I go to a middle/high school that consists of 700-800 students in a small Minnesotan town. I know a lot of people from bigger cities tend to believe that nothing bad happens in small towns, but unfortunately I have to admit even my little community has been corrupted. To give an accurate mental image of my town, we have a strip mall with only three stores, so this essay is coming straight from the heart. I’m three-fourths the way through my freshman year and there have already been two threats sent to the school that have sent the people in my town into a turmoil of sorts. With a population of just over 4,000 people, we never really see a bomb or school shooting threat coming. Increased police security is the only thing that has come out of these situations, but it is genuinely a terrifying thing to sit through knowing something bad could happen at my school at any point in time. Especially since nothing is being done about it until someone is already too far gone in a messed up ideaology to realize how twisted of a “solution” this is. Violence in schools, gun violence particularly, should not be a day-to-day worry for a student. Nor should it be the brunt of a joke and I’m tired of it. Something needs to change. Statistics, or the lack thereof, is its own subject entirely, but necessary to a full comprehension of this subject; as well as why they happen. What also needs to be covered is some terrible ideas this country has had in the past to try to bring the gratuitously high number of school shootings in a year down and finally some actual solutions to an oppressive problem. Starting with statistics.
Has anyone else ever noticed the only information shared about school shootings is always during an active situation or after the fact? The GVA (Gun Violence Archive) as of 2023 shows that in this year alone there have already been ninety-five mass shootings across America, and at the time I started writing this article it was only the 1st of March. Over 3,000 people have already died this year from gun violence not including suicides which unfortunetly doubles this already large number. This is one of the leading issues in the USA, but some people take what the 2nd Amendment says about the right to bear arms and run with it, truly believing that regulation is the start of banning weapons. Even if someone’s not killed or injured, they’re still scarred psychologically, potentially for the rest of their life. This new generation has already shown a spike in anxiety diagnosis’ from school stress alone. The effect on students generally will cause post traumatic stress symptoms, depression, anxiety, and sometimes suicidal tendancies. According to the School Shootings article presented by the Center for Violence Protection, adolescents experiencing something like this generally stunts social and psychological growth as well as their academic prowess from before a shooting. Most shooters go into their chosen school with the intent of not coming back out alive, and while there is very little information on the mental reasoning behind school shootings there are some common threads as to why they happen.
There is no valid reason for taking one or more innocent lives, but school shooters are their own category entirely when it comes to mentally damaged people. According to a 2019 Reader's Digest article written by Elizabeth Yuko: Years of Research Finds That Most School Shooters Have 4 Things in Common, almost all shooters have four different motives that lead to this unspeakable act of violence. If a child is exposed to violence or any sort of trauma in adolescence, this is where the seed could’ve been planted. Shooters tend to grow up with a twisted sense of morals due to the lack of in their childhood home, and if an event triggers unresolved feelings this is where some people don’t know how to properly deal with the unresolved trauma leading to different suicidal feelings. Being raised in an abusive household has a massive effect on ones mental stability in the future. Now obviously there have just been some messed up people with no remorse for their actions, but for the majority, we do have to dig a little deeper than that. Where shooters and other trauma survivors differ, is in role models. I have never met a person who has praised Ted Bundy or some other extremely messed up individual, but many of these pre-shooters take inspiration from other “successful” shooters. What truly is the means to an end, is whether or not they decide to actually carry out their plan. Which is an aspect I wish the government could help more in. Clearly therapy cannot be mandated, but some schools do essentially nothing about bullying, especially to minorities. People of color and open members of the LGBTQ+ community are more subject to bullying than straight white men. Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit gun violence prevention team, states in the article 17 Facts About Gun Violence and School Shootings that all minorities, including women are also more likely to be shot. 98% of school shooters are men, 53% of which are white, and what the government can’t change about this, which frustrates me, is empathy. People are people, but an unfortunate amount of humans are raised to believe they’re superior. I’ve been jabbering about how shooters are mentally ill but a fair chunk of them were likely bullies ruining more lives than just their own, even before taking the path of violence. A path that is chosen far more than some care to acknowledge.
