School Shootings

The Causes of School Shootings
School shootings have been on the rise. Many kids are feeling the pressure of growing up in a world that is constantly changing and some do not know how to handle the situations that surround them. No one knows the exact reasoning behind why school shootings have risen so rapidly, but many have suggested motives for why children feel pushed to turn to school violence. Bullying, mental illnesses, and lack of gun control all influence a child to act out in violence. A topic that has recently received a lot of national attention is school bullying. Many of the school shooters face harsher bullying than just the normal type of bullying that many people face growing up as a child. Many of the shooters have reported facing years of bullying, ridicule, and even severe harassment. They felt as though they were outsiders and not only did their peers isolate them, most of the time the shooters isolated themselves. Many of them give warning signs that go unnoticed. During the April 20, 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris went on a shooting rampage through their high school taking the lives of twelve fellow students and a teacher while wounding twenty-one others. At the end of the violence, they decided to commit suicide. There were clear warning signs that the boys were in trouble before they committed the act by a videotape that was made by Klebold and Harris. Kalish and Kimmel wrote that Harris said, “People constantly make fun of my face, my hair, my shirts.” Klebold added, “I’m going to kill you all” (Kalish). They were anti-social and never seemed to a part of the popular crowd. They were victims of school bullying for many years. Klebold had also wrote, “you’ve been giving us shit for years, constant gay baiting, being called queer, faggot, homo, being pushed into lockers, grabbed in hallways, mimicked and ridiculed with homophobic slurs” (Kalish). Many students called the two young men mean spirited, homophobic-like names because they were loners, but there was never any evidence to support the claims of them being gay. The name calling and taunting had affected the boys self-esteem in a very negative way, but it seemed as though many of the people who had bullied the boys had not even noticed the toll it had taken on them. In fact, no one seemed to realize how unstable Klebold and Harris had become. Many children are victims of senseless bullying but never violently act out. If there were more people that saw the warning signs that these children displayed, some of these shootings might have been prevented. Many of the kids felt so depressed that they felt like they had no other choice. There are several types of bullying, ranging from physical to emotional. Children today are even turning to “cyber bullying”, which is a form of bullying that happens via the internet. With Facebook and Twitter, children have easy access to other children and their personal lives. It can be just as crippling as being bullied in the school setting. It is now harder than ever to not be able to escape the taunting and judgments of others. Many people believe that bullying is a right and that everyone goes through it at some time or another in life. But at what point does it go too far? Schools should enforce a no tolerance policy for bullying and pay attention to the children. There are always warning signs that indicate a child is struggling. Many people reluctantly miss the signs that something is wrong. Cho Seung-Hui was born in South Korea. His parents decided to immigrate to the United States in 1992, when Cho was 8 years old, to provide a better life for their children. He is now famous for the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech University. His parents reported that he was often bullied at school as a younger child. Many also believe that Cho Seung-Hui had severe mental issues including imagining a supermodel girlfriend named “Jelly”, and he also imagined himself as her fantasy lover and called himself “Spanky” and other times referred to himself as “Question Mark.” He also slept with his lights on and often moaned and talked in his sleep (Hosenball).
“It is hard to exaggerate the premium that many Korean immigrants place on admission to highly selective American universities. The Ivy League is preferred. Local Korean TV [in the United States] will even broadcast who gets into which college," says Jeff Ahn, president of the League of Korean Americans in Virginia. Sun-Kyung, Cho’s sister, went to Princeton and majored in economics. She turned down an acceptance into Harvard (Hosenball). Did Cho Seung-Hui feel ashamed or jealous that he had not gone to an Ivy League school like his sister had? Perhaps, but it was very clear at an early age to his parents that he had mental problems and they tried to get him help by sending him to the pastor at their church. According to the article, “Making of a Massacre” the pastor of Cho’s family church said he was a smart boy who could understand the words of the Bible, but he doubted that Cho actually believed in the words.
On April 16, 2007, Cho carried out his very thought out plan of killing thirty-two people and eventually turning the gun on himself on the Virginia Tech campus. Before he committed the horrific crimes, he decided to make videos, take pictures, and send them to NBC News Studio in New York City. He displayed guns and weapons, and he showcased how he would use them. In one video Cho states: “You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul, and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy’s life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people.” (Kalish).
Many of the school shooters showed some tendencies for having some sort of mental illness. Some had even been put on an anti-depressant medicine for their depression. Common amongst them was that they had kept journals months before they acted on their violent thoughts. They had kept detailed records of the bullying and their feelings. Towards the end of their journals, they planned out their violent crimes.
Most of the shooters tend to be young white males that struggle to make it socially in high school. Koch states that, “In the past. most violent school deaths occurred in urban secondary schools, involved firearms, and both the victims an offenders tended to be male” (Bonilla). They experienced anger and rejection, and simply did not fit in. They had a hard time looking past high school and seeing a future for themselves. Most of them became deeply depressed and showed signs that something was wrong. Unfortunately, no one noticed until it was too late.
