The pandemic has made us fearful; to closing down businesses, schools, and even closing down on ourselves. People lost interest in themselves as a result of the pandemic and became more self-protective and separated from the outside world. With the CDC recommendations of donning masks and standing 6 feet apart, this can alter how we perceive the world, give us little freedom, and cause fear for certain people to leave their homes.
Gun violence has sky-rocketed over 30% during the pandemic. During the pandemic, children had to stay home and virtually learn from their own devices. Once the pandemic has officially calmed down, innocent children are excited to go back to school and see their friends that they haven’t seen for 1-2 years. The first day they are back, a unfamiliar face with the one soul purpose is to cause bodily harm to them and the teachers that come to work everyday. Children are supposed to learn in a secure environment while attending school and discovering their true selves. How can schools be considered safe if a person “decides” to target a group of children with no correlation to that individual? Was school ever safe? Gun violence has increased dramatically since the pandemic subsided, and school shootings have occurred all around the United States at a unprecedented rate.
Let’s examine the history of the worst mass school shootings in American history, which is regrettably known:
Sandy Hook Elementary, December 2012.
A total of 26 lives were lost in this horrible incident in Newtown, Connecticut, including the innocent lives of 20 6-7 year old children, 6 staff workers, and many more who had just begun working at the establishments. The shooter was Alex Lanza, 20, who happened to committed suicide after the killings.
According to Peter Langman’s article, He may have had delusional visions of murder, he may have been envious of the happiness of the Sandy Hook students and envied their connectivity, and the fact that he murdered his mother did not at all lessen his rage since he believed that she loved the Sandy Hook students more than he did. Is there a disconnect between his psychological desires and his drive for straight forward love?
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, February 2018.
In Parkland, Florida, 19-year-old Nickolas Cruz started shooting at 17 children that were taken by surprise and 4 staff members. Currently, the jury advises Cruz receive life in prison without the possibility of parole instead of the death penalty.
Coming from a difficult background, he was objectified in his own community, frequently arrested, and removed from his own guardians’ house. He eventually came to despise himself. Why did he chose Valentine’s Day from all the other days? A love day? Is it the fact that no one adored him in high school? Why would shooting a high school alter his perspective? According to this article, Nickolas’s birth mother drank excessively while she was pregnant, which caused him to develop alcohol spectrum disorder and caused brain dysfunction, erratic episodes, and violent behavior, all of which may have contributed to his decision to shoot up the high school.
Robb Elementary School, May 2022
Salvador Ramos, 19, died earlier this year from suicide after shooting 19 children and 2 adults. This incident is recognized as the deadliest in Texas history. He shot his grandma in the face while visiting her before going to the elementary school and fatally pointing the AR-15 weapon towards innocent children and taking lives too soon.
With children to be eager to return to school after being isolated for so long, unaware that Salvador Ramos will open fire on an innocent elementary school, he took that opportunity. According to PBS, he declared that he didn’t want to live in this world any longer. He was very focused on gaining popularity and believed that social media would help him be noticed and earn attention. How was he taught by social media to like violence and amass weapons? What caused Salvador Ramos to lose faith in the world?
Considering the three schools where innocent lives was taken from. The procedures for handling gun violence have not altered since the outbreak. Did the shooters believe that using a gun was a way to intimidate others and demonstrate their authority to them? It is well known that the pandemic has been mentally affecting other people and influencing them to make poor decisions. Did the pandemic have a impact on the shooters minds to desensitize themselves from others? Is this the new wave of them expressing themselves?
Instead of the pandemic uniting us and making us stronger, it indoctrinated people into making poor decisions and injuring others in order to “prove the point,” and society is full of problems, when there should be benefits. Sadly, there are more firearms than people in the United States, and if adolescents continue to have access to them, can the gun violence trend change?
The thought that parents will pick up their children from school and prepare their after-school dinners for the final time is heartbreaking. As a result of someone’s wrath towards children and the loss of staff members in schools—thinking that schools is a safe place where children can be themselves—is far from true and has to be debated to modern time; this must stop right away.
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