What Are the Causes of a School Shooting?

Bullying

• Bullying is one of the main causes of school shootings. Victims repress feelings of hurt and alienation until they are unable to cope, and they retaliate by gunning down their tormentors and unsuspecting bystanders. These students want to get payback by doing exactly what their tormentors did to them - attacking and hurting their unsuspecting and helpless victims.

Drugs and Medications

• Many students within the school system today are heavily medicated for a number of reasons. Some of these individuals are bipolar or hyperactive, while others are taking medication for other medical or psychological reasons. Any change, adjustment or absence of some of these medicines can cause a student to become irrational, delusional or highly paranoid. Violence could ensue, sometimes with weapons, resulting in injury and sometimes even death.

  Illegal drugs such as cocaine or crack can also cause students to become highly aggressive and dangerous. Delusions and disorientation can be lethal - especially when combined with a gun.

Media and Video Games

• Television, movies and video games give students the perception that violence and death are the norm. Children take on imaginary roles as assassins, murderers, superheroes and forces of evil and combat others in battles to the death. These imaginary roles can sometimes carry over into real life, and when faced with adversity, students can take what they have learned in the virtual world into actual school situations.

Dysfunctional Homes

• Many students come from homes where violence is the norm. When faced with alienation, ridicule and oppression at school, these children might respond in the only way they are familiar with - with force and aggression. Taking a violent stand is what they have been taught and the only way they know how to react to situations over which they have little or no control. Injury and sometimes death result.

Availability of Guns

• The ease of obtaining guns and other weapons has caused major concern among schools in the country. Parents who own guns, weapons available for sale in the streets, and gun theft have made the school system unsafe for both students and teachers. Stricter gun control laws would solve this problem, although some argue that the laws already on the books that restrict children and the mentally ill's access to firearms simply need to be better enforced.