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Causes Of Mass Shootings

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The millennials generation have witnessed 65 mass shootings since 1990. The number of victims? 936(Mass shootings in America, Follman; 2015). The first mass shooting of the generation occurring on September 14th, 1990 when 47 year old Joseph Wessbecker entered his former workplace and gunned down 9 people, and injuring 12 others before committing suicide. The most recent mass shooting happened on October 1st, 2015 when 26 year old Chris Harper Mercer opened fire at Umpqua Community College in which he killed 9 people and injured 9 others. Wessbecker and Mercer had one thing in common, They both suffered from mental health problems. Out of the 65 shootings, over 50% of them were caused by people has prior signs of mental illness. But, there …show more content…

The thought of a mass shooting happening puts fear into the mind of human beings, and the thought of possibly putting a stop to them by providing better mental health services to people may be a soothing thought to people. But like abortion and gun control, Everyone has an opinion that can’t be ignored on the topic. There’s people who think that mental health issues causes the mass shootings, and then there’s the people who beg to differ and think that mental health doesn’t play a role in them(mass shootings) at all and think that people use the mental health as a reason to justify the shootings. Now we come to the million dollar question, Is mental illness the reason for mass shootings? One thing is for sure, Rampage Violence needs a new type of …show more content…

In the article, Katz interviewed Harold Pollack of The University of Chicago, and he states that “gun reform can’t be achieved until americans stop looking at mental illness as a scapegoat for violent behavior”. In the interview, Mr Pollack also states that severe mental illnesses only account for 5% of the violence that is seen in America. Pollack additionally adds that he believes that people who carry concealed gun permits are not the dangerous people but that they are supporting or contributing to the problem in america which is gun violence. Pollack is trying to persuade the public that instead of mental illness being the problem, That it’s actually guns. The average gun enthusiast would probably say that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. The questions that Pollack must answer is does he have evidence that back up his claims, and in the article he does not. Pollack and Katz are not the only people who believe that guns are the problem in this country when it comes to the mass shootings. MotherJones.com calculated all mass shootings from 1982-2015 and they found that 61 shootings were caused by people who

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Passing gun control legislation that creates a universal background check and gun database system as well as passing mental health legislation that improves the health care system’s protocols and policies for assisting people with mental health disorders and that enacts counseling programs in communities and schools will decrease the likelihood of mass shootings in schools. The United States is bitterly divided. Issues of great concern, such as the rise of mass shootings, are partisanized. Both sides of the debate will not comprise or listen to what their opponents have to say. Groups from both sides can only agree that one innocent life taken from gun violence is one too many.

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463 Words | 2 Pages

Mass Shootings The evidence that was provided by Butler was very clear and understanding. First, Butler uses the study published in The American Journal of Public Health, authors Johnathan Metzl and Kenneth Macleish, find that in mass shootings “notions of mental illness” mirror “cultural stereotypes and anxieties about “race/ethnicity, social class and politics. ”(Butler 1). Furthermore, each race seems to have a label.

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452 Words | 2 Pages

The shooter injured three students, but did not kill anyone. After refusing to lower his weapon, the shooter was killed by police. According to Slater, the shooter was mentally ill, suffering from “hallucinations and bouts of paranoia”. The author goes on to state that there should be more intense gun control. She feels that there should at least be a psychiatric evaluation before a person should be allowed to purchase a gun.

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232 Words | 1 Pages

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 1,516 mass shootings in 1,735 days. Furthermore, not every shooting has a large number of victims. The most commonplace shootings target individuals. While working at RefugeeOne, I met a refugee client who was only thirteen years old and was shot twice in his back while

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804 Words | 4 Pages

Multiple gun ownership by an individual has led to increased gun violence and mass shootings. This can be seen in cases where individuals with a history of mental illness or criminal record can obtain multiple firearms, leading to tragic consequences. The pew research center reported that about 66 percent of gun owners in the U.S. own multiple firearms, with few people owning as many as ten or more guns (Parker et al., 2017). This has raised distress about the potential for these individuals to use their excessive collection of firearms for violent and criminal purposes. For instance, the mass shootings that have occurred in recent years have often been conducted by individuals who own multiple firearms.

