Gun Violence & Bullying

Post

Pretend you’re a child about to go to school and build gingerbread houses. You would be so excited, dressed in your little elf costume ready to go on the bus. You get to school and start building delicious gingerbread houses when you hear a big bang. As a child, you think it’s the construction. But it is not. This is the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School that happened on December 14, 2012.

A gunman shot a window and entered Sandy Hook. He shot 2 adults and moved on to first-grade children. Teachers and students hid in the nearby classrooms. A little while later, the police got an urgent call. The police came and immediately evacuated the building. The last shot heard, was Adam shooting himself in the head. The police searched the building and announced 27 people are dead, with 20 of them being children! Parents were terrified.

One of the reasons Adam may have targeted Sandy Hook was because he was bullied and beaten while attending school. The children taunted him and assaulted him. He always came home with bruises all over. Adam’s mother was even planning on suing the school for doing nothing about the bullying!

Studies have shown that bullying has many different effects, such as mental, physical, psychosocial, and academics. If you’re bullied you might have trouble thinking, you might act differently, you might not want to be around anyone and your grades might drop. In some, this may lead to violent attacks although the causes are usually multifactorial. A recent study by the Secret Service in the USA looked at 41 school attacks from 2008 to 2017 and showed that most school shooters were severely bullied.

If you notice a child is struggling, you should help them by providing support. You can get them into counseling and intervene early in the process. The lawmakers in the USA can also help by making gun laws more strict. They can also enforce higher security standards at the schools.

We can reduce bullying by having more aware teachers and students who know the red flags to identify troubled kids. We can also make sure that students learn not to bully others via education, strict anti-bullying rules, and harsher consequences for offenders.

Sources:

• Averill, Andrew. “Adam Lanza Bullied as Student at Sandy Hook, His Mother Considered Suing.” The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Science Monitor, 17 Apr. 2013, www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2013/0417/Adam-Lanza-bullied-as-student-at-Sandy-Hook-his-mother-considered-suing.

• History.com editors. “Sandy Hook School Shooting.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 11 Dec. 2013, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gunman-kills-students-and-adults-at-newtown-connecticut-elementary-school.

• Ray, Michael. “Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 7 Dec. 2019, www.britannica.com/event/Newtown-shootings-of-2012.

• “Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Sept. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting.

• “Secret Service study: Most school shooters were badly bullied, showed warning signs”, The Colorado Sun, November 7, 2019

---

Published October 8, 2020

Written by Raveena Duggal ~ Edited by Sara Gogna and Deeba Mehr ~ Graphics created by Jess Moerman