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Causes Of Mass Shootings

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Since 1966, there have been 150 mass shootings in the United States. Over 1,000 people have been killed, and over 150 of those people were children or teenagers. These statistics are brought up in a heartbreaking article by The Washington Post, titled “The Terrible Numbers that Grow with Each Mass Shooting,” written by By Bonnie Berkowitz, Denise Lu and Chris Alcantara. After the most recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida, debates on gun control have once again sparked up. This has happened far too many times for change not to occur. There are many causes for school shootings, such as easy access to high power weaponry, a large amount of untreated mental illness among youth, and even media overplaying the tragedy of such events. The …show more content…

One L Goh, who shot and killed seven at a small college in California in 2012 was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. James E. Holmes who killed 12 and injured 70 at a movie theatre in Colorado had been seeing a psychiatrist for an unspecified mental illness. Adam Lanza, who is responsible for the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary that left 27 dead, was untreated for a developmental disorder, anxiety, and OCD. Christopher Harper-Mercer who was armed with six different guns, killed 9 at a college in Oregon, graduated from Switzer Learning Center in California. A school that taught students with learning disabilities and emotional issues. And these shootings aren’t the only ones, they are just the deadliest. There are plenty of other shootings where only a few people were …show more content…

No matter how many steps we take in the right direction, there will always be evil people that commit heinous acts like the ones previously mentioned. The best thing that anyone can do is just reduce the number of mass shootings to the bare minimum. The first thing that need to happen is stricter gun control. By preventing the sale of high-powered rifles to young adults, mentally unstable personalities, and anyone with a criminal history. While also increasing the level at which background checks are performed and increasing the waiting period that guns are available to the general public. Secondly, those that have guns need to have a safe and secure location to store weapons where anyone unfit to possess a gun is not able to attain one. Third, mental illness needs to be recognized as a bigger problem than it currently is. Anybody that suffers from any type of mental illness, or even just wants someone to talk to, should be able to meet with a professional that can help them figure out their situation. And finally, the media. The media should walk on eggshells when reporting on mass shootings, making sure not to show off the killer. News stations shouldn’t spend weeks on how the shooter prepared his arsenal, and they shouldn’t show the shooter’s plan of attack. Whether it be pulling the fire alarm to lure students out in the halls, or barricading doors and locking himself in a room, shooting down into a crowd

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Although many of these shootings occur every year, there many steps that can be placed in order to prevent them from occurring in the future. Creating gun laws that provide better background checks on the buyer and family can help lessen the chances of a mentally ill person from obtaining a gun. Spreading awareness of a person with a mental illness-or generally spreading information of the many different mental illness- can also help prevent mass murders such as Sandy Hook from occurring. Finally, researching ways to prevent mental illnesses from forming can help prevent these violent crimes. If the blame is on the illness, why not find ways to cease them from affecting more people?

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School shootings are starting to become a norm in today 's world. This is something we can only take precautions for but, we cannot completely stop school shootings from happening. Banning guns is not the option because the shooters are still going to find a way to get their guns. We should not punish everybody for the stupidity of some people 's actions. "At Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado two teens went on a shooting spree on April 20, 1999, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide" (Columbine Shooting, 2018).

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