School Shootings and How We Can Stop Them
By: Kellum Dixon
Date: Spring of 2025
Have you ever watched the news before? Well if you have, you may have heard of school shootings. School shootings are a very serious matter that is happening more and more often in our everyday lives. There have been many kids who have lost their lives or been seriously injured in school shootings. So you might ask, “How can we stop this!?” Well, in this article I am going to answer this very question.
In my opinion, the best way to stop school shootings is to stop the shooter before they can shoot. So, I looked into some of the main reasons why someone would commit this crime. In the article “Why Do Shootings Occur,” you find that the main causes of why people commit school shootings are bullying, revenge on those who have hurt them, having experienced domestic abuse and in some cases substance abuse (overdose of drugs and/or alcohol). So now that we know this, how do we stop these issues from causing more school shootings?
I believe to stop school shootings we have to try to get rid of the things that cause people to feel so negative they decide to carry out a school shooting. This means we would have to find ways to get rid of bullying, abuse, drugs/alcohol abuse, and much more. How are we going to make this happen? I think the best way to get rid of these things is to bring in stricter consequences for bullying and put more kindness into the community. A bully becomes a bully by being a victim of abuse or being bullied themselves, so with more kindness and more consequences we can stop abuse and bullying from happening.
The other top cause of shootings was substance abuse. To stop drug and alcohol abuse of teenagers we should contact the proper authorities if we hear that children or teens are abusing drugs and alcohol.
Even though you might think that school shootings don't happen often, they really do. The article “School Shootings in 1997-2022” tells us that school shootings have had a massive increase since 1997 and the number of school shootings are continuing to rise. We should spend our money on things that will benefit the children and teens of America to stay safe away from harm.
Recently, I interviewed a teacher, Archer Boyd, about school shootings and what she thinks about them. Especially how we can stop them, because they are a very serious problem. Boyd has always lived in a world where school shootings are normalized and common (even though they never should be) and this makes her perfect for this interview.
Kellum: “Boyd, how do you think we can stop school shootings?”
Boyd: “First it's important to be aware of the signs of a school shooting, so make sure that the people in a school environment are all knowledgeable about what those warning signs look like in a classmate. Somebody who's talking about harming others, somebody who's mentioning that they have access to firearms in the home, somebody who's ostracized or experiencing isolation or bullying, all of those can be really obvious signs that somebody might be looking to harm themselves or others.”
Kellum: “Anything else?”
Boyd: “I also think the next thing for preventing school shootings is that it's really important to not keep anything to yourself. Being honest with teachers, being honest with your parents, and not worrying about getting your friend in trouble, getting your classmates in trouble, or you getting in trouble.”
Kellum: “Totally I agree! So you’re basically saying that to stop school shootings we need to be more open and talk to teachers if we have problems?”
Boyd: “Yes, I think that is a really important part of it and then also being open with each other. You know, making sure that you're reaching out to your classmates and just like you talked about with bullying and people experiencing abuse and hardship making sure that you're connecting with your peers.”
Kellum: “What do you personally think about school shootings?”
Boyd: “Well, school shootings have been around for as long as I have been a teacher and as long as I've been a student. I've never existed in a world without school shootings. Columbine happened before I was born, which is one of the really big school shootings. I've done lockdown drills my whole life. I've experienced a couple of instances where I was in a school where there was a shooting threat. I have friends ho have experienced shootings and I think that it's an issue that is very unique and new to our generation. And, I think that policy makers are not taking it as seriously as they should. So they're making schools unsafe for students. I would argue the most important people are children and I think that we need to learn to take it more seriously as a society.”
I agree with Boyd completely, because what she is saying is one hundred percent true. If we can stop bullying and abuse, school shootings will happen less often. She also brings up a great point about students needing to be more open with teachers, friends and family. It's a good point because if you keep your feelings bottled up inside you then that can lead to doing terrible things such as committing the crime of school shootings.
I also agree that children are important and that we do need to protect them. Which also means putting in a ton of work to stop school shootings. Then, we could protect kids, adults and make the community better in so many more ways.
We need to protect others and ourselves. So if we are kinder, have more rules and be more open with friends / trusted adults, we may finally be able to stop school shootings from happening again.
These are the sources that I used:
•School Shootings in 1997-2022
•Boyd