DOUGLASS HIGH SCHOOL 2018 SHOOTING

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Douglass High School Shootings

Nicholas Cruz who was 19 years old at the time he performed the shootings was a brother to Zachary Cruz. The shooting was associated with anger and the frustration of being expelled from school and can as well be associated with childhood experience whereby these two brothers even though from the same mother did not experience the care of their biological parents since they did not know them and were adopted from a very early age. Therefore this made it very difficult for the brothers to live with some things. With Nicholas being engaged in the shooting so much changed about their lives. This means how they acted, how they lived, and more importantly their relationship. The brother to Nicholas states that he is caught in between loving his brother and hating him because he doesn’t know what to do since he is the only family he has left but he is also a murderer and loving him means partaking in his case (Contrera, 2019). Therefore this paper discusses the mass shooting performed by Nicholas Cruz in Parkland, Marjory Stone man Douglas High school with a focus on the causes and effects of the shooting.

Nicholas and Zachary were both blood brothers even though looked different from their skin color suggesting that the father to Nicholas was white and the father to Zachary was black. They grew up together in the house of Rodger and Lynda Cruz who had adopted the boys directly from their mother. They lived with these charitable individuals and learned almost everything from them. The boys never knew they were adopted since they grew up here and were only informed about this when they were in middle school.

It was on February 14th of 2018 when Nicholas performed this shooting which later would be identified as one of the worst shootings to happen in the United States of America high school setting. Even though he had a challenging childhood and this might have contributed towards this, it is not fully acknowledged that this is a reason to excuse since everyone is under the law. On this day he walked to walk towards the school around 2:19 pm and he had a bag with school magazines and his legally purchased rifle. This was what he was to use in the next few minutes to kill 17 people and injure 17 murders in which later in court was referred to as attempted murder (Madfis, 2017).

There were warnings about his presence and how he was a threat to students and the school generally and therefore it was difficult for him to be allowed in without questioning. This can be stated to be the reason why the member of staff radioed the code red when he saw him (Editors, 2019). Even though the time of the code red was too late and he couldn’t be prevented from doing what he wanted it still had a great impact on the level at which he murdered the students. He had been expelled for disciplinary issues. His brother also states that in a manner in which he thought to be kind of jokes he stated that he was going to kill all the students in the school (Contrera, 2019). At some point as they played with his brother he also did a lot of harm in the house like destroying the chairs and other violent acts which made their mother call the police on him as she did not have any other option. Therefore these can be regarded as the basic behavior and leading causes to this shooting.

However, with the above, it is still possible that the lack of biological parental love and care when Nicholas was young is highly related to his decisions and how he acts at this point in life when he wants to do anything harmful and bad without thinking that it is that bad. The school administration even though had put everyone on alert that Nicholas was a threat did not act most appropriately. This is because if they could act in the best manner possible they could have warned even the gateman of Nicholas and therefore he could not be allowed in the school at first. This is also displayed by the fact that Scott Peterson was arrested and charged with retreating during the shooting. He was the deputy school resource officer and had been deployed the same day (Editors, 2019).

Law enforcement can be said to have responded very quickly and in the right manner towards this case since Nicholas Cruz was arrested very fast before he could even get home. Even though it was very difficult for him to be identified because he resembled any other high school student he was still arrested within a very short period as officer Michael explained how he arrested him as he just thought he could have been the right person to arrest even though he was in high school uniform (Editors, 2019). Therefore this was a very shift action of the law enforcement agencies and especially the police in particular who did the right thing in making sure that what happened was contained and the offender was presented before the law for prosecution.

There cannot be stated explicitly to have existed red flags towards this except that his brother had red flags but thought it was all jokes. From the side of the school, there were no red flags towards this and it was almost impossible to determine or to tell if Nicholas could do such a thing. Even though he was violent and there was no peace around him which led to his expulsion there was no guarantee that he could kill and this was a bad state of affairs. After the attack parkland high school decided to have an armed officer which is the exact thing I would suggest. However other ways to deal with this would be to make sure that the students are trained on how to deal with this kind of issue and danger when they are faced with them. This is put into place can prevent many students from getting hurt (Katsiyannis, 2018).

Due to the shooting, there were many legislative actions in Florida and the most significant can be said to be the raising of the age at which a person could own a gun to 21 from the normal 18 and therefore this meant that no teenager could hold a gun and do whatever they wanted (Boylan, 2013). There was also a 3-day wait for the processing of the gun imposed and therefore it was not to be immediate purchasing. Even though there are crimes in Florida high schools they have reduced with eh 2018 killing of 17 students. However, most of the small crimes are never looked into and they are most of the time ignored and hidden. The most appropriate punishment for the offender if found guilty would be life imprisonment. Even though he qualifies for a death sentence life imprisonment would be the best kind of punishment.

In conclusion therefore this mass killing can be said to have had a very great effect on the lives of the individuals affected and how they lived later after. It also had a great impact on the life of the brother Nicholas and generally affected a lot of things in Florida like the purchasing of gun laws.

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References

Boylan, M., Kates, D. B., Lindsey, R. W., & Gugala, Z. (2013). Debate: Gun Control in the United States. Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research®, 471(12), 3934-3936.

Contrera, J. (2019, January 25). ‘Why did you do this?’. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2019/01/25/feature/his-brother-confessed-to-gunning-down-17-people-in-parkland-but-hes-the-only-family-zach-cruz-has-left/.

Editors, H. (2019, February 6). Teen gunman kills 17, injures 17 at Parkland, Florida high school. History.com. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/parkland-marjory-stoneman-douglas-school-shooting.

Katsiyannis, A., Whitford, D. K., & Ennis, R. P. (2018). Historical Examination of United States Intentional Mass School Shootings in the 20th and 21st Centuries: Implications for Students, Schools, and Society. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 27(8), 2562-2573.

Madfis, E. (2017). In search of meaning: are school rampage shootings random and senseless violence?. The Journal of Psychology, 151(1), 21-35.