Colin Pinneo

Mrs. Kohout

English 1010

21 November 2022

The day was February 13 2018 and Samantha Fuentes was stuck late at work. She was so

tired that next morning and had to take an uber because she was late to school. Besides an odd

fire drill and some announcements she described the day as completely average. It was her last

class of the day and she was sitting on her phone because they had just finished their lesson. All

of sudden she heard three distinct gunshots behind her in the hallway. Everyone went silent and

gave a silent look to one another. She says someone asked if it was a drill but in her mind she

knew they were real gunshots. She described the next moment as if you shined a light and a

bunch of cockroaches. Everyone scattered. Everyone moved to one side of the room and people

started building barricades. She says she was walking to the back of the room so disgruntled she

was running into desks. She remembers each shot taking any other possible sound away. Like the

shots were a band at a parade getting closer and louder till they stopped to change songs. As soon

as they stopped and then thana started in the room she was in she dropped and began to turtle

crawl towards the other students that were barricading themselves. She described the whole room

filling with smoke and it smelled like fireworks. When the shooting subsided she looked up

which she said she should have never done. She looked right at him and then he moved onto the

next room and continued shooting. Samantha couldn't hear a thing because the shots were so

loud. She looked to her left and to her right and saw friends that have died. She asked to borrow
someone's phone to message her parents and that is when she realized she was shot in the legs. A

swat team arrived in the room and asked who was injured. Upon saying yes she was told she was

going to have to run out of the building. Even though her legs were shot she was able to run

faster than she's ever run before.(Fuentes)

In the past twenty years our society has disappointingly grown to see school gun violence

as normal. Samtha Fuentes was a part of the Parkland Florida Shooting in 2018. Sadly this was

not the only shooting that year. That year there were twenty three other K-12 shootings, not

including college shootings. (Blad and Peele) Since then the number has only increased. In 2021

there were 35 K-12 shootings and this year, 2022, as of October 31 there have been a record 46

K-12 shootings.(Maxwell, Peele, Decker, Hyon-Young Kim). This proves the sad realization that

school shootings are becoming common.

Since the devastating Columbine shooting in 1999 there have been over 311,000 children

at 331 schools that have experienced gun violence. There were 93 shootings with casualties at

public and private schools in the 2020-21 school year, compared to 23 in the 2000-01 school

year. (St. George)This shows a massive increase in the past 20 years. With this increase it has

brought this issue to the forefront of people's minds, especially parents. One out of every 3

parents fear sending their kids to school because of school shootings.(Washborn) This is very

alarming. If parents stop sending their kids to school and are not well enough equipped to

homeschool this could cause disaster. If kids are lacking a quality education it will cause future

generations to fail to contribute to the progression of society. And with the upward trend of

Shooting in the past 20 years this is a legitimate concern. With this concern many are trying to

find the cause of this exponential rise.

 One reason shootings are becoming more frequent could be because students are being

bullied in a much more unruly way. Dr. Paolini, an assistant professor of Counselor Education at

Kean University stated:

According to Lee (2013), there are two leading causes of school shootings:bullying

(87%), as well as both non-compliance and side effects from psychiatric drugs (12%).

Most school shooters claimed or left evidence behind indicating that they were victims of

severe and long-term bullying. The majority of bullying victims experienced feelings of

humiliation, which resulted in thoughts of suicide or revenge (Lee, 2013). Additionally,

of those school shooters who had been prescribed psychiatric medications, 10% displayed

medication non-compliance (failed to take drugs prescribed). Many School shooters who

were taking psychiatric drugs for their disorder experienced side effects of the drugs

prior to carrying out a violent act (Lee, 2013). In fact, there have been 22 drug regulatory

warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, violence, and even

homicidal ideations (Lee, 2013). There have been at least 27 school shootings committed

by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs, which has resulted in 162

wounded and 72 students and/or faculty killed (Lee, 2013). However, there has yet to be

a federal investigation in the United States on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts

of school shooting.

This outlines two main causes, bullying and prescribed psychiatric drugs. Most shooters claim to

have suffered from long term bullying. Meaghan Warner, a senior social worker who specializes

in treating substance use disorders and complex trauma, states:

Bullying often leaves us with lingering feelings, turning into anger towards others or

ourselves. When one goes through bullying over a long period of time, they may begin to
 blame themselves for being bullied. Thinking thoughts such as “If I wasn’t so ugly,

people would leave me alone,” or “If I tried harder, people wouldn’t make fun of me.”

The types of thoughts can change how we see and feel about ourselves and leave

long-term impacts.

This supports Dr. Paolini's claim that bullying is a major cause of school shootings. Bullying can

leave people with feelings of anger. Anger can often turn into violence. If someone has been

bullied they may feel alone and begin to believe what people are saying. Once they believe it

they can become determined to make everyone else believe they are worthless. Sadly one

common way people do this is by doing something indescribably horrendous, shooting innocent

kids in a school. People who have been in such a low place have admitted they had thought about

committing a school shooting. This was the case with Aaron Stark.

Aaron Stark was almost a school shooter. In 1996 he went to North High in Denver

Colorado. In a moment of pure pain and anger he almost committed one of the worst atrocities.

When Growing up he was alay the new kid. His family was violent and he had drug addicted

parents. They were always moving around. He had gone to 30 or 40 different schools.

