Causes of Gun Violence in Schools

Causes of Gun Violence in Schools

Gun violence in schools just keeps increasing. How many of our kids are we willing to lose before we actually implement a plan of action to tackle this problem? Every year more than 20,000 children and youth under the age of 20 are killed or injured by firearms in the United States, and the numbers just keep increasing. We cannot afford to be quiet anymore. As a first step, we need to think about the causes. What causes gun violence in schools? What makes a person want to carry a gun and go shoot people? These are questions that we need to discuss before we are able to propose any solutions to the problem. In their article, "School Shooters: History, Current Theoretical and empirical findings, and strategies for prevention,” Catlin Bonanno and Richard Levenson discuss a few theories and characteristics of attackers. For instance, the authors talk about how stress and strain are big factors that cause the attackers to do what they do. They also discuss how there are five stages of strain and they basically indirectly answer the questions above. To begin with, strain can stem from our everyday life situations such as relationships, work, and school. But a major factor of strain that is discussed in the article is when a person is bullied or feels unaccepted by his or her peers. It has been proven that most shooters experienced bulling or were threatened or injured by one of their peers. This sums up the first stage of chronic strain.

When someone feels unaccepted by peers, they usually try to build connections or make relationships somewhere else, this leads to the second stage. Some individuals “either never find meaningful relationships with others or form relationships with students who [also] have been marginalized and who then become supportive of and/or encouraging of their violent antisocial feelings and beliefs” (p.4). Instead of making new friends or connections these individuals end up feeling even more marginalized or make connections with people who suffer the same problem. Making these non-meaningful relationships results in more strain and more suffering to the socially rejected individual.  

This leads to the third stage of strain which is when a person who has the two previous stages then faces events and experiences that seem catastrophic to an already troubled and isolated person.  This stage is basically the catalyst that fuels the attacks on schools. At this stage, the strained person starts feeling like there is nothing else to lose and this leads to the fourth stage; the planning stage. Just as the name implies it is the stage where the attacker starts gathering all the necessary equipment for the attack and making a plan. Finally the last stage is the massacre at the school. Looking at the number of stages that a person goes through before becoming an attacker shows that we, as a community, have many chances to prevent this problem from happening. As a matter of fact, even if a person is already at stage five it is still possible to stop the attack and prevent gun violence in schools. Because even though an attacker has already hit stage five there is still a need for “certain facilitating factors” to be in place such as the absence of security and the many things that might happen before committing the act. 

Another cause of gun violence can be "narcissism." Our current society has “overemphasized material comfort and narcissism [which in turn leads] to feelings of resentment, envy, and hatred toward others’ real or imagined success.” (p.5). These feelings can act as an impetus for attacks on schools, and such feelings have been identified in past school shooters. This adds one more thing to the list of causes of gun violence in schools. There is a massive amount of scenarios and causes of gun violence and we should not lump them into a single category.  

  
Looking at all these causes we can tell they interact with each other. Looking at this problem through a single scope will only limit the problems impacts rather than solving it. Therefore We need to realize that this problem has many different scenarios and not only one cause. Proposing solutions that may primarily change the attackers emotional states and prevent more massacres from happening should start as soon as possible.