History of the First School Shooting
The first school shooting took place in July 26, 1964 at the Pontiac’s Rebellion school it was one of the most notorious incidents. Where four Lenape Americans Indian entered the school, house started shooting and killed the school master Enoch Brown nine children and only two of the children survived. Twenty five years later another horrified shooting took place in April 1991 at Columbine High School. Columbine shooting two teens went on a shooting spree that killed 13 people and wounding more than twenty other before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide.
Columbine shooting was horrified that it impacted students, staffs, and the community and will always be remembered in history. To solve this problem, school need to implement preventative programs in school for student and parents.
Many massive schools shooting have occurred within the past few years that have impacted our communities and schools. A mass shooting is so disturbing, so irrational, and horrifying for everyone in the community. According to non-profit organization Everytown for Gun Safety, a total of 65 shootings have occurred on school campuses across the United States as of October 4, 2018 and the total number of school shooting matches last year’s total. Just in 21 weeks into 2018, and there has already been 23 school shootings where someone was hurt or killed.
School safety should be the number one priority to the U.S Government responsibility because we pay taxes, and everyone wants to be in a safe environment. However, the government should provide more funding for any necessary items, mental health programs and supportive service for students and parents that can prevent school shootings. Many schools shooting have increased and there has to be more protections for innocent student attending schools.
First to ensure school safety the government needs to provide more funding towards preventative programs such as mental health programs and supportive programs for parents. The funding can provide counseling services so that students get the care they need long before their isolation or despair convert into violence. Many of the perpetrators at school shooting were diagnosed with mental health. In an article called “”How prevalent is mental illness in mass shootings?”” By Elizabeth Llorente it shows that in a study of 185 public massive shooting from 1900 through 2017 criminologist Grant Duwe found out that 59 percent were committed by people who had been diagnosed on mental illness or showed signals of having serious mental illness. If the school would have programs to assist this individuals with their needs to massive school shooting would not have happen. Researchers who study the impact of mental illness stigma have found that students with mental health services sometimes find that their friends avoid them, their family member’s pity and distrust them and sometimes teachers fear and underestimate their abilities to perform tasks. If schools would be more open about mental health awareness many students would not be afraid of getting the help they need. Mental health problems have arisen in this country in the past few decades. With the funding schools would get they can hire more psychologist to assist students in need. School psychologist play a critical role in creating a positive school, identifying struggling student and counseling student that are facing significant challenges. We lack those resources for student that truly need the help and are in broken homes where no family is helping them. For example in Bosom the number of psychologist per student is around one for every 1,000 students. Basically it would be hard for a student to seek help if more than one student out of the 1,000 needs assistance. While the National Association of School Psychologists recommends one school psychologist per 500 to 750 students as a minimum. Many schools would need more than three or four psychologist per school. Children’s mental health issues often manifest as physical symptoms, or behavioral issues. Any staff in the school property should be trained in children’s mental health and need to avoid setting policies, such as automatic suspensions and zero-tolerance rules, which put kids with mental health needs at greater risk. Providing universal mental health screening and education for student all ages will increase the support for student to identifying their needs. A clear pattern has appeared in the perpetrators of school shooting: all are males, less likely to seek out any type of support than their female peers often some are bullied, suffering mental health issues, isolation or depression have experienced loss and have been identified by schools for acting violently. These are all children that are in crisis with unmet mental health needs. Such as Duwe told Fox News that “”Paranoid Schizophrenia”” is what the most common among these individuals. This individuals feel like large group of people are out to get them and that these people are there to make them miserable. In many communities they might not feel comfortable with helping their children so if schools open doors student will not be afraid to seek for help. I have encounter people that have children that have a mental illness and their kids are afraid to share diagnose with friends because they fill that they will be judge and unwanted. If courses contribute to share about mental illness and the important to seek for help it can be a great factor to help prevent any violence from student that wants to harm others. We should not ignore the any individual that has mental health illness and has made treats to hurt himself and other massive shooting are real.
Second, the U.S government should provide funding for any items invented to help students in an active shooting. School shooting has become more frequent in recent years that parents feel anxious in leaving kids.
