A mass school shooting in America will only be defined as a mass shooting, by the government, if three criteria are met. These being if four or more people are killed in the incident, the attack must take place in a public area (schools in this case) and if the shooter had chosen his victims at random (CNN-1). From the years of 1966 to 2012, it has been seen that close to a third of the world’s mass shootings happened in America (CNN-1). In 2017 there were 10 mass shootings between January the first and November the first (CNN-1). There are enough weapons, according to a report done in 2007 by the Switzerland-based Small arms survey, that there are enough guns to arm every adult in America and still have guns left over (CNN-1). The only time …show more content…
To start off with the shooter’s side. Most mass school shootings take place in areas of little crime and that these conservative areas hold masculinity and gun culture in high regard (PDF). There is an attitude in America that “guns solve problems”, this can also be seen by the fact that “74% of gun owners say that the right to own a firearm is essential to their freedom (CNN-1)”. American’s see guns as a fix to most situations. An example of this would be when hurricane Irma was advancing towards Florida last year in September, residents began shooting at the hurricane (INDEPENDENT-12), the local sheriffs office had to sent out a tweet advising the citizens to not shoot at Irma because “You won’t make it turn around” (INDEPENDENT-14). Adding to the gun culture, guns are very easy to acquire due to loopholes in gun laws. This makes it easy for a school shooter to acquire his weapon of choice with little worries about a backround check as most backround checks are only done after the event by the FBI and if it is a private transaction, there is no backround check