Grace+S’s+Final+AmEx+2014+Speech

=Title of Speech=

//**School Shootings**//
=Text of Speech=

==== When I was in elementary school I remember when a boy in Oxnard was shot by another boy in his school’s computer lab and died. When I was in Middle school I remember hearing about the boy who asked to go to the bathroom and returned to the class with a gun and yelled “Hail Marilyn Manson” and tried to shoot the teacher. While in high school The Newton, Connecticut Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened when 28 children and school personnel were shot to death. Now while researching universities I listen to the news report on the Isla Vista shooting where 7 UCSB students were shot and killed by another student. While writing this speech the news interrupts once again on another college shooting this time in Seattle. What has happened to my country? ====

==== A recent study showed that the U.S. has 88 guns per 100 people and 10 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people — more than any of the other 27 developed countries in the study. Japan, on the other hand, had only .6 guns per 100 people and .06 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people, making it the country with both the fewest guns per capita and the fewest gun-related deaths. I don’t have an answer on how to eliminate violence, but it does seem clear that fewer guns might be a good place to start. However, to look at only the gun as the problem is too short sighted we must look beyond the gun to the person holding it. When considering the shooters mentioned before in my examples I see a commonality about them. They were all young men who felt so emotionally distraught, angry and alienated that violence was their only form left of expressing it. My mom is a teacher at Citrus Glen Elementary School and she has talked to me about a major gap in student services at the elementary level. Elementary schools do not have counselors anymore. They do have school psychologists but the school has to share the psychologist with another school. Therefore the school psychologist’s time is very limited at each school and is used primarily to assess and perform cognitive testing for learning disabilities and write reports. So, there is this gap where a child with emotional problems is not getting any kind of help except what the classroom teacher can provide. Troubled student’s issues often just increase in magnitude with no intervention being provided. I think there is a big problem with how we address mental health in this country and I believe to help kids at the youngest of ages will help prevent future tragedies from possibly occurring. Even if we can not reduce the number of guns in our country then at the very least we should make sure we care for the emotionally distraught and mentally ill people so that they are less likely to go out and commit these acts of violence. ====

I want to live in an America where children, teenagers and college students can go to school without the fear of random acts of violence occurring. I believe that the peace I want to see in the world begins with me and that I am going to try harder to reach out to people around me that might be feeling alienated. We all know people that could fit the nightly news profile of the shooter… “ the shooter’s school reports a long history of trouble with school officials, he was unpopular, an outcast in school, often teased by his peers and socially awkward.” I bet all the students in this room and the teacher too can think of people that would fit this description. So, the question is what will we do about it? If the often-quoted words of Mahatma Gandhi are true and we should all “Be the change that you wish to see in the world” then that is where I will start. I want to live in an America that cares, that is peaceful and whose children can go to school without fear.

=Cite Your Sources= http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/09/19/u-s-has-more-guns-and-gun-deaths-than-any-other-country-study-finds/