Some people argue that arming teacher would be the most effective method in help protecting the students and is inexpensive than other methods. However, having guns on campus can easily be use for anything but defense, accidents can happen and defeats the purpose of keeping the school safe. Having teachers armed in kindergarten to twelve grades can be many possibilities of bad stuff happening to students and staff. Anne Nova from CNBC conducted a survey of March of this year 497 adults who teach kindergarten through the twelve grade and seventy-three of U.S educators opposed the idea of being armed or having. More than half of the teachers in the survey feel that arming staff will make school more dangerous. Just in March of this year a California teacher’s gun accidentally went off in a public safety class injuring a student. The student injury was minor but what if it caused his life just because of a minor mistake. Teachers are human civilian and make mistakes too but why not prevent any fatal from happened. Accidents have consequences such as we saw with the teacher that is pointed the gun to the ceiling to make sure it was not loaded when the weapon discharged. The teacher was put in administrative leave from his teaching job. Many parents would like to feel that their children are safe at school. Training teachers might be inexpensive than getting more security guards and, in some case, training might be granted for free training from local organization. Yet in a critical situation teacher may not remembering the training they receive because everything is happening so quick. Not everyone has the courage to shoot and not be capable of shooting a human being when a situation is occurring more if they have interacted with him or her. They might panic and aim to another student instead of the preparator that why in the survey in March from Gallup shows how many teachers do not agree in being armed. No amount of training will ever prepare teacher to grab the gun when a massive shooting is occurring. There has been some evidence that show having a gun to the mixture of anger, stress, and frustration can escalate to violence. In Georgia a teacher barricaded himself in his classroom and shout a handgun out the window. Fortunately, no student was injured only a student hurt their ankle while running away because she heard a gunshot and thought there was a shooting. His break down would have been less destructive if he did not have a gun in the classroom. The presence of a gun may serve as the ignition and fuel for a school shooting. I would be a bit concerned if I knew that my teacher was armed because they can use it without there being a shooting. For example, just imagined students starting a fight and no adults can stop it because there are many students involved and a teacher is tempted to break the fight by using their gun. Using a gun while a fight not be the most appropriate method to use when stopping a fight. Many things can happen either he shoots up in the air and the bullet hit someone or a person can take it away from him. There are many possibilities that can trigger teacher by having them armed. We need adults who interact with children daily not armed with weapons, but with the ability to respond effectively to students in need. Instead of providing teacher with guns give them resources from them to provide mental health resources to students and their parents.
Even some people may argue that installing warning systems such as text messages ad emails are valuable to student safety on school grounds. Nevertheless, it can be a useful feature to use to alert student because many of the students in K-12 depend on their parent’s phones or emails. The preparatory also has a phone, shooting take seconds and phone calls take minutes, too much or too little information and someone could possibly be turn off. Every message to the public can also alert the preparator on what the school campus believes is going on. Too much information can tell the bad person more than anyone wants him or her to know. For example, what if the school message informs the students, staffs, parents and teachers to shelter in a certain place and turn of the lights, the preparator can also receive those messages. Messages at times can be vague, misleading and misunderstood which can cause chaos. Many of the people attending the school or having children in school campus might read the message or hear the voicemail after everything happened yet they panic and take unnecessary actions. We can acknowledge that many of the school might not have the updated email or text messages.
If schools really want to remain safe, they should implement mental health, bullying and family interacting support groups or classes. If school staff can find resources, and if people’s taxpayers are willing to support us, then all the schools would do everything in our power to try to create a sense of normalcy and ease for student and parents. The ongoing horrors of school shootings has wrought such terror upon parents, educators and communities that schools nationwide are working overtime to fine-tune active shooter drills, hire additional security and reduce emergency response times.
Second the government should provide more funding for California school to have access in hiring more security guards. School resource officers are sworn law enforcement personnel who have been trained to work in schools. Their duties include controlling outside traffic, patrolling the school, maintaining discipline, identifying problems and mentoring at-risk students, teaching law-related classes and serving as liaisons between schools and police. The SRO provides armed security for the school at an annual cost of between $100,000 and $250,000. This is an effective solution but an expensive one that could be difficult to afford but if it is going to save life why not be secure than sorry when a tragedy happens.
History of the First School Shooting. (2019, Feb 27). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/history-of-the-first-school-shooting/