Had Rayanne Mace, 19, Gayle Dubowski, Catalina Garcia, Daniel Parmenter, all 20, and Julianna Gehant, 32, skipped classes on Valentine’s Day, 2008, they would still be alive.
Schoolmate, Steven Kazmierczak, 27, an award winning Sociology graduate, killed the five and wounded 16 others in the latest school shooting incident in America. He had walked on to the stage at Cole Hall auditorium at Northern Illinois University (NIU), and shot the students. The weapons: a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, 22-caliber pistol, Hi-Point .380 pistol and a 45-caliber Glock semi-automatic handgun, were hidden in a guitar case slung over his back.
It was the fifth school shooting in one week. Two days before, a boy, 14, shot his classmate at a junior high school, in Oxnard, California. February 11, a boy, 17, shot a classmate in a high school, in Memphis, Tennessee. February 8, nursing student, Latina Williams, 23, shot and killed Karsheika Graves, 21, and Taneshia Butler, 26, in a classroom at Louisiana Technical College, then shot herself, and the day before, there was a shooting at Notre Dame Elementary, Ohio.
Should the 33 people killed in the Virginia Tech Massacre last April, and the 15 at the University of Texas in 1996, and the 12 in the Columbine High School Massacre have skipped classes? School is supposed to be one of the safest places outside the home. Yet, they are under siege from students.
When senseless killings violate school security, authorities must engage thorough background checks on students, especially medical records, before granting enrollment. Investigations revealed the shooters all had mental illness, depression or related causes.
In the case of Brenda Spencer, 16, who lived across the street from Grover Cleveland Elementary School, San Diego, she was a drug abuser with a violent streak and repeatedly broke the windows at the school with her BB gun. Still, her father gave her a .22 semi-automatic rifle and ammunition as a Christmas gift in 1978. And on January 29, 1979, she shot and killed two men and wounded nine children as they entered the school.
Statistics from the Us Department of Education and the Centers For Disease Control has revealed a disturbing trend in schools in the USA: shootings are on the increase. Between 1997 and 2000, there were four shootings a year. In 2001, there were six, in 2002, two, and three in 2003. There was one in 2004, four in 2006 and 2007 each. This year, in February alone, there were five school shootings.
Over the last 15 years, more than 350 people died in school shootings. Many more were injured. Between 1992 and 1998, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice recorded 226 deaths from school shootings. Figures from the Children's Defense Fund and the National Center for Health Statistics revealed that between 1979 and 2001, gunshots killed 90,000 teenagers in America.
The United States Secret Service and the US Department of Education compiled a report titled, Secret Service Safe School Initiative, on data from 1974 to the end of 2000. It documented 37 incidents involving 41 student attackers and interviewed 10 school shooters. The study found that school shootings were rarely impulsive acts, but were most time planned, and that other students knew of the shooting before it occurred - but did not tell anyone.
In the USA, more children were killed by firearms than any other industrialized nation worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In comparison to Great Britain’s 19, and Canada’s 153, over 5000 children got killed in the US, in one year, from firearm incidents.
Attending school in America has become a dangerous routine. The fear of death by a colleague or another student at the same school is greater than the resolve to achieve, academically. The pattern of shootings at schools throughout the US is a terrifying truth. No one knows when another gun-toting student will take aim and fire at schoolmates or staff. Parents send children to school to obtain diplomas and accreditations not to end up in coffins for beds.
