California High School Shooting

Throughout global, we have looked at several violent cases. From the dog mauling trial to OJ, these cases seem very distant. It doesn't seem like any of the events that happened in these cases would ever happen to us. However, there are violent events that happen in environments not too far from ours. As of today, there has been 369 shootings in the United States.

Last Thursday morning, on November 14, a teenage boy, in a Southern California high school, opened fire in his school quad, shooting many. Surveillance video captured the boy pulling the gun from his backpack of Saugus High School and shooting five people and then himself. "Within approximately 16 seconds, it was over," sheriff's Capt Kent Wegener said. A sixteen-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy passed away from the shots, authorities reported. The other three students, two girls, a fourteen and fifteen-year-old, and a fourteen-year-old boy were also shot before classes began. They were listed as stable on Thursday night. A 0.45 caliber semi-automatic pistol with no rounds left in it was recovered by investigators, who obtained a search warrant. A student, Sharon Orelana Cordova, told NBC Los Angeles that she was doing homework when she saw people running, so she started running, too. "When I got out, I saw this person lying down on the ground, and I saw blood all over. It was really scary. I was really, really scared. I didn't know what was going on," she said. After shooting, the gunman ended up shooting himself. He later died in the hospital.

It seems like almost every day that there is another shooting in the news. In our society, it has almost become "normalized" to have school shootings. When people see a school shooting in the news it just seems like a normal occurrence. As a society, we can work towards ending school shootings if people become more aware of them and actually work towards fighting against them. High school is a very difficult time for people. Students deal with depression and anxiety and if people become more aware, maybe students' mental health could be improved and there could be a decrease in school shootings.