The Second Amendment & High-School Shootings in America

The term 'school shooting' has become instantly recognizable for people all over the world. The term was first used in America for the Enoch Brown School shooting of July 1764; however, it was not until the 1970s that people started understanding this term as a type of violence rather than a mere news heading. Even though these incidents claim the lives of young and innocent students and seem to tear the very fabric of society that America was built on, such incidents are rare and account for less than 1% of all homicide involving school aged children between the age of 5 and 19 (Kathleen 5). Furthermore, the cause of these incidents is the ill treatment by peers and poor mental health of students who carry out these shootings rather than the availability of arms with which these attacks are carried out. Therefore, the Second amendment of the American constitution, which provides the right to own arms by the public, should not be dissolved in the face of recent school shootings in an attempt to deter such incidents in the future, since there is no proven correlation between the two items.

The Purpose of the Second Amendment:

The Second amendment of the US constitution states:

"A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

This original article was first introduced to the American constitution as an extension of the English common law in 1789 under the Philadelphia convention. Certain changes were later made regarding the extension of this right to religious and racial minorities. However, contrary to popular belief the purpose of this law was not to arm the public and promote the stockpiling of personal arms and ammunition but rather to create a state where the people as a whole had the power to continue to protect themselves for the integrity of their nation. Justice Story, appointed to the supreme court in 1811 by James Madison, writes in his commentary that:

"The militia is the natural defense of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." (Story)

The essence of this law also becomes apparent when you link it to the Declaration of Independence, where Thomas Jefferson states that liberty must be rescued even through means of revolution or rebellion (Hornberger). Therefore, this law cannot be considered obsolete, in the modern day America by arguing that the threat of a tyrannical government no longer exists. Neither can it be cited as the prime cause of civil gun violence as that was not the intent of the law, in the first place.

Gun violence and the Second Amendment:

Despite the fact that the founding fathers of America, introduced the second amendment as a security for the public, people frequently relate it to the wide spread availability and use of guns in America. However even the biggest supporters of gun rights, such as the infamous National Rifle Association (NRA), maintain that certain legislation and licensing procedure be put in place when selling guns, in order to prevent people with a criminal from getting access to firearms. All American states thus require some basic criterions to be met before a gun license can be issued legally. Such groups also assert that if more law abiding citizens owned personal fire arms there would be less crime to deal with. They argue that if everyone owned a gun a criminal would think twice before targeting an innocent victim for fear of retaliation. If personal arms were banned criminals would no longer fear such a response and would become even more ruthless and active in their crimes.

Opposition groups such as 'The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence' argue that if a total ban on guns was introduced there would be no guns to cause the violence with in the first place (Horwitz). They also accuse groups like the NRA of making the threat of a tyrannical government an excuse to quench their desire for arms and violence (Everitt). The actual fact is that if guns were banned altogether, just like addictive drugs, there would inevitably rise a black-market in its wake, where criminal would be well catered to. Even introducing tighter legislation and licensing procedures will not reduce gun violence as most people who own licensed guns, never use them against other people. As much as 90% of all felons convicted for weapons offences have had prior convictions (Weapons Offenses and Offenders 1-8). As a gun license is not granted if a person has had a history of violence most of these people could not have attained a gun legally, and would thus not be deterred by restricting or banning gun anyway.

Gun Violence and School Shootings:

We have already established that there is no rationale behind dismissing the second amendment and accusing it of causing gun violence in America. Now we will discuss weather this same violence and the apparent proliferation of guns has had an effect on school shootings across America.

Dr. Helen Smith a psychologist working with confused and violent children makes two crucial points in her article on school shootings. Firstly, she states that such tragedies occur not because children have a better access to guns today since the percentage of households owning guns is the same as that before the 1970s, when this form of violence appeared. In fact, due to wide media coverage and general awareness children's access to guns has now reduced. Secondly, she states that assuming that the lack of guns would stop children from carrying out such actions is completely wrong. The shooting at the Columbine high school proved that access to guns was not the problem as the two teenagers had come packed with homemade explosives that were just as effective in their killing spree. She states that people assume that just because children have access to guns that they will become killers. The real problem she feels is not that children have a greater access to guns but that there is a greater urge to use them for mass murder targeting their peers and teachers (Smith).

The children who perpetrate such actions are dangerous to start with. These children have usually been the target of bullying and discrimination by their peers and have been ostracized from the normal circle of society at school. The persecution they face is enough of a cause for these children to feel that killing is justified (Deadly Lessons: School shooters tell why). Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold where two such teenagers who committed suicide after conducting the Columbine High School shooting. Long before the actual killing both of them had started a website where they would post topics related to the game 'Doom'. Many believe that the game is what inspired the two to perpetrate such actions, however soon after launching the site, they started posting death threats to their fellow students and even shared plans on how to make small homemade bombs (Columbine Special Report). Their friends recall that the two would often talk of mass murder targeting the school, but that they never took it seriously. They even went to the extent of posting a list of their targets on their website and a report on how the stock piling of pipe bombs and others weapons was coming along (Eric Harris' Webpages). Therefore, rather than assuring and taking steps that prevent these children from getting guns it is much easier and more practical to introduce measures at schools to counter the problem of bullying and nip the anger and frustration of children in the bud, in order to effectively assure that such incidents are minimized in the future.

