Society, A Sociological Approach to Education, “Symbols are the concepts or ideas that we use to frame our interactions” (2015:19). Symbolically, a sense of self and hierarchical place is determined by social interactions (Ballantine and Spade 2015). Students find themselves determining how they see and feel about themselves by how their cohorts, parents, siblings, teachers, and others interact with them. Sadly, the young perpetrators of school shootings have derived their sense of self from their social experiences of isolation, bullied harassment, and low hierarchical status, producing skewed and biased self-perceptions.

(Sub-subpoint 1) 87% of students said that the main cause of school shootings is because they want to level the playing field. (Alfred University) 2. (Sub-subpoint 2) For example, a 12-year-old from Nevada opened fire at school because he was bullied. He was called “an idiot, a retard and gay”.

Social Control theory can be used as a reliable and valid psychosocial explanation of school violence, specifically in explaining the actions of the Columbine school shooters. Kempf-Leonard and Morris described control theory in their journal in a way that provides an explanation for how behavior conforms to that which is generally expected in society. Some control theories emphasize the developmental processes during childhood by which internal constraints develop. Social control theories, however, focus primarily on external factors and the processes by which they become effective. Deviance and crime occur because of inadequate constraints.

How many innocent children have to be brutally murdered before it is enough? This has been an uprising topic in today’s society since school shootings are so prevalent. From Kentucky, to Oregon, to Colorado, to Florida, the safety of our nation 's schools have been shattered by gunfire. The ones who have committed such horrible crimes have done these actions for many different reasons, at different times, and at different schools. Yet, they do have at least one thing in common.

Feeling safe in school is something that parents shouldn’t have to worry about with their kids but it’s something that has been brought up within the past few years. Most school resource officers are placed in a middle or high school because that’s when kids begin to act out. As said in one article, “researchers have found that students and teachers in middle grades schools may be at

When one hears "school security" these days, the word that goes with it is "tighten." Indeed, given both external threats and unruly (sometimes violent) student behavior, it makes sense to think that the most sensible course of action is to err on the side of more stringent measures, harsher sanctions and less permissive administration. It largely comes down to liability - whenever an individual with a history of troubled or criminal behavior snaps or becomes involved in an incident severe enough to attract government or media attention, many of the questions asked in the aftermath are variations on "why was this person not in jail. " The same applies to schools, where administrators often end up having to justify themselves to parents and

School safety is a very controversial topic in the U.S. There are many cases of people questioning the safety of schools. Recent school shootings raised concerns over school safety. While this has received a lot of attention, other things such as drugs, ara problem in schools. Even teachers have spoken out about the lack of safety of their schools.