Gun violence has had a tremendous toll on the lives of Americans for way too long. This particular civic issue really intrigues me, and the different aspects of how it has gotten out of control with nothing to help change what needs to be fixed, therefore I have decided to make this blog about gun violence and the control that needs to be implanted across the nation. I will be talking about different aspects of gun violence such as the different way they are misused across the nation, and how it affects the population as a whole.
For today’s blog I will be talking about gun violence in schools. The first school shooting I will talk about was the biggest school shooting in the USA leaving thirty two people dead and seventeen injured. The Virginia Tech shooting started at 7:15 am on April 16th, 2007. Twenty three year old Seung-Hui Cho who was a senior at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University first shot a female freshman and male resident assistant in a campus dorm before he left the scene. Police showed up to the scene, but were yet to suspect a shooter. At approximately 9:40 am Cho proceeded to enter a building that he had chained and locked where he entered several classrooms and went from room to room killing students. He was armed with a 9-millimeter handgun, a 22-caliber handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Cho ended up dying from a self inflicted gunshot. This led to be the third largest mass shooting in U.S. history.
The second tragic school shooting I will be addressing took place at Sandy Hook Elementary school on December 14th, 2012. Adam Lanza killed twenty first graders and six school employees before he ended his own life. The morning of this day Lanza also killed his mother who was the one who owned the weapons that Lanza used to kill innocent children. He killed a total of 28 people in the elementary school that day leading to be the second deadliest school shooting in the USA. He was armed with a semiautomatic rifle, two semiautomatic pistols, and multiple rounds of ammunition. Lanza murdered children that were only at 6 or 7 years old, and injured 12 first graders who survived. In the investigation of Sandy Hook it was discovered that Lanza attended the school as a child, but they were not able to find the motive behind his actions. In a report that was later released they also disclosed how Lanza was mentally ill and he could not live a normal life with others and could not interact with others easily. After the Sandy Hook shooting, President Barack Obama at the time called for new safety measures to be taken for those trying to purchase guns. His main goal was to expand background checks, and when this legislation was sent it was blocked by the U.S. Senate.
The final school mass shooting is the one that took place in Parkland, Florida at Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14th, 2018. At the time this took place I was only twenty minutes away at Spanish River High School with friends who attended the school where the shooting took place. Nikolas Cruz was a 19 year old former student who entered the school campus with his legally purchased AR-15 semiautomatic rifle in a duffle bag and a backpack filled with magazines. Cruz’s attack lasted a total of four minutes where he left 17 dead and 17 injured leading to be the deadliest high school shooting in the US. Only seven minutes after entering the school campus, Cruz walked off campus at 2:28 pm with other high school students where he looked like an ordinary student that was fleeing the school from the incident. He successfully left the campus and proceeded to go to Subway and then McDonalds where he was apprehended by a Broward County police officer. After this mass shooting there was an outbreak for gun control across the nation. This sparked protests, support from people around the world, and the March for Our Lives to take place. Three weeks after the incident, Florida governor Rick Scott signed a bill which changed the age requirement to purchase a gun to 21 years old and a three day waiting period on all gun purchases. Nikolas Cruz was arrested and charged with 17 counts of first degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.
These three horrific incidents were only a few of the mass school shootings that have occurred from the lack of gun control across the nation. This is a horrifying civic issue that needs to be addressed and fixed. There was finally a change made to the law after the Stoneman Douglas school shooting, but it took too long to make a change that should have already been there. In this blog series I will be addressing in detail different ways gun violence occurs and the measures that need to be taken to fix this issue at hand.
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