Unlike common belief, most of the people that commit these violent crimes tend to be intelligent. Many of the shooters were very capable of having successful futures. In fact, the Columbine shooters were just a year away from graduating high school before their attacks. They had already applied for college and went on college tours. Cho was described by many, including his sister who is an Ivy League graduate, as brilliant in Math and always good at school. Unfortunately, many of the shooters could not picture their lives past their time in school.
October 2, 2006, the local milk man, Charles Carl Roberts IV entered the school house with the intentions of bounding, sexually molesting, and shooting the young Amish girls. He sent out the boys and locked in the women and young girls. Like the other shooters, he left some sort of suicide note. He called his wife before committing the act and told her what he was getting ready to do. Roberts seemed to suffer from some type of mental illness and depression. He admitted that he had sexually assaulted young girls before, and he had been dreaming about committing violent acts again.
Unlike the other school shooters, Charles did not keep a diary or videos. However, he had planned out the whole event and gathered his various supplies. He knew exactly what he set out to do and how to do it. He had worked and lived close to the Amish community for years. He ended up killing five of the young girls before taking his own life. Almost all of the school shooters end up committing suicide after their act (Kalish).
Psychopaths are people that have psychopathic personalities and antisocial behavior. They lack the ability to love and have a sense of superiority above others. They also have a hard time learning from experience. Most psychopaths show ruthless disregards for others and they are deceitful. They enjoy being deceitful and take a sense of pride in their work, knowing that most people do not see their actions coming at all. Not all psychopaths act on their violent thoughts, however. The shooters all showed similarities to having psychopathic traits.
The videos shot by the shooters leading up to the crimes are heavily drenched in hatred and anger. They all speak about who and why they are planning on killing. Many of the shooters had hit lists, listing everyone that thy wanted to kill. They all try to make it out to seem as though society and their peers are the reasoning behind their intended actions. They thought that they had no other options than to act out in violence. They felt pushed until they had no other options. Their written journals showed a more horrific side of the shooters then the video diaries did. They poured their true thoughts and emotions into their journals. Therefore, they gave everyone a chance to truly see their sinister side and how dark their thoughts were.
In a diary entry, Harris wrote: “I will sooner die than betray my own thoughts. But before I leave this worthless place, I will kill who ever I deem unfit. I will rig up explosives all over a town and detonate each one of them at will after I mow down a whole fucking area full of you snotty ass rich mother fucking high strung godlike attitude having worthless pieces of shit whores. I don’t care if I live or die in the shootout, all I want to do is kill and injure as many of you pricks as I can (Kass).
As dark and gruesome as most of their written journals were, some of the shooter’s writings would sometimes show a more compassionate side to them. One of the Columbine shooters, Dylan Klebold wrote about a girl that he obsessively loved. He also wrote about how he wanted to have a future, his goals, and aspirations in life. In some of the diary entries, he seemed unsure of his plans but knew he wanted to commit suicide. All of the shooters seemed overly depressed in their writings and unsure on how to cope with their feelings. Some of the shooters wrote as if they had no way out like Klebold who had written, “Ignorance is bliss I guess…that would explain my depression…this is a weird time, weird life, weird existence and wherever I go after this life—that I’ll finally not be at war with myself” (Kass).
Cho even kept a journal describing his plans of attack and who he would want to kill. He wrote: “Kill yourselves or you will never know how the dorky kid that you publicly humiliated and spat on will come behind you and slash your throats. Kill yourselves or you will never know the hour the little kid will come in with hundreds of ammunition on his back to shoot you down” (PBS).
Another issue that has risen in the possible motives behind school shootings is gun control. There are laws preventing people to buy guns. One is that someone must have a permit and a background check done before purchasing a gun. In most instances, someone will have to show a driver’s license as well. Like most laws, there are ways around these stipulations and the shooters managed to get past them all. The shooters bought their weapons and ammo through private dealers, therefore they were not asked to show a permit or licenses and they did not have to perform a background check. Other shooters simply paid other people to buy their guns and ammo without having full knowledge of their intentions with the weapons. The book Violence in Our Schools talks about why there is school violence. The author states: “94 percent of U.S. has adopted a zero-tolerance policy on guns” (Orr). Consequently if people followed the rules and regulations of buying and using guns, people might have fewer opportunities to inappropriately use the guns.
Some schools are not able to take extra precautions to help protect their students from such violent acts. Weinberg & Schuermann wrote, “To prevent guns from entering schools, many districts and principals have purchased metal detectors, installed security cameras, locked exterior doors, and hired guards. However, in most rural schools where school shootings are mostly carried out, lack the funds for the technology to prevent students from bringing in weapons. Things such as metal detectors and surveillance cameras are very expensive and will not fit into many school budgets. Some shooters claimed it was too easy to bring the weapons to school using backpacks or hidden under their clothing” (Weinberg and Schuermann).
Many of the motives for why children turn to violence and become a school shooter are unknown. People may never know exactly what pushes children to act out in violence. If the school systems and society got more involved and adopted stricter policies against bullying and gun control, children might not feel as pressured to act out in violence at school.