He would wake up, be chased away by cops and end up at a new school just to do it again a few

days later. As a kid he said he smelled because he wasn't able to shower nor did he have any

clean clothes. All of his clothes were torn and he had a weight problem. None of this helped him

to make any friends. Despite all of this he was incredibly smart and liked comic books.

Unfortunately this was a time where people didn't like the smark comic book nerd. Because of all

these reasons he was bullied. Aaron describes the bullying:

 So every time I went to a new school I was in a new set of bullies. They'd walk up to me

and shoot me with a harpoon, like I was a whale, or dump food on my head because they

said I was too fat. But the bullying wasn't just at school. It happened at home a lot too. I

was told that I was worthless by just about everybody in my life. When you're told you're

worthless enough you will believe it, then you're going to do everything to make

everybody else agree with it too

For Aaron the darkness was like a blanket, he used it as a shield. He would keep a few close but

push others away. In life he had away her there are good and bad people he had just begun to

believe he was one of those bad people. During his talk he says the abuse never stopped so he

related to cutting himself so he could control the pain. In one last ditch effort while he was laying

in a friend's old shed he called social services. When he went in they brought his mother Arron

biggest source of pain. His mother hated places like this and spent her life running away from

them. She knew exactly how to talk her way out of any consequences. So, they sent him home

with her. On the way home she turned over to him and said.¨ Next time, you should do a better

job and I'll buy you the razor blades.¨(Stark) After hearing this Aaron told everyone what he did

next:

My heart just got ripped out of me at that point. The darkness I'd been staring at for so

long, I ran headlong into it. I had nothing left to live for. I literally had nothing to lose.

And when you have nothing to lose you can do anything, and that is a terrifying thought.

I had decided that my act of doing something was I was going to express my extreme

anger and rage by getting a gun. I was going to attack either my school or a mall food

court. It really didn't matter which one. It wasn't about the people, it was about the largest

amount of damage in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of security.
He felt alone, he felt betrayed, he felt lost, he felt pain, and he felt anger. He was ready to make

everyone else hurt just the way he did. Thankfully he wasn't alone. His friend that let him stay in

his shed saw him in this low palace. Even after Aaron had lied, stolen from him, and ruined his

property he invited him in and showed him acts of kindness. Simple not overbearing gestures but

they meant the world to him. Aaron Describes what he did as; ¨He treated it like it was a

Tuesday. He treated me like I was a person. When someone treats you like a person when you

don't even feel like a human, it'll change your entire world, and it did to me. He stopped me with

his acts of kindness from committing that atrocity that day.¨(Stark)

In order to stop people from committing these atrocities all need to do is just be kind. As

Aaron Stark says ¨be kind to the people you think deserve it the least.¨ With all that is going on

in the world you can never know what people are going through. We don't need to arm teachers

or report kids that are at risk. When you report those kids you ostracized them and made them

feel worse about themselves. How would you feel if you were ostracized and know one could

look at you the same? In reality if we just talk to them and treat them like it is just a Tuesday we

could make all of the difference. Don't downsize a kid's emotions; they are real. Though you

may not understand them or think they're doing it for attention the odds are they are not. Kids

have so much to deal with with the way social media has standardized the way a kid should be. If

you sit down with a kid, treat them like a human and discuss their feelings not down play them

you could change their life.

School shootings over the past twenty years have been on an exponential rise. It has

unfortunately gotten to a point where a school shooting is just a bad test grade. It sucks and it's

not acceptable but we can see past it. This is unacceptable and needs to be stopped. If this growth

continues, a parent will no longer go to school out of fear. The kids who need school to escape
from home will no longer be able to. The kids we need help will no longer be able to receive it

for free at school and will be forced to pay for a therapist or bottle it down, which most will do

instead. Making schools safer is an issue on the forefront of many minds but should be on the

front of everyones.
Action Blocked Alert. 12 Mar. 2021,

med.uth.edu/psychiatry/2021/03/12/the-impact-of-bullying-on-mental-health.

George, Donna st. “School Shootings Rose to Highest Number in 20 Years, Federal Data Says.”

Washington Post, 28 June 2022,

www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/28/school-shootings-crime-report.

Paolini, Allison. School Shootings and Student Mental Health: Role of the School Counselor in

Mitigating Violence. 2015,

www.counseling.org/docs/default-source/vistas/school-shootings-and-student-mental-hea

lth.p. Accessed 5 Dec. 2022.

“School Shootings in 2018: How Many and Where.” Education Week, 22 Nov. 2022,

www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-in-2018-how-many-and-where/2018/02.

“School Shootings This Year: How Many and Where.” Education Week, 22 Nov. 2022,

www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year-how-many-and-where/2022/01.

Stark, Aaron. “I Was Almost a School Shooter | Aaron Stark | TEDxBoulder.” TED Talks, 26

June 2018,

www.ted.com/talks/aaron_stark_i_was_almost_a_school_shooter/transcript?language=en

Washburn, David. “One in 3 Parents Fear for Their Children’s Safety at School, Survey Finds.”

EdSource, 17 July 2018,

edsource.org/2018/one-in-three-parents-fear-for-their-childrens-safety-at-school-survey-fi

nds/600219.

MLive. “School Shooting Survivor Describes the Shooting That Nearly Took Her Life.”

YouTube, 27 Feb. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8uwrmbiqV0&feature=youtu.be.