By Sheersho Zaman

Imagine for a second you are sitting at school and having fun with friends. Or you’re just in the middle of class. Through the corner of your eye, you notice the quiet kid sitting at the back. He always sits there; usually head-down on the table. But this time, he looks different. He is tense and drenched in nervous sweat. You immediately think of the articles you read months before about similar situations and before you can say anything, he takes out the gun he had been hiding and starts firing away at his leisure. Terror ensues.
School shootings are two words that should never have to be uttered together, and yet time and time again it is brought to the limelight due to certain events. School shootings have been increasingly a more common occurrence in places like the United States where gun laws are rather lenient. In 2015 alone, more than 52 cases of school shootings were reported in the US that left 30 dead and 53 injured.
What’s even more scary is how unpredictable these incidents are. Each one of the assailants seems to have a different motive. At the beginning of this article, there was a hypothetical scenario described where the lonesome kid in class turned out to be the shooter, but this is not always the case either. Evan Ramsey was involved in one such case where he entered his high school with a 12-gauge shotgun and killed two people. He reportedly had a rough life at home, with his mother being an alcoholic that lived with a string of violent men. In over two years, he had lived in ten different foster homes and was physically and sexually abused.
On the other hand, Kip Kinkel was another person involved in school shootings who shot his parents, killed two others and went on to wound twenty-five more at his high school. He had no such trauma from a rough livelihood. Loved by parents and people alike, his memorial service was attended by seventeen hundred people. He was however psychotic, wholeheartedly believing conspiracies like the Chinese getting ready to attack the US, Disney’s world domination plans, etc.
Eric Harris, another perpetrator, on the other hand was completely different. He was wholeheartedly sociopathic. He was manipulative and charming, and had a long history of breaking the law. He was guilty of stealing, vandalism, buying guns illegally. He set off homemade bombs, and he even hacked his school’s computer system to write “Ich bin Gott,” which is German for “I am God, “in his school planner. He kept journals that were full of his fantasies about rape and mutilation.
From this, it can be concluded that school shooters have no method to their madness. Some are broken by the world, while others pretend to be broken by it. Some, like Eric, want to break the world by themselves.
There have been countless debates on what to do about school shootings. Tighter gun control, preventing the circulation of violent games, etc. has all been considered as viable options. The best way though is perhaps just to talk with these people. Prevent people from being bullied. Stop alienating someone for being different. If talking to them reveals mental problems, report them and get them real help. Do not let them do things that will kill the humanity in them. Save the victims before they become victims. Save the killers from themselves.