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Is it possible that school shootings are a result of our school system?

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I see it everyday in my middle school(am a student). The special needs kids especially, dont get the help they need. They might get an aide for a period or two, but then the aide has to go assist another kid. And our school counselors have enough to deal with. They cant take time very day to talk with the kids who need help. The Florida Shooter had a real screwed up life. His mom and dad were dead and he was living with his friend. He obviously wasn’t getting any help whatsoever so he turned to violence. 
My proposal is that we increase funding to schools, and our National Parks(both learning resources) and decrease military spending. In fact right now we should be more worried about defense rather than offense. I.e. ICBM interception systems and defense for our satellites.
Zombieguy1987
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  • JimboShrimpJimboShrimp 4 Pts   -  
    Of course that's a root cause of shootings, no one will dispute that--so I'll focus on your proposed solutions. Firstly, increasing funding to schools would more likely do harm than any good--as we know how competent public schools are. In addition, it seems like much more of an unsolvable people problem to me than a funding one. We can't ever get rid of bullying, It won't happen as long as we're still really human. 

    The best we can do, then, is mitigation of the consequences of that failure of human nature. In my opinion, that involves safer schools via armed teachers and trained students.
    Pogue
  • CYDdhartaCYDdharta 1823 Pts   -  
    I see it everyday in my middle school(am a student). The special needs kids especially, dont get the help they need. They might get an aide for a period or two, but then the aide has to go assist another kid. And our school counselors have enough to deal with. They cant take time very day to talk with the kids who need help. The Florida Shooter had a real screwed up life. His mom and dad were dead and he was living with his friend. He obviously wasn’t getting any help whatsoever so he turned to violence. 
    My proposal is that we increase funding to schools, and our National Parks(both learning resources) and decrease military spending. In fact right now we should be more worried about defense rather than offense. I.e. ICBM interception systems and defense for our satellites.
    Currently, the US is 4th highest in spending per student, yet our students only rank 25th out of 32 OECD nations in terms of knowledge, and the US government is the largest landowner by far, with almost 1/2 million square miles of protected lands.  Do you really think increasing funding in either of these areas will do anything significant?
  • NopeNope 397 Pts   -  
    Teachers have the job to teaching. I see no reason for them to be armed. School shootings are not common when you consider the number of schools. I am afraid of accidents happening with the guns. How well the guns would be kept away from students. How quickly the teachers can get to the seen with their guns. I worry about having to hear of during a school shouting a student was killed on accident by a teacher who missed the student with the gun (hitting a moving target when their are sacred kids running around and you are stress with a hand gun is VERY HARD). I worry law enforcement my have trouble figuring out who the bad shooter is. Some teachers would lave there students defenseless to go hunting the shooter. Also I would not feel as safe as I do now if I new some of my teachers had guns and seemed to be in a bad mood that day. I am skeptical about arming teachers.

    Also AmericanFurryBoy talked about how some special needs kids were not getting the help they need. In some schools I been in this is not the case as the special needs kids each had a helper. I think it would be helpful if you clarified which school system you are taking about.
  • FredsnephewFredsnephew 361 Pts   -  
    No.

    If unstable people have easy access to guns.

    Then eventually someone is going to get hurt.
  • WilliamSchulzWilliamSchulz 255 Pts   -  
    In this case, I would argue no for two key reasons. 

    1. Some of the posts that I have been reading are about the Parkland shooter and how his life was not stable at the time of obtaining a gun. Let me clarify that this was not a result of the school system. Yes, he was expelled from the school, but that does not mean that the school did anything incoherently wrong. It is not the job of public schools to instill morals and beliefs into children, rather, it gives them the knowledge required to solve basic problems in the world as well as understanding situations based off of experience. For this reason, although the teen lived a troubled life, we can't pass blame to the public schools for an action taken against them. 

    2. @AmericanFurryBoy seems to suggest that we increase spending in schools, noting that we spend more on offence than defense, thus causing an unbalance in the protection of our schools. If this is right, we are spending more money on the defense of schools than the education of their students. Don't get me wrong, I value a safe school, but there are a variety of measures that can be taken at little to no cost, for instance, a guest check in, diversified drills, ALICE, all of these run free at the school and help with safety. 