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908 Words | 4 Pages

The shooter used a rifle called an AR-15, which many people think it means “assault rifle” but it really means Armalite Rifle design 15. Gun laws should be stricter on the mentally ill aspect. Nicolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter was mentally ill and bought a rifle legally which should not have been allowed to happen. Now making gun laws stricter will not mean the death rate or shootings will decrease right away because mainly the only people that go to a gun store to buy a gun are law abiding gun owners.

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1242 Words | 5 Pages

Regulating guns will not stop all of the killings that are occurring in America, and there are better ways to cease the killings than regulating guns. Body Paragraph One: Topic Sentence: Regulating mental health will be more effective in ceasing killings with guns than regulating guns. In an analysis provided, 22 percent of the perpetrators of 235 mass killing, could be considered mentally ill, many of which were carried out with firearms (Qui). Almost 25% of mass shooting killers are being considered mentally ill

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952 Words | 4 Pages

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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1063 Words | 5 Pages

Various studies have been conducted on numerous aspects considering mass shooters, the most prominent focusing on why shooters perform these tragedies, and what can be put in place to avoid these shootings. However, not everyone has agreed with each other when it comes to solutions, and they see issues with laws that may be set in place. The source of the issue is hard to localize, because there are many different characteristics apparent in mass perpetrators--there is no one thing that can link every single perpetrator together--hence the reason there are conflicting views. Some have taken the perspective that there is no way we can solve these problems with a single piece of legislation, while others believe red flag laws can prove effective

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296 Words | 2 Pages

There are a lot of misconceptions of gun violence and how it correlates to the mentally ill population. A 2011-2013 survey shows that people believe that gun violence is more likely to occur due to someone who is mentally ill rather than someone having an easy time buying a weapon. One of the first things people think about when the hear the latest mass shooting news is that the perpetrator had to have been someway mentally ill. They take this statement, twist it, and then say that all those who are mentally ill are violent. An article on mental illness and how it correlates to gun violence stated “Only 23 percent had a documented psychiatric history of any kind ― which means 3 out of 4 did not.”

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1264 Words | 6 Pages

It does not take long for a debate to arise after a school shooting to argue which side is to blame. However, the debate has done nothing but made it worse for the trend of school shootings as it typically results in nothing. With two opposing sides, they barely consider any reasonable solutions since they are more focused on worrying if the gun or the shooter is to blame for the death of hundreds of people. In an article written by the Gallups’ Lida Saad concluded, “According to two recent Gallup polls, from 2011 and 2013, more people believe that mass shootings result from a failure of the mental-health system than from easy access to guns.” Gun advocates are in favor of this reasoning because they believe that the system is failing to identify mental health patients in regards to gun violence.

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451 Words | 2 Pages

On October 1st, 2015 President Barack Obama released a speech regarding the devastating mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. President Obama’s main argument, in his speech, was that we as a nation have put so much money to prevent other disasters but have, for the most part, ignored the idea of proceeding with gun control laws to prevent situations like mass shootings. The President mentions how “it's fair to say that anybody who does this has a sickness in their minds, regardless of what they think their motivations may be. But we are not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses or want to do harm to other people.

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1650 Words | 7 Pages

Mass Shootings have been pretty common in the U.S. In the past 30 years or so. According to the Congressional Research Service, there have been 78 mass shootings in the United States since 1983. The shootings have resulted in 547 deaths and 1,023 casualties. Mass shootings are only responsible for a very small percentage of deaths in the United States, but mass shootings are happening more often than ever, a mass shooting happens on average one time a month.

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577 Words | 3 Pages

Much of the criminal activity that takes place today is heavily related to the lack of treatment for mental illness. According to the US National Library of Medicine, approximately 60% of shooter in mass shootings that took place in the United States after 1970 displayed symptoms of acute paranoia, delusions, and depression before committing their inhumane acts. I am sure that most of you are aware of the Sandy Hook shooting that took place on December 12, 2012. The perpetrator, Adam Lanza took the innocent lives of 20 students as well as the lives of 6 staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Lanza had displayed key signs of mental illness as young as the age of three.

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1314 Words | 6 Pages

In fact, According to Kain “more than half of mass shooters over the last 30 years had mental health problems”(2015, p.4).This claim is very clear for that incident; because any person who kills 27 human beings including his mother and then himself after killing all these children would have some mental

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