School Shootings

Every time a school shooting occurs people look to various facts and information to try and figure why the shooting happened and most importantly how another shooting can be prevented. If recent events are any indication, 12 school shooting in the first two months of 2018, it is time to look at these shootings from a different vantage point. It is time to look at what is NOT present in each of the school shootings.

Ten out of the twenty deadliest school shootings in the last seventy years have occurred at middle schools and high schools. Most can ramble off the obvious commonalities between all the shootings: white male, teenager, suburban setting, lower middle class to upper-middle-class communities, some type of gun. However, there is …show more content…
It isn't hard to figure out: none of the ten deadliest school shootings have occurred in urban school settings. How can that be? And how can it help us in possibly preventing the next school shooting? The loudest cries after a school shooting from the left is gun control. more background check, closing loopholes, banning assault rifles, limited the number of guns a person can purchase. The right is equally predictable in their responses: not a gun issue, guns do not kill people - people kill people, this is a time for prayer, arm teachers in schools. Parents and educator join the left for gun control measures and add it is a mental health issue, it is bullying, kids are exposed to too much violence. While some of these identified causes do seem to have a role in school shootings, mental health being the most legitimate one, the others lose credibility or at least fail to hold up to scrutiny when combined with the fact that no mass school shooting has happened in at an urban …show more content…
When examing the ten deadliest school shooting there is no doubt that the mental health of the shooter/s played a role. The mental health of anyone who thinks it is a good idea to just randomly shoot people especially children is an issue. However, when mental health is looked at in conjunction with the lack of school shootings in urban settings certain questions come up. Many children in urban school settings deal with and suffer from emotional and mental health issues that would cause most adults to break down. Their lives are not easy. A good deal of these students worry about where their next meal is coming from, will they be shot playing basketball, substance abuse within their families, incarceration of dad or mom, homelessness and countless other issues and struggles that they face on a daily basis. Yet again these students are not going into their schools with guns, that easily available in their communities, and killing their teachers and classmates. If mental health was the root cause of school shootings then the high schools in Bridgeport, Connecticut would be shot up on a regular basis. To be clear this is not to say that the emotional issues or mental health issues that other children outside urban school settings deal with any less traumatic or severe. This is only to raise the question to what extent does mental health really play in school shootings and it is as big of a role as we currently believe it to

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