    For this reason, schools are safe if they take the right measures to begin with and because schools are not responsible for a child's mental and emotional growth, there should be no correlation between the two.
    A good debate is not judged by bias, but in the context of the debate, where objectivity is key and rationale prevalent. 


  • George_HorseGeorge_Horse 499 Pts   -   edited June 2018
    No. School shootings are the result of demented children, taciturn witnesses, and the absence of proper gun storage. It is not the fault of the school system, but rather those who KNOW the shooter, the parents who fail to safely and privatey store their guns, or those that aid the shooter in obtaining weapons.
    ErfisflatZombieguy1987
    "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? " ~Epicurus

    "A communist is like a crocodile" ~Winston Churchill

    We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.~Orson Welles
  • blamonkeyblamonkey 66 Pts   -  

    It seems that people tend to blame everything and everyone on school shootings. What people miss is the nuance in the connection between mental illness and shootings. Because of the labyrinthine system of regulation that doesn’t affect school shootings whatsoever, the clear answer is that attributing blame to any one entity is insufficient.

    Before I begin, allow me to go over some observations about the topic at hand.

    The original poster’s proposal includes increasing spending toward funding schools to help ESE kids who are supposedly likely to commit mass shootings. The poster seems to associate mass shootings entirely, or mostly, with school shootings.

    To understand the exact problem with drawing an absolute link between mentally ill students and gun violence, we need to see how we currently define mental illness. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms defines mental illness that would prevent someone from purchasing a weapon if you were “adjudicated as a mental defective” or institutionalized against your will.

    The Legal Information Institute at Cornell University offers clarity as to what being “adjudicated as a mental defective” is. Essentially, a mental defective is someone who falls under any of the qualifications below:

    (a) A determination by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority that a person, as a result of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease:

    (1) Is a danger to himself or to others; or

    (2) Lacks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs. (1)

    While this may seem clear-cut on the surface, the problem is in its enforcement. To be able to target those who would be a danger to others, we need stricter boundaries for who is considered mentally ill. In fact, Duke Health News in April of 2015 finds that roughly 9% of adults in the US have a history of impulsive, angry behavior and have access to guns (2). The reason for this is adequately explained by Ronald Kessler, Ph.D., professor of health care policy at Harvard when he furthers:

    “Very few people in this concerning group suffer from the kinds of disorders that often lead to involuntary commitment and which would legally prohibit them from buying a gun.” (2)

    Being institutionalized against ones will or found to be incompetent by a court is horribly targeted because it does not address those who still could potentially become a harm to others. As a past ESE student in high school, very few students fall under the category of “adjudicated as a mental defective,” and yet, I would not trust some of them with a gun. Nevertheless, a young adult could still come back to a school and kill many. Also, the link between diagnosable mental illness and gun violence has not been well established in the scholarly community, with estimates wildly differing. Jeffrey Swanson conducted a study funded by the NIH and found that:

    “4 percent of gun and other violence is traceable to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression – the three mental health conditions most frequently found in violent incidents (6).”

    Even if we got rid of all of these serious conditions, we only see a minor decrease within death.

    Also, one must consider the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) which has massive gaps in enforcement. The DOJ’s Office of Inspector General in 2016 found when looking at records between 2008 and 2014:

    “We reviewed a judgmental sample of 631 state processed transactions and determined that in 630 of them the states did not fully update the NICS database or inform the FBI of the transaction’s outcome. These failures mean the NICS database is incomplete, and increases the risk that individuals found by states to be prohibited purchasers could be able to purchase firearms in the future.” (3)

    While there has been strides to increase reporting to the NICS, the lack of information makes determinations hard. The Griffords Law Center explains that from the FBI’s own estimates, about 3,000 people pass a NICS background check each year despite being prohibited under state or federal law from purchasing a gun (4). This doesn’t even account for Snafus such as what happened in Florida when for an entire year, state employees were unable to log into the NICS, allowing tens of thousands of applicants to receive concealed-weapon permits. In fact, 291 out of 365 concealed-permit applications reviewed after the issue was revealed were revoked (5). The Chicago Tribune goes further, showing how discrepancies in information being released to the NICS worsens the overall system.

