On April, 20th, 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, 13 students and 1 teacher were shot dead by Dylan Klebold, age 17, and Eric Harris, age 18. On February 12th, 2008, 15-year-old gay student, Larry King, was shot twice and killed at E.O. Green Junior High, Oxnard, California, by 14-year-old McInerney. On May 21st ,2014, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, both aged 12, stabbed their friend Payton Leutner, age 12, 19 times near a woods in their hometown of Waukesha, Wisconsin because a video game character called “Slender Man” “told” them to. Why did these children feel the need to kill another? All murders taken place by children aged 21 or younger occur because society has encouraged them to act. Inadvertently glorifying school
…show more content…
The Curse of Columbine describes a period after which multiple copycat killers replicate the tragedy which occurred at Columbine; because of the mass media coverage, these copycat killers were able to correct the mistakes Klebold and Harris made in order to make their own attacks more efficient. More than 50 schools targeted for violence after 1999 were inspired by the shooting conducted by Harris and Klebold, one of which being a stabbing at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pennsylvania. On April 9th, 2014, 16-year-old Alex Hribal stabbed 21 students, whom all survived the attack; Hribal originally planned the attack to be on April 20th, the anniversary of the Columbine shooting, but he decided to bring the date forward to April 9th which was Eric Harris’s birthday. He worshiped Harris and Klebold, continuously watching news reports of the attack which explained the weapons used along with each individual murder in extreme detail. Hribal studied the two juveniles, rehearsing how he was going to stab different students and training himself to not be remorseful of his actions. Hribal, Harris, and Klebold all share one common characteristic -- the need to be known. By having the media cover and explain in depth each school shooting which occurs in America, children are shown that they can become a household name by …show more content…
Although these people should be protected by law, society still encourages prejudice against them, for example the fostering of the Confederate flag. The Confederacy promoted a society in which African-Americans were inferior to whites; the south’s encouragement of this prejudice is what inspired Dylann Roof, aged 21, to commit a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Charleston, South Carolina. On June 17th, 2015 at 9:05pm, Roof entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, known to the locals as "Mother Emanuel". He pulled a Glock 41. 45-caliber handgun out from his fannypack and proceeded to kill 9 members who were in Bible study. During his interrogation, Roof admitted that from a young age he was a member of several white-supremacist groups and harbored feelings which were represented prior to the civil war -- that blacks were inferior and trying to take over America. Shortly after this confession, there was a national debate as to whether or not the Confederate flag should be removed. If the flag was removed immediately after the civil war, would Roof still have felt compelled to murder these peaceful church goers? Society kept the flag, along with the negative connotation of blacks which came along with it, assuming that children would not be susceptible to the truth behind it, rather seeing the flag as a
The Curse of Columbine describes a period after which multiple copycat killers replicate the tragedy which occurred at Columbine; because of the mass media coverage, these copycat killers were able to correct the mistakes Klebold and Harris made in order to make their own attacks more efficient. More than 50 schools targeted for violence after 1999 were inspired by the shooting conducted by Harris and Klebold, one of which being a stabbing at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pennsylvania. On April 9th, 2014, 16-year-old Alex Hribal stabbed 21 students, whom all survived the attack; Hribal originally planned the attack to be on April 20th, the anniversary of the Columbine shooting, but he decided to bring the date forward to April 9th which was Eric Harris’s birthday. He worshiped Harris and Klebold, continuously watching news reports of the attack which explained the weapons used along with each individual murder in extreme detail. Hribal studied the two juveniles, rehearsing how he was going to stab different students and training himself to not be remorseful of his actions. Hribal, Harris, and Klebold all share one common characteristic -- the need to be known. By having the media cover and explain in depth each school shooting which occurs in America, children are shown that they can become a household name by …show more content…
Although these people should be protected by law, society still encourages prejudice against them, for example the fostering of the Confederate flag. The Confederacy promoted a society in which African-Americans were inferior to whites; the south’s encouragement of this prejudice is what inspired Dylann Roof, aged 21, to commit a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Charleston, South Carolina. On June 17th, 2015 at 9:05pm, Roof entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, known to the locals as "Mother Emanuel". He pulled a Glock 41. 45-caliber handgun out from his fannypack and proceeded to kill 9 members who were in Bible study. During his interrogation, Roof admitted that from a young age he was a member of several white-supremacist groups and harbored feelings which were represented prior to the civil war -- that blacks were inferior and trying to take over America. Shortly after this confession, there was a national debate as to whether or not the Confederate flag should be removed. If the flag was removed immediately after the civil war, would Roof still have felt compelled to murder these peaceful church goers? Society kept the flag, along with the negative connotation of blacks which came along with it, assuming that children would not be susceptible to the truth behind it, rather seeing the flag as a