School Violence has definitely hit the headlines these past years and it is escalating to encompass much of today’s news. Although guns are taking much of the blame for this, the real problems lie elsewhere and the solutions are increased priority for the mentally ill, family stability, teaching morals, and legalizing concealed carry.

Prioritizing mental healthcare is the sensible solution to much of the school violence today. Almost all of the recent school killers have been diagnosed with a mental disorder, most commonly Psychopathy. It affects 1-3% of men and .5-1% in women. (Shermer) Psychopathy is also accounted for over 50% of all violent crimes worldwide. The main reason that people with this disorder and other disorders are killing is that mental healthcare is so hard to get to today. In the past, mental help and healthcare has stopped many killers in their tracks and saved many lives too. The mental care is very hard to get access to today and more and more people who need it the worst can’t get access to it. Many past killers have gone through with killing because they had a mental disorder, but nobody noticed until they had already taken the lives of classmates, which is why prioritizing mental care is a must to stop these shooting epidemics. Mental healthcare is one of the leading causes, but other factors affect the killers greatly.

Another big issue that affects killers negatively is keeping family stability. Many of the killers that shot up their schools came from single parent households and had minimal contact with others and even their families. This loneliness contributes to their antisocial behavior and drove them to kill for attention, or even just because they wanted to die. Single parent households have become so much more common these days and when kids don’t get taught, disciplined, or have enough close time with their families, they will have a tendency to do these things. For example, the murderer from Santee, California lived full time with his dad. His mom lives thousands of miles away on the other side of the continent. He had close to no contact for his mother and longed to talk to her and, most importantly, get her attention. (Egendorf 37) His main motive for killing was to get his mother’s attention and get her to actually pay attention to him. The problem was his father didn’t realize how far away from normal his son was and gave him access to the family gun safe, which he then used to shoot up his school. One can see how important just seeing your mom is to children and how much of an effect it has on them. The solution to this problem would be to try and put a stop to divorced households and keep family stability high. Children would be much more secure and less likely to shoot up a school.

Along with family stability, teaching morals ties in and is basically what determines how children will act in childhood and adulthood. Most parents teach their kids right, by showing them how to act and punishing them when they do anything bad, and it usually works out good. Many of the killers have either abusive or neglective parents that don’t pay them much attention. This compels children into street gangs, illegal activity, and just being an overall bad person due to not being taught how to act and what to value. If kids are going to start to act right, they need to be taught good values, religion, and have many good influences to help them. Just by teaching children to be better can save many lives later when they don’t decide to shoot up their school.

My last topic to cover would be legalizing concealed carry laws nationwide. When adults have guns, kids are going to think twice about trying to shoot up their school at fear of being stopped by an armed adult. “Would Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold would done what they did, knowing there was a good chance of being stopped by an armed adult.” Legalizing concealed carry laws in more states would not only bring higher protection to civilians, but it would also offer school protection. If you were a killer, would you walk away if you saw a sticker on a school that said NO GUNS on it? The guns would help arm responsible adults to protect themselves and others from potential killers. The average amount of deaths in a shooting rampage is 14.7 when stopped by the police, but only 2.3 when stopped by civilians. The law would give the students and adults a fighting chance when it comes to killers.

In review, prioritizing mental care, having family stability, teaching morals, and legalizing concealed carry will help put an end to the school shootings and rampages that seem to happen so commonly nowadays. The main solutions lie in the first 3, however, and the concealed carry would only be to stop it once it has already begun. Hopefully, if we use these principles, kids will stop dying from being shot by their fellow classmates.