    “According to FBI records, at the end of last year the Pentagon had exactly one active record for a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction in one of the FBI's main gun background-check databases, though there are two other large databases in which such records could be gathered and for which data was not available. By contrast, the database held nearly 11,000 dishonorable discharge records.

    Asked about the gaps in the data, an FBI spokesman said the information law enforcement agencies provide to the FBI "varies greatly across the nation.'' A potential domestic violence arrest, the spokesman said, "can be one of the most difficult federal firearms prohibitions to establish," because state or local records often do not indicate whether a particular assault meets the federal definition for domestic violence.”

    Without adequate enforcement, it is difficult to ascertain who is purchasing weapons, and who is mentally capable of utilizing said weapon in a defensive manner. Young adults, such as Nikolas Cruz who was only 17 at the time of the Parkland shooting, can easily obtain weapons through legal means.  The Washington Post in 2018 analyzed how many guns were purchased legally in mass shootings and found that at least 168 mass shooters’ weapons were obtained legally, while 52 were obtained illegally, and 52 were unknown in their origin (12). This is one of the reasons why.

    Aspects of criminal prosecution regarding straw gun purchases are also problematic. In trafficking investigation between 1996 and 1998, trafficked guns accounted for 25% of assaults and 17% of homicides, while 46% of trafficked guns were trafficked through straw-gun purchases. A straw gun purchase is basically when someone buys a gun and gives it to someone else, often in an open manner. NPR in 2015 explains that often, prosecutors need to prove a direct link between the proxy and the recipient of said gun. Also:

    “Daniel Webster, head of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, someone could claim " 'I have no idea how that person got that gun. They may have stolen it from my house,' or 'I sold it to someone else, and I don't know who that person is.' So it's very difficult to pin someone down."

    Straw gun purchases have been used in the San Bernardino shooting. This ease of access to weapons will likely increase shootings within and out of schools in the future.

    Finally, let’s consider gun safety when it comes to storage of guns. This directly links back to school shootings as it involves the access to weapons. The Crime Report in April of 2018 explains:

    “There have been 32 school shootings since 1990 with at least three victims dead or injured.  Most shooters are white male teenagers. In 25 cases, shooters were teens or younger. Of the 20 cases where details were available, 17 guns came from home, with a few shooters getting weapons from relatives. About 42 percent of adults live in households with a gun, says a 2017 Pew Research Center survey (9).”

    Parents often are not storing weapons in safe places. The American Academy of Pediatrics conducted a survey in March of 2018 that determined that only 1/3 parents store weapons locked and unloaded (10).

    This results in many of the tragedies we see today, especially when we consider how many children, (roughly 22 million according to CBS (11) are in households with firearms.

    When looking at the specific plan outline by the original poster, we need to realize that while we would be bettering mental health, assuming the funds are used effectively, we cannot determine that it would decrease shootings. Remember, the law does not prevent most ESE students from obtaining firearms legally, or illegally, easily. Because the ATF does not identify many “red flags” as a reason to prevent gun usage, many can buy weapons easily. Remember that a person can only be determined to not be able to use a weapon unless they have been institutionalized or have been determining to be not fit to own a weapon as determined by the court. Even if the NICS works, straw gun purchases and using a relative’s weapon is also a viable option. Moreover, where exactly are we cutting from the military budget? Some operations, such as our operations overseas in containing China or preventing a Taliban resurgence are necessary for people who need it. Estimates regarding how much is needed to help students have not been given and are at best, inconclusive.

    Our convoluted system of regulation allows gun violence to fester in schools and cities alike. When laws are too narrowly applied, guns are readily available without background checks, straw-gun purchases are not prosecuted, and gun safety is not followed, we engender more school shootings by unnecessarily increasing access to guns regardless of people being psychologically competent.

