School shooting’s crime rate has been skyrocketing through past years. This research paper emphasizes what and why school shootings are committed. Offenders who are mentally ill, victims of abuse, and tempted by the influences of the surrounding are the main factors of why crime is perpetuated. Studies have shown that the offender or criminal who committed the crime has face trials of abuse and cognitively ill.
Have you ever wondered why there are school shootings? Have you ever asked yourself what type of people commits this type of crime? Have you ever ponder what motivates the offender to commit a crime? Are there any explanations for the questions asked?
The research paper reflects on defining aspects of whether school shooting is caused by the influence of video games or an unspecified reason. However, the resources or documents of case studies declared evidence of what causes shootings in school premises.
The first phase will drift towards the motivation factors of the offender. There were case studies about crimes committed and the consequences of their actions. School shootings are caused by three main components: psychological, subject to abuse, and environmental influences.
Psychological or mental illness is most commonly found in criminals who committed the crime. Mental illness is genetic, children will inherit it from parents and grandparents. Depending on your parent’s genes which side is more dominant you would have a fifty-fifty risk of getting mental illness (Mental illness, 2019).
According to Fast (2008), the two criminals known as Jamie Rouse and Bary Loukaitis are victims of mental illness genetically passed down for generations. J. Rouse and B. Loukaitis grew up in families with habits of drug abuse and most commonly mentally ill. They pledged crime on school grounds and faced the consequences of their actions.
Jamie Rouse age seventeen hosted a gun shooting in his school. He executed gunfire to two instructors, a coach, and a girl who got in his way. His dad and grandma fought mental illness and drug use problems. The outcome of his actions is life imprisonment for the first-degree murder, twenty-five years for attempted murder, currently in the psychiatric unit at Tennesse South Central Correctional Center.
Barry Loukaitis age fourteen, his mother and grandmother struggle with mental illness for generations. He walked into his algebra class in room 15 at Frontier High School. He shot his teacher, a student, and wounded another student. He holds onto his classmates as hostages. For fifteen minutes he has given them up one by one and himself as well. Consequences of his actions: sentenced to prison for two hundred five years, incarcerated at the same facility’s program for adults.
Moreover, abuse can be in different forms but common abuse a core foundation of every defendant: parental abuse and subjects to bullying.
Parental abuse targets emotions, psychological and physical concepts. Emotional and psychological abuses correlate. It is based on what you think of a subject, role, or obligations that lead to what you feel (Cherry, 2019). For example, the activity that occurs in the brain leads to emotional responses (Cherry, 2019). This type of abuse is executed on words being said to a child that neglect him or her from being socially active in school and associate with people in the environment.
Effect of psychological abuse, the child would mostly face sadness at an early stage of development to adulthood. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This type of disorder is commonly found in the effects of chronic child abuse. Emotional effects of disorders: worry, bipolar, schooling, and management (Hunter, 2014).
Physical abuse is beating your child with solid objects such as a belt, shoe, two-by-four PVC pipe, and wooden stick. Physical abuse causes injury to the victim’s body that is most likely to heal or turns into a scar. These injuries may be fatal or healable: amentia, spinal cord injuries, hearing impairment, speech difficulties, and death (Hunter, 2014).
Effects of physical abuse come in different phases. At first, behavioral problems of being externalizing. Second, alcohol and other drug use: tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs. Third, committing and attempting suicide episodes. The two stages are associated with feelings of shame and internal attributions of blame for he or she is the reason for the abuse. Fourth, learning and development problems. The child or teenager will show poor academic achievement in years of development (Hunter, 2014). Last but not the least, threatening the act of being violent among others. The child will execute his or her pain, sufferings among others in a learning environment that causes bullying that leads to the second type of abuse.
Subjects of bullying are a victim of being bullied in school, workplace, or any other social gatherings in society. Being bullied drives the victim to commit the crime as revenge.
Luke Woodham at the age of sixteen, his father left the family after losing his job and minor setbacks. His mother often goes on dates and returns home the next morning. His older brother by the name of John Jr. would babysit him. Luke was overweight, wore glasses with big lenses, socially inept, he was teased in high school (Fast, 2008).
He killed his mom for refusing to give him her car. He killed his ex-girlfriend Christy Menefee, wounded others. He is sentenced to one hundred forty years for second-degree murder. He is sentenced to serve at Parchman Farm Prison, an institution that faces cruelty and inadequate criminals (Fast, 2008).
Kip Kinkel age fifteen, was bullied by boys at school. He seeks his parent’s approval to enroll him in karate classes to protect him. However, his parents did not want to because their household does not exercise any harmful actions or ways to violate the ground rules. As time flies, Kinkel was active in his studies. Unfortunately, he associated with “skaters” kids who have been in and out of juvenile, committed criminal acts. He then follows their trials of stealing CDs to gain drugs on the side of the streets. He started the habits of visiting pornography sites, how to make bombs. This leads to the second subject environmental influences (Fast, 2008).
Environmental influences such as: associating with peers that have sought criminal activities, such as stealing, selling drugs, drug addicts, and alcoholism. Peer pressure is commonly found in few victims as a way to commit a crime (Taylor, Fritsch, & Liederbach, 2018).
Internet is one of the main key factors of crimes committed by criminals. The Internet provides information that allows the offender to execute the crime (Taylor, Fritsch, & Liederbach, 2018). In school shootings, for example, the offender learns how to load bullets and
Technology is one of the frequent norms in setting crimes (Taylor, Fritsch, & Liederbach, 2018). The advancement of technology has given the convict possibilities to create a crime scene. For example, the perpetrator can hack into security cameras or computers to view the setting of a particular place in the target. School shootings endured because of the three leading factors: mental illness, a victim of abuse, and influence of surroundings.
In conclusion, there are no relative relations between playing video games and school shootings. Mentally ill is the number one norm of every defendant who committed a crime. Especially criminals who had experienced abuse during childhood. Influenced by surrounding is another key factor in school shootings. Help to prevent school massacre from happening.
