School Shootings.

Here, where I go to school, I don't feel the need to worry much about school shootings. But then again, I'm pretty sure the victims of Columbine, Virginia Tech, the Amish Schoolhouse, and NIU felt the same way before the gunmen showed up to school armed. Though, the shootings have taken place in schools states away and even though I live in a good, safe community, you can never be sure when that "potential" gunman is going to snap and come to school packing.

School shootings and what provoke them are absolutely astounding, almost frightening. The gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, for example, is one of the most frightening I've seen or heard of. He had a background of no friends, of being a stalker, and all sorts of creepy stuff that they found out about him. He was deranged. So, out of curiosity, I did a little research and found some statistics for school shootings/other school related violence: http://youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu/violence-in-schools/national-statistics.html Looking at these stats make me think that, even though they have levelled out, we can't take the chance of letting them rise again. Thorough background checks should be done, to prevent future incidents.

Other methods of shooting preventions would be arming school staff. The methods, I have been told, that teachers are supposed to use when dealing with an assailant are two things: don't make eye contact and do what the assailant says. But in most shootings, it seems, the assailant is there to kill and only kill. Negotiating won't do you much good if you're dead. So, I believe that teachers should be armed. Possibly armed with guns that fire rubber pellets or bean bag (which are both effective methods that are used by the police force to stun and disarm criminals) or even tasers. Teachers would go through training and background checks before obtaining these because when students are at school, they and their safety are the responsibility of the staff, am I correct? And I believe staff should be trained to protect students if necessary.

Looking at all of this, I believe there's something more to these shootings, something psychological. Have we become desensitized by the media? Does the "hands-off" approach to raising and educating children have a say in this? Could it be the lack of respect for authority? And could these shootings be on a rise again in the next few years? As we are bombarded with 24-hour News coverage of every little criminal act on television and as we've become further immersed in these violent and gruesome images, our society has begun to crumble as we know. In this age, nobody cares. Because it's all about the proverbial "me, me, me". Instant gratification. When there's something in a person way, blow it over and keep going.

And that's not were it ends.

We have unlimited access to infinite amounts of "perverse" knowledge on the internet, the kind of knowledge that could contort the mind of an already unstable individual. Also, family and social settings have changed drastically. In todays world, divorce rates and the number of single parents have skyrocketed, leaving children of these singles alone the majority of the time that they are home. Going hand-in-hand with the loneliness at home is rejection by peers. Looking into the backgrounds of these gunmen reveals that the majority of them were ostracizied in their social lives. Estranged from the community because they were different. Essentially leaving them on their own. This in combination with the lack of love at home and the pressures around them, would have led to a break down and put them in a corner where they had no other way out. But on top of taking their own lives, they are going to take all over those responsible for their suffering down with them.