Prevention and Awareness:

The reason that the term 'school shooting' became so instantly recognizable even though it embodied less than 1% of children related homicide was because of the media coverage that such events receive. Adults kill 90% of homicide victims under the age of 12 and 75% of homicide victims aged 12 to 17. Each year 20 to 30 children are killed in shootings related to the school which is even less than the people who die from lightening Strikes (which stands at 88 per year) (Facts About Violence Among Youth and Violence in Schools). Above all the homicide rate at schools dropped 20% between 1992 and 1996 whereas the media coverage of such events rose 720% in the same period (Killingbeck ).

As a result of such wide spread awareness of a problem which does not deserve the attention, countless laws have been passed and millions of dollars are spent every month on securing schools and assuring that students do not carry weapons to schools. This money could have been spent better on buying books and providing scholarships to students who cannot afford tuition fees. The culprit for such a waste of money is the media. Since school shootings are indeed tragic and heart breaking, media companies deliberately play with the idea of such shootings to glue the viewers to the TV screen and earn money, while at the same time distracting the people from making decisions that would actually help and reduce the chances of such incidences from happening again.

Conclusion:

The Second Amendment enables America to defend itself from foreign forces and more importantly itself. It assures that there will always be a power even higher than that provided by the social contract and the trichotomy of powers, the people of America themselves. If the second amendment is tampered with or dissolved altogether, it would be against the spirit of freedom and liberty which America was built on and the basis on which the aristocratic regimes of 16^th century Europe trembled. As James Madison Said:

"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments . . . forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition. . . . [The] several kingdoms of Europe . . . are afraid to trust the people with arms."

A nation is by its people. If the people cannot be trusted than the nation cannot exist for there will be no person suitable to head the state or be part of it. Therefore, the right to own arms embodied in the second amendment is a trust in the American people, which is the basis of the nation itself, dissolving this trust would collapse the very structure America stands on.

Works Cited:

"Columbine Special Report." CNN In-depth Specials. 2000. CNN. 3 May 2007 http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/columbine.cd/frameset.exclude.html

"Deadly Lessons: School shooters tell Why." 15 October 2000. Chicago Sun-Times. 3 May 2007 http://powerreporting.com/files/shoot.pdf

Everitt , Ladd. "TOUGHER GUN LAWS COULD HAVE PREVENTED VIRGINIA TECH TRAGEDY." News. 23 April 2007. The Coalition to stop Gun Violence. 3 May 2007 http://www.csgv.org/news/news_releases.cfm?pressReleaseID=134

"Eric Harris' Webpages." The columbine shooters. A Columbine Site. 3 May 2007 http://www.acolumbinesite.com/ericpage.html

"Facts about Violence among Youth and Violence in Schools." CDC. 21 April 1999. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2 May 2007 http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel/r990421.htm

Greenfield, Lawrence, and Marianne W. Zawitz. "Weapons Offenses and Offenders." Bureau of Justice Statistics November 1995: 1-8.

Hornberger, Jacob G.. "The right to Keep and bare arms." LewRockwell. 2004. 3 May 2007 http://www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/hornberger11.html

Horwitz, Josh and Casey Anderson. "Gun Advocates Won't Consider Conflicting Rights." The Tampa Tribune. 21 October 2005. Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. 3 May 2007 http://www.csgv.org/docUploads/Tampa%20Tribune%20Oct%2021%2005%2Epdf

Killingbeck, Donna. "THE ROLE OF TELEVISION NEWS IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF SCHOOL VIOLENCE AS A "MORAL PANIC"." Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 8(3)2001 186-202. 3 May 2007

Kathleen Reich, Patti L. Culross and Richard E. Behrman, "The Future of Children." Children, Youth, and Gun Violence Vol. 12, No. 2Summer - Autumn, 2002 4-23. 3 May 2007 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1054-8289%28200222%2F23%2912%3A2%3C4%3ACYAGVA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N

Story, Joseph. Commentaries on the constitution of the United States; With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional history of the colonies and states, Before the adoption of the constitution.. 1st. Cambridge: BROWN, SHATTUCK, AND CO., 1833. 3 May 2007 http://www.constitution.org/js/js_344.htm

Smith, Helen. "It's not the Guns." The Nando Times 11 May 1999 3 May 2007 http://www.violentkids.com/articles/violence_article_8.html