Columbine Shooting Research Paper

On April 20, 1999, two Columbine High School students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, went on a shooting rampage in Colorado, killing 12 students and a teacher before ending their own lives (Leftwich 1). Nearly seven years later there seemed to be an annual shooting rampage trend. On October 2, 2006 a gunman by the name of Charles Carl Roberts IV took hostage five girls, at an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, and eventually shot and killed them before committing suicide (“5th Girl” 1-2). The following year, on April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a college student, shot and killed 32 people at Virginia tech before taking his own life (Leftwich 1). The rampages did not end there, on February 14, 2008, a gunman shot multiple people on the campus
of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, killing six and wounding eighteen. One of the most recent shooting that involved a firearm occurred on November 6, 2009 when a U.S. Army psychiatrist allegedly opened fire inside Fort Hood in Texas, one of the nation's largest military posts,13 people were killed and 30 injured, most of the victims were U.S. military personnel. In December of 2012,20 students and six adults were shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton.
Dangerous and cruel uses of firearms like these have reached to new extremes in America.
Firearm injuries are one of the top ten causes of death in the United States (“Statistics”). Firearms are the second leading cause of traumatic death related to consumer product in the U.S. and are the second most frequent cause of death overall for Americans ages 15 to 25 (Violence Policy Center para.4). Every two years more Americans die from firearm injuries than the total number of American soldiers killed during the eight year Vietnam War (Violence Prevention Institute). In 2005, 11,346 people were killed by firearm violence and 477,040 were victims of a crime involving a firearm. In 2006, firearms were used in 68 percent of murders, 42 percent of robbery offenses and 22 percent of aggravated assaults nationwide (National Institute of Justice). “Homicides committed with firearms peaked in 1993 at 17,075, after which the figure steadily fell, leveling off in 1999 at 10, 11. Gun-related homicides have increased each year since 2002”(National Institute of Justice). The federal government needs to take action to prevent similar tragedies from happening in the future. In an effort to stabilize and decrease firearm related injuries and deaths in the U.S. a strong federal law to control guns is
needed.
Firearms are important to us in some ways. For instance, they assist the National Guard that provides arms to its enlistees in order to protect our nation. They assist well trained police forces to provide personal security and protect citizens from any threat. But in many cases firearms are unlawfully used to take the lives of innocent civilians for an unknown cause and in every event that this does happen there is a financial loss. “While guns are an important part of our history and our society, we must do more to curb the horrible costs to our society that result from them,”(Inslee par.5) The costs are broken down into the type of gun related injury (figure 2). According to the Annual Bill To The Nation, costs of gun violence in the U.S. have been estimated at between $100 billion and $126 billion. The average cost for treating each unintentional shooting is $22,400. The average cost for treating each gun-related injury is $18,400. Because most victims of gun violence in America are uninsured, the public ends up footing the bill for their treatment in tax dollars (figure 1).

With the huge financial cost of gun violence there is also the cost it brings to families and their overall quality of life.
It digs a deeper hole in the hearts of innocent families who then suffer from all types of distress and illness because of a loss.We have to think about the reality of it all since gun violence is not somebody else’s problem, it’s everyone’s problem.

Firearms Deaths by Mode of Death for Children .(Briebart) Giving such people better privileges while using their weapons is not helping the ones being killed.
Gun control advocates focus on the serious negative effects on gun availability on safety, while gun ownership advocates emphasize the lawful use of guns and their place in our history and culture. While our history and culture is important we need to address the current national problem in order to live in a safe enough society. In an effort to stabilize and decrease firearm related injuries and deaths in the U.S. a strong federal law to control guns is needed. In the bigger picture, we people will see the United States, as a Nation, as a better safer place to live in and not to die
from.