I sat on my couch in December of 2012 next to my parents as they watched the news that evening. On every channel the turned to was the story of deadly mass shooting that took place in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty-six dead, twenty of them being children under the age of 12, and two non-fatal injuries. Since then, the phrase that society added to my vocabulary was ‘gun control’. I had always understood the gun control to be a tactic to ‘steal’ guns away from American citizens. But as I grew older, I became more and more indifferent to the issue. I knew something needed to be done, but hadn’t the faintest idea what that was or how it would be done. Most recently, I had taken the position that those who committed acts of gun violence could not …show more content…
Not to say that all school shootings are caused by bullying during adolescence, but it is an indicator that bullying can input violence into its victims. According to studies by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), 4,400 teens and younger children die each year from suicide, making it the third highest cause of death in young people in the United States. Also, there are 100 suicide attempts for every successful suicide death, meaning that there are 440,000 suicide attempts by young people annually. This is all to say that bullying is connects the victim’s resentment towards their persecutors to acts of violence. My solution to gun violence in schools would be to put a stop to bullying. I acknowledge that kids calling each other names or teasing one another will always exist, but the purposeful defamation, humiliation, and abuse (both physical and psychological) of youth against youth is an epidemic that needs to be eradicated. I have personally witnessed multiple efforts by my former public school grab the reins on bullying, but it seems that as soon as the adults in charge catch up to the newest form of bullying, teenagers have already found another way around the system, leaving victims without a shoulder to lean on. Many schools have a ‘zero tolerance’ policy on bullying, but ‘zero tolerance’ just means that action is taken if the perpetrators were caught by a teacher