School Violence And Gun Control Essay Research

School Violence And Gun Control Essay, Research Paper

Guns are instruments of destruction. Although some people say that guns are for protection, for hunting, or even to scare off possible criminals, in reality their sole purpose is to maim or kill either an animal or worse a human being. Guns are most definitely not for everyone, because certain individuals can not handle a gun safely, and still others choose to inappropriately use firearms for criminal acts. While the National Rifle Association s credo, Guns don t kill people, people kill people , may be true, people are still dying. In the past, gun deaths were primarily related to criminal activities and protecting oneself from the criminals.

In recent years, gun death statistics have been changing. Now children are making up a greater percentage of these gun deaths, and they are dying younger and younger. The frightening part is that most of the children are being shot and killed in schools by disgruntled classmates. Statistics show that when guns fall into the hands of children, death is the inevitable result. While many feel that stronger school security will stop this violence, still others insist that a lack of values being taught in the classrooms has caused increased school violence. Today the concept of political correctness unfortunately removes most values teachings from the classrooms. The constitution demands the separation of church and state, which means that although students can pledge their allegiance to the flag, they can t offer up a prayer for their safety.

One of the most critical questions facing our nation today is how can we keep guns away from our children. When a child goes to school the last thing they need to worry about is getting through the day alive. What can we do to safeguard our most precious resource, the children. This report will look at some of the gun control legislation that has been enacted by congress. It will also discuss what the gun industry has done in response to these laws. In addition, it will offer ways to achieve gun control in an acceptable manner.

Why do children feel the need to use guns to resolve disputes. One reason is that our children are becoming more aggressive. This is due to all of the violence they see depicted in the media on a daily basis. Media violence, aggression, as well as the ease with which children can gain access to a firearm are all factors that have resulted in the sharp rise in school violence. There can no longer be any doubt that heavy exposure to televised violence is one of the causes of aggressive behavior, crime and violence in society. The evidence comes from both laboratory and real-life studies. Television violence affects youngsters regardless of age, gender, socio-economic levels, or levels of intelligence. In study after study it has been proven that there is a relationship between television violence and aggression in children. The causal effect of television violence on aggression, even though it is not very large, exists. It cannot be defined or explained away. Researchers have come to believe that a vicious cycle exists in which television violence makes children more aggressive and these aggressive children tend to exhibit a propensity to watch increasingly more violent shows. Television networks believe that violence makes television more interesting and without it the programs will be more boring and that people will go to another network. Since the network doesn t want to lose it s market share, sponsors, and advertising dollars, they continue to increase the amount of violence they show. While the government does regulate some of the programs shown, but they can t monitor them all. Television stations have received many complaints from the public regarding the content of the violent shows that they show on their networks, but to no avail, they can show anything they want because of their constitutional right to freedom of speech. According to some studies the average child watches about 27 hours of television a week. In some cases, it is as much as 11 hours a day on a weekend. With the current amount of violence that is on television today these same studies estimate that the average child sees 8,000 murders and 100,000 before finishing elementary school. Could this truly be why our children are becoming more aggressive. I say, yes, most definitely .

To that end, we ve got all these aggressive young children who lack conflict management skills, who now meet up with the school bully or some one else who makes them angry. How do they resolve the issue. In most cases, they fight or they hold it in and it festers until the day they can t take it anymore. Fighting is never the right thing to do, but when I was in elementary school there was a fight every day, but no one got killed. What makes today so different. Well remember the aggressive children mentioned earlier. Many of them are the quiet ones who bring the knives and guns to school to get even for the real or imagined wrongs done to them by their classmates. Where does a child get a gun and why is it so easy for our children to gain access to a firearm. One of the main reasons that we have problem with guns in the hands of children is the lack of effective gun control. Better gun control is the starting point to eliminating dangerous and unnecessary firearms designed to kill. Gun control is actually many issues wrapped up into two words. To