Identifying Potential School Shooters And School Shootings

School shootings can happen at any time in any school. This is why most schools districts are well prepared now, as when it comes to security for the school and lockdowns. Like Katherine Newman said in her article “Too Close for Comfort”, this is more common in small towns, because gossips and rumors sticks around when everyone knows each other. There are plenty of reasons why these shooting happens, for one some kids might want to get back at another student for bullying them. Another valid reason is not having a good relationship with their parent. Last one can be that they have friends who are up to no good so they try to fit in. 

Living in a small town can be antisocial for kids under the age of 16. Children in these small towns often pick on others just for their enjoyment. Sounds crazy but like Katherine Newman said in “Too Close for Comfort”, there isn't much to do in these small towns just watch the football game on Friday nights. That explains how bad it is in these towns where kids only has one enjoyment to watch and not all of them likes watching sports so they’ll just stay home. Kids all around the world get bullied, whether it be for the clothes they wear, the way you look or sound, and even for liking a certain thing. It’s easier for a city kid to move on from being bullied than others, just because they have more people to meet and start over. As to a town kid they don’t get to meet a lot of new people so the people they know will be the only faces they’ll be looking at until they’re older and move. So if a town kid is constantly getting bullied every single day, at one point they’re going to get tired of it, snap and get revenge on every kid that bullied them throughout the years by shooting up the school. 

Not all kids have a perfect relationship with their parents. If a kids parents are divorced they might blame themselves and think otherwise. Some parents don’t care about their children as in not communicating with them; just straight ignoring them. They’ll let them do whatever they want or they might be the opposite and not let their child do anything; having them locked up in the house not having any activity. If the parents do own a gun and has it visual for the child they’re going to grab it the next morning and take it to school. To release their anger they’ll end up shoot it up and most likely taking themselves out after. Not all kids are the same. 

There's a lot of kids that are up to no good, and there’s a lot that try to fit in. They start to hang around with the wrong clique and they’ll end up telling the kid that’s trying to fit in to do stuff for them to accept them, such as stealing, being disrespectful towards their parents, or even shooting up a school. Kids will do anything just to impress others without thinking, and that’s how they get into trouble. To summarize, kids who lives in small town has a higher chance to expreserence a school shooting just because there’s not much of activities to do in them, kids not being able to escape their bullies, kids not having a good relationship with their parents, and others trying to fit in and impress the bad individuals. “One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns”- John Oliver.