Fall 2019 SOCG 2043 Essay: School Shootings and Societal Impact

This essay examines school shootings as a critical social problem, particularly prevalent in developed countries like the United States. It highlights the increasing frequency of these incidents, often targeting educational institutions, and attributes them to factors like easy access to weapons and psychological disorders. The essay presents statistical data on the rise of school shootings, including incidents in specific states and demographic information about perpetrators. It discusses existing policy efforts, such as background checks and psychological evaluations, while also evaluating their limitations and failures. The essay emphasizes the need for a multifaceted approach involving stricter gun control measures, increased public awareness, and improved mental health support to mitigate the issue and prevent future tragedies. It concludes by stressing the importance of government initiatives and public awareness to address and reduce the impact of school shootings effectively.

Running Head: SCHOOL SHOOTING
SCHOOL SHOOTING
Name of the Student:
Name of University:
Author Note:

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School shooting has become a common phenomenon primarily in the developed
countries. Over the last decade a number of shooting incidents have occurred and most of the
cases the educational institutions were the primary target. One of the biggest reason behind such
a phenomena was the easy to pray approach of the gunmen. The perpetrators came from varying
backgrounds and assaulted in schools or educational institutions out of frustration or any other
psychological disorders. In this regard, this essay aims to illustrate the school shooting as a social
problem and its impact on the society. Furthermore, a policy briefing to mitigate the issue is also
incorporate into the discussion with the purpose to curb down the incident predominantly.
This essay is going to investigate on United States where the school shooting incidents
are high and fatal also. According to Baird et al. the shooting incidents are reported to increase at
a rapid pace since 1981 and there are despite of several attempts by the school authority and the
government by imposing policies to prevent the violence, the problem still exists in the society.
the CNN report suggested that the rate of school shooting was growing in such a pace that in
2018 the average incidents was more than 1 shooting a week. The report of Coughlan articulated
that over 1,300 school shooting incidents have been occurred in US since 1970 and 2018 scored
the highest number with 82 recorded incidents. As a matter of fact, California, Texas and Florida
are the top three states in US with most of the shooting incidents. The research of Sommer et al.
tried to project a demographic statistics over the gunmen. As per the research at least 690
incidents were occurred where the shooter was the current student of the school. Besides this, an
astonishing fact is that the percentage of male shooters are more than females and in 861
incidents where the shooter targeted specific victims.
Besides the government initiatives, it is also important for the public to take some
responsibility in order to reduce the school shooting incidents. There is a two faced policy that

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can deal with the school shooting and reducing the practice as well. The first one is associated
with the checking the background of the buyers. It is a very debatable and over high criticism
from every corner of manufacturing companies. Despite of such obstacles it is important to run a
background check on the gun buyers and then sell it is the most useful and easy to practice
mechanism. The report of Rand Corporation advocated that the universal background check
system would prevent more than 1000 homicides per year. On the other hand, a thorough
psychological test is also required in order to understand the root of the crimes and procuring
better precautions on that. The report of Beland and Kim shows that most of the shooting were
occurred by the current students of the academic institutions. Therefore, it is obvious that there
are some possibilities to look out the root cause of the school shooting from a psychological
perspective. In fact, most of the reason till today found that psychological disorder is one of the
major cause behind such incident and the lack of treatment made it impossible to eradicate the
problem out of its root.
However, the policies are already implemented within the US society and the thorough
background check is seemed not enough for the educational institute to deal with the school
shooting. For an instance, the background checking system is not universally adopted in all the
states of United States. The report of Rostron advocated that there are severe gaps in the
government policy making and the height of pressure from gun manufacturing giants it becomes
impossible for the government to take adequate measures in order to bring justice and curbing
down the nefarious acts of school shooting. One the other hand, Schildkraut and Hernandez
mentioned that the psychological tests are also seemed ineffective because those are already
prevalent in educational institutions. The psychological tests are sometimes failed to find
anything related to revenge and ferocity. The process is not so sure enough to take down the

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practice of school shooting permanently. Based on such an inference, it can be stated that further
stern measures should be implemented in order to bring more efficacy into resolving the policy
of reducing school shooting properly.
The future of this problem needs to a catastrophe where the government will have no
power to wipe out the problem. The society will also get affected in a large scale and atrocities
and rage are the major feature that transcended over the society. Therefore, it is an obvious
question for the society to get address the issue and its consequences in future (Schildkraut,
Elsass and Stafford). There are two facets of the issue in this regard. One is associated with the
fatal consequences of the issue where the continuous failure of the government will increase the
issue like a cancer which is incurable and government is out of clue to deal with that triggering
threat. On the other hand, it is also possible that the smart move from the government in terms of
put a ban on purchasing gun by the civilians with a collaboration of the communities to grow a
solid awareness will also bring a better future by reducing the threat of gun shooting.
Based on the above discussion, it can be stated that the increasing rate of shooting in
schools is created great threat for the public and also obstructed the government policies as well.
It is like a disease that the government has no remedy to resolve. This essay is trying to depict
the fatality of the issue and willing to point out the government failures in order to address and
mitigate it extensively. Failure in the government policies and bereft of public awareness are also
identified as an impetus for this social disease. Therefore, it can be concluded that proper
government initiatives and public awareness can handle the situation and curb down the school
shooting effectively.

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Reference
Baird, Abigail A., Emma V. Roellke, and Debra M. Zeifman. "Alone and adrift: the association
between mass school shootings, school size, and student support." The Social Science
Journal 54.3 (2017): 261-270.
Beland, Louis-Philippe, and Dongwoo Kim. "The effect of high school shootings on schools and
student performance." Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 38.1 (2016): 113-126.
Coughlan, Sean. "2018 'Worst Year For US School Shootings'". BBC News, 2018,
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46507514.
Duplechain, Rosalind, and Robert Morris. "School violence: Reported school shootings and
making schools safer." Education 135.2 (2014).
Rostron, Allen. "School shootings and the legislative push to arm teachers." U. Tol. L. Rev. 45
(2013): 439.
Schildkraut, Jaclyn, and Tiffany Cox Hernandez. "Laws that bit the bullet: A review of
legislative responses to school shootings." American Journal of Criminal Justice 39.2
(2014): 358-374.
Schildkraut, Jaclyn, H. Jaymi Elsass, and Mark C. Stafford. "Could it happen here? Moral panic,
school shootings, and fear of crime among college students." Crime, Law and Social
Change 63.1-2 (2015): 91-110.
Sommer, Friederike, Vincenz Leuschner, and Herbert Scheithauer. "Bullying, romantic rejection,
and conflicts with teachers: The crucial role of social dynamics in the development of

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school shootings–A systematic review." International Journal of Developmental
Science 8.1-2 (2014): 3-24.