Bullying Vs School Shootings
After the Columbine High School Shooting in 1999, many teachers, parents, and students attributed bullying to the cause of the shooting. Soon enough it came to be that this automatically excluded other plausible factors. The misconception that bullying is the cause of school shootings is a growing problem that needs to die because it does not leave room for other causes such as mental illness or a bad home life to be considered, but it also undermines victims of bullying by making them something to be feared rather than understood.
The first recorded school shooting happened in 1764, meaning that school shootings go back over hundreds of years in the United States, therefore researchers, parents, students,
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One is mental illness, according to Hertiage.com “they[shooters] are significantly more likely than the average population to suffer from undiagnosed or untreated mental illness; “which leads into question why would the mental illness of a shooter be undiagnosed? What about them slips under the radar for being untreated. When looking at the previous statistic, young white boys are not being treated or detected for mental health issues. NYU News has a theory to share. “School shooters are often coddled — because of who they are — and ignored by parents and authorities in power.” This quote provides clarity because it makes sense that young white boys would be ignored. A bad home life, even if nothing is seemingly out of the ordinary, is another potential cause that fits under the umbrella of traits for a school shooter. A home life where the child is ignored because presumably nothing could be wrong with them, is still considered not a great home life. This is what leads to depression or anxiety, or many more mental illnesses that could go undetected. A home life of abuse or addiction could also lead to these occurrences no less. There is so much that could be going on in the home behind closed doors, it is hard to fathom that what occurs in the classroom is what's breeding …show more content…
Two boys walked into school the morning of Columbine, dressed in trench coats, and shot, killed, and wounded many students and teachers. The boys finished the killing spree by turning the guns on themselves as well. The shooters were known as high school outcasts, they were violent video game players, and partakers in goth culture. These factors led victims and investigators to believe that they chose to shoot up the school in retaliation to being bullied by peers, but upon further research there was more to the story. Both of the boys, Dylan Klebold, and Eric Harris kept journals. There were entries dating back to a year before the shooting that showed evidence of a struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide from both. Both boys were