Instruction
i want this paper after 16 hours Paper One
In his enlightening bookTerror in the Mind of God, Mark Juergensmeyer distilled all mass murder into one pithy phrase: Performance violence. Murder as theater. Killing your boss or your girlfriend is revenge. But shooting up their entire building, or any symbolic building, is about raising your body count. You're amping up the "wow" factor. It's a performance. We know that.
--Dave Cullen, Lets Stop Naming Mass Shooters in Our Reporting
"I don't believe bullying caused Columbine," Jeff Kass, who covered the story for the Rocky Mountain News told CNN. "My key reason for that is they never mentioned it in their diaries."
--Stephanie Chen, Debunking the Myths of Columbine, 10 Years Later
Whenever there is a horrible tragedy, a shooting in a place like, say, Columbine, Heston or people of theNRAwill actually hold a big pro-gun rally as soon as they can after the shooting to just rub peoples face right in it, to say, We dont care thatxnumber of people have died here. Were going to keep motoring on with our Second Amendment rights. And youre not going to do anything to stop us from owning the largest assault weapon we want to own.
--Michael Moore, Michael Moore on Gun Violence and Bowling for Columbine
Above, there are three different epigraphs about causes for Columbine. Depending on what lens we look through (criminal justice, history, psychology, religion, education, international affairs, terrorism, medicine, biology, the law), our answer to that question will change. A psychologist might focus on mental illness or personality disorder, while a historian might place Columbine in historical perspective with events like the Oklahoma City bombing, the siege at Waco, or earlier school shootings. How we address this question of what caused the Columbine massacre depends on what perspective we take, what experts we consult, and what larger picture we want to illuminate. Are we looking at how Columbine changed school shootings? What psychological problems are common to mass killers? Are we looking at where their goals fit into a historical framework? Are we asking whether they are evil and what that means? Are we looking at the way mainstream media explains this school massacre and other shootings? Are we looking at how criminal justice agencies look at causes in order to prevent shootings?
For this assignment, write a paper in which you focus on a specific explanation of a cause of the Columbine massacre and what that cause helps us understand about acts of mass violence in general. Your task is to make an argument showing that the cause you discuss is, in fact, supported by experts, and that studying this cause can show us a larger picture of public acts of violence. Thus, you can also discuss other such events from the past or in recent history in support of your argument. It may help you to understand the field that is most concerned with your question, e.g., philosophy and religion (and perhaps psychology) make take up the question of evil, while the availability of guns might be a political or sociological or legal issue. You can use all sorts of experts, but dont choose them randomly. They should have a direct bearing on your question and the scope of your inquiry.
A solid paper would be between 5-8 pages, in MLA format, with in-text citations and a Works Cited page.