Let’s all pause for a moment and ponder what the country has done about gun control. What comes to my mind is when some individuals in this country had the splendid idea of arming teachers which would have been nothing but counterproductive. A chance for a shooting only increases when there is already a weapon in the classroom. When we should’ve been cutting back on guns, an idea that only throws more around is the one that got most popular? I feel like that should say something about some of the people in this country. In all honesty, I’m debatably just kind of happy that we were trying to think of a solution, no matter how fruitless of an attempt it was. My school had a pretty poor strategy for a while in an active situation that also likely would’ve proved to have no benefit, and unfortunately in these situations, it is not the thought that counts. The plan used to have a “hard” and “soft” drill. The soft drill was when a shooter was in the school, but not near a select classroom so we turned off all the lights and hid in the corner of a classroom. Which was pointless, because turning off the lights and locking a door doesn’t change the fact it was 1:00pm on a Tuesday. Where else would the kids have been? The hard drill wasn’t too smart either. We were told to all huddle up into a group and grab the heaviest thing we could find to throw at the intruder if they got past the locked door. Obviously escape was the most viable option, but our back-ups were nowhere where they should have been. My school has upgraded our system and now it is something much better, but just the fact that people have had to think of these ideas in the first place and teach them to a room of Kindergartners is a sad reality that I hope we won’t need for the future generations.
I do not have all the answers, as I am a 14 year old and these ideas have likely been thrown around before, but restating, supporting, and helping put previous ideas into action is the only way school shootings are going to stop. The best course of action is to prevent them from happening ahead of time or in adolescence. Almost everyone in highschool right now has seen a form of bullying which is a direct pipeline to some sort of downfall. We ourselves cannot change other people, but we can change what we do about it. Laughing after a cruel joke at someone else’s expense goes much deeper than a lot of people think it does. The pipeline from bullying to suicide is genuinly so disheartening to think about, and in the end almost all shooters kill themselves too as their way out. “Words can hurt '', “Treat other people the way you want to be treated”, and “Be kind”, are not just sayings people grow up hearing from their parents. Yes, it is cheesy but I stand by them. If someone’s not kind, where do they get in life? The answer is nowhere. Eliminating the mentally damaged who eventually were led to believe shooting up their past highschool was their way to free themselves, gets rid of the majority of school killers. I don’t believe in strictly good or bad, but sometimes there are just some people who ruin things for the sake of chaos. Not all shooters have any thought process behind their actions, which is where gun control comes into play. It is quite honestly ridiculously easy to buy a gun. The 2nd Amendment protects the right to own guns, which is completely okay, but we need a better form of regulation. A background check, namely. There are key similarities as I said earlier to those who usually end up being shooters, we need some form of surveillance and prevention. Why can an eighteen-year-old buy a gun when they can’t even buy a drink? Being involved with hunting as a sport is different from buying an assault rifle and store clerks have got to know that. But what do we do ahead of time? Gun regulation is such an issue in this country that so few people are willing to acknowledge. I don’t want to have to have a plan for escaping the school when someone’s inside, but in these times one is necessary for the safety of the students and teachers. My biggest worry should be the science test I have coming up. No matter how well a school prepares for this sort of thing, it doesn’t change the fact that they happen. That’s not going to change, not unless we finally acknowledge the root of the problem itself and decide how to move forward.
School shootings are events no one should have to suffer through or worry about. The general information already tells us how high the numbers already are to a distressing point with only being three months into 2023. The basic statistics and reasoning behind most shootings are very disheartening to read but key points of information to know how to move forward. After looking at “solutions” this country has come up with, I then tried to provide some real things we actually need to look further into, namely gun control. This idea itself I’m sure will anger a lot of people, but no one can deny that it needs to happen because if it doesn’t how else will we move forward? I go to a small school and we get a very good education, but that’s not going to save my life or anyone else’s when one of our threats actually comes true. I simply do not know how to make it more clear that the cycle of school shootings is just going to keep going around unless a step is taken and we finally take action. Students have a lot on their plate from what could be going on at home to what is happening at schools. It’s hard to float when someone feels like they’re drowning. We as a country, need to collectively take a step forward and to stop tainting the lives of others as well as our own. This is undoubtedly the best way to start. So what are we going to do to be a part of the solution?