“There Are No Lessons To Be Learned From Littleton” is an essay by Gary Kleck that reminds us of an incident back in 1999, where two young men armed with guns and explosives murdered 13 people, wounded 31 then committed suicide in a high school in Littleton, Colorado. Kleck follows this example to support his main idea of how it’s highly publicized violent events like this that suddenly make everyone want to take action to prevent any similar murders, yet making a diagnoses of the key problems could be irrelevant to the motives or causes of “ordinary” violence.
Kleck supports his argument with many stats of the declines in homicides and gun violence over the years and states, “If there is no increase in youth/school/gun violence, it is fruitless to search for contributing factors that have been increasing in recent years.” He explains to us that gun violence is schools is extremely rare, and that the media coverage of these rare event has eroded our perception and has taken much attention away from the “ordinary” violence.Kleck helps clarify these terms with the reader by explaining the crucial difference between mass killings and “ordinary” violence. He states, “Mass killings are almost invariably planned, while other homicides and assaults are rarely planned.” He covers other differences including the necessity of firearms in mass killings, how these killers often come from a middle-class background and have little prior record of criminal behaviour.
The purpose of Kleck’s essay is to create a greater understanding of these differences and create awareness around the unlikelihood of such bizarre events ever happening again in quite the same way. He wants us to broaden our horizons to more commonplace forms of violence, rather than tailor preventative measures to such a specific event. By writing this essay intended towards the mass media viewers of America, he is trying to reach out to the people in fear and concern, and provide them the information to settle their minds and not feel the need to jump into any decisions in the aftermath of a crisis.
In his conclusion, Kleck states, “But we will be best able to separate the issues that matter from the ones that do not if we learn our lessons from careful analysis of “ordinary” crime and violence rather than from the freakish events chosen for our attention by the news media.” I found this last statement extremely effective, as it explains his purpose and how we can achieve it.
What is your opinion on the motives behind gun violence in schools?
I think it all comes down to bullying. Schools need to find a way to stop bullying before it pushes a student to go to these extremes.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that children are all necessarily cruel. I think that if we take greater care to teach children to use a strength based perspective, we will be much more successful in creating inclusion. We need to find a way for children and teenagers to have that empathetic streak maybe we can eliminate much of this hostility.
ReplyDeleteThere can be many factors behind the students who bring guns to school, a low income family, no support from home, bullying, mental illness. I think the biggest thing is realizing that these children are doing this as a last resort or looking for a way to get attention to release the pain they feel
ReplyDelete- Ashley Drew