Virginia Tech School Shooting Essay

I remember the day vividly. I was staying home from school with food poisoning and was laying in my mom’s bed, flipping through the channels to see what was on TV. Then, I had to stop. This was April 16, 2007. This was the day of the Virginia Tech school shooting. I had never seen anything like this before. I was 12 and never thought that a shooting could happen in a school environment. Sadly, 12 year olds today probably would not be as shocked as I was when I saw the images on CNN and frantically called my parents. Watching the coverage of this massacre all day, I was completely appalled that the shooter was mental ill and on a wait list for a mental hospital. The thought that there was a large wait for mental ill patients to get help was

James, who had “no befits or insurance or any idea where he might find a doctor” (51). Gary Busch, who was tragically shot after appearing “to be experiencing a psychiatric crisis” (52). This helps to put a name and a person to the “over one million people suffer(ing) from mental illness” (53) in New York City. This number was staggering to me, as well as the fact that “close to 8,000 mentally ill people” are in NY prisons or jails. It was sad to read as well “that, nationwide, state spending on treatment for the seriously mentally ill is one-third less than it was in the 1950s” (55). With the increase in gun violence in communities and schools, it is shocking that there would be a cut in funds when it seems that more funding is necessary as we have people like the Virginia Tech shooter on a waitlist to seek treatment. As well, in the death of Kendra Webdale, her shooter “had not refused treatment, the state had repeatedly refused him mental health services that he knew he needed” (58). “That he knew he needed”. Wow. He knew that, because of his illness, he could cause harm to himself or others, yet the state let him down. No hospital would turn away a physically ill person, why would they reject one who was mentally