     

     

    1.       https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/478.11

    2.       https://corporate.dukehealth.org/content/nearly-1-10-adults-has-impulsive-anger-issues-and-access-guns

    3.       https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2016/a1632.pdf

    4.       http://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/background-checks/nics-reporting-procedures/

    5.       https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/florida-gun-background-checks-failed-for-over-year-adam-putnam-a8393196.html

    6.       http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/03/03/how-prevalent-is-mental-illness-in-mass-shootings.html

    7.       https://everytownresearch.org/reports/inside-straw-purchasing-criminals-get-guns-illegally/

    8.       https://www.npr.org/2015/12/09/459053141/straw-buyers-of-guns-break-the-law-and-often-get-away-with-it

    9.       https://thecrimereport.org/2018/04/06/most-mass-school-shooters-get-guns-at-home/

    10.   http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/141/3/e20172600

    11.   https://www.cbsnews.com/news/3-out-of-4-children-in-homes-with-guns-know-where-the-firearms-are-kept/

    12.   https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-shootings-in-america/?utm_term=.f548f6219942

     

     

    WordsMatter
  • Polaris95Polaris95 147 Pts   -  
    While it might play a part, I feel that the root cause of this problem is irresponsible parenting coupled with the widespread availability of guns in the US. Almost all of the school shooters had estranged or neglectful parents who did not care for their children. This estrangement makes it a lot easier for the children to go to extremism. A lack of support from peers at school can also lead to extremism and is another cause.
    Schools should work hard to integrate students and give them the care and support they need. Solving irresponsible parenting is hard. Some people have suggested having a national parent test, but what makes a good parent is subjective, and methods work differently to different children.

    One issue that can be eaily fixed is the gun issue. Heavy restrictions must be placed on firearms. You must have a license to use one, and must pass background checks. This would make it harder for teens to get access to guns, and would prevent many school shootings. And yes, special needs students should get aid. Decreasing military spending is a good idea, but kind of irrelevant to the situation.
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5970 Pts   -  
    On a deep level, every single crime is a result of the criminal not receiving enough help. Every time someone breaks into a house, they do it because their economical needs are not satisfied. Every time someone performs a mass school shooting, they do it because their psychological needs are not satisfied. Every time a religious terrorist uses explosive belt in a public place, they do it because their spiritual needs are not satisfied. 

    For this reason, every person suspected in having a potential for committing a crime is put in state or federal watch lists, their background is thoroughly checked regularly, and they often have a dedicated psychologist (especially at schools and universities) that regularly meets with them and tries to provide the support they need to stay on the peaceful path.

    However, there is only so much that can be done. We cannot satisfy every person's needs without establishing a harsh totalitarian system that watches over every single individual closely and takes action upon the slightest deviation from the desired behavior - and such a system would defeat the purpose of the matter, since essentially it in itself would be thoroughly criminal with regards to human rights.

    ---

    I do not think your suggestion on increasing school funding will necessarily accomplish the desired goal. I would instead focus on cultivating the culture of mutual support and love, where a person at a difficult time is not left to boil in their bitterness, but receives a moral support from everyone around, and a thought to go on a killing spree does not even cross their mind; they do not see the society as the enemy.

    Such an approach works incredibly well in Japan. Japan does not have harsh anti-bullying regulations, for example - but it has an incredibly solid society. If you are being bullied, you will have the vast majority of people stand at your side. If you are in an economical pit, then both the government and the society will help you. If you are going through a difficult emotional time, people will hug you and smile at you to make you feel better. As a result, crime in Japan (aside from major cities, which feature some degree of organized crime and, in general, a more chaotic community) is nearly non-existent. People would enter a grocery store, put their bag with a wallet in it near the entry and go shopping for 20 minutes - without the slightest fear for their possessions. Because stealing is something a Japanese individual would almost never even consider doing, because of how the society is organized.

    How to repeat this success, starting at the current point in the American society? I do not know. I would propose widespread awareness campaigns in schools, in the media, on street posters, on commercial products. Just as smoking was significantly reduced not by harsh restrictions, but by the society taking a stance and constantly talking about the harm of smoking - violence can be reduced the same way.
    Polaris95
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