School Shootings

- School Shootings

The recent rash of school shootings represents an alarming cultural and sociological trend in the United States . Though many will argue that these completely random events could be committed by anyone , evidence to the contrary is easy to find . In fact , it appears that school shootings have a very tangible cause and are associated with certain very strong cultural patterns . In general , the increased number of school shootings is only a microcosm of society at large . Trends indicate that more and more children are suffering from social anxiety issues and

they also indicate that violent crimes are increasing at an alarming rate during this day and age . The tragedy at Virginia Tech and similar incidents around the country have served as a stark reminder that young people are capable of doing some awful things as a result of the society that they live in . American society is not doing enough to care for those that have some psychological issues and it is also heading more and more towards the acceptance of violence . Even widespread policy changes won 't have an immediate and substantial affect on keeping these things from happening in the future . As the Vatz and Weinberg article Any Lessons From Virginia Tech indicates , Those who wish to use Virginia Tech to help them to achieve major policy changes will be fooling themselves if they believe any such initiatives will transform the threat of this catastrophe reoccurring (Vatz , Weinberg

The first and most important cultural trend to consider is the upswing in violent crimes . Though some smart people want to assume that only disgruntled students are committing violent crimes , the data indicates that society is moving towards being more violent , as well . According to the Jeffrey Jenson commentary , Reflections on the Virginia Tech Shootings , An increase in violent crime rates among adults in the past few years may signal an end to the downward turn in violent crime in the United States . Notably , overall violent crime increased by a little more than 2 between 2004 and 2005 (Jenson . This means that society as large is moving out of an era when violent crime had take a downturn The social reasons for this trend are many and they all have a substantial impact on college students , in particular . Since college students and other young people are the ones who watch most of the violent movies and television shows , they are the ones who are most likely to be affected by the shifting dynamic in this country . Violence is not an accepted idea in American society , but in many ways , people have become numb to all of the incidents . The outrage is gone , which creates enough acceptance for disgruntled students to consider such a stunt . Figuring out the absolute cause of the Virginia Tech school shooting or any other school shooting will lead one to consider much more data than just that piece . Just because society has seen an increase in violence does not immediately mean that more heinous...