On February 14th, 2018 at approximately 2:23 pm, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School became the victim of a mass shooting caused by a 19-year-old gunman, Nikolas Cruz. Cruz opened fire, with an AR-15 rifle, between the hours of 2:21-2:27 pm when he decided to pull the fire alarm causing everyone to rush out; students and staff members. Cruz was able to shoot and kill a total of seventeen students and staff members while leaving the rest with physical, psychological, and emotional trauma. Cruz, who was expelled from Stoneman, due to “disciplinary reasons” was able to do this tragedy because he had easy access to legally own a weapon in the state of Florida. Not only did he have easy access to a weapon, but he was able to enter the school with no difficulties because he wore a disguise that included wearing school gear, and as well that there wasn’t enough security to help protect and make sure intruders who could be harmful to the students from coming into the school. Cruz was able to find his way around the school because he already had a map planned out of where everything was located and where he needed to go first.
There were many variables that contributed to Nikolas Cruz's opening fire at Stoneman Douglas. One of them being the social variables where society was the cause of Cruz's opening fire. People believe the actions taken were caused by bullying, neglect of an adolescent, and not giving the proper help that Cruz needed at the time. Nikolas was adopted at a young age, both his adoptive parents passed away which took a toll on him, but it was as huge of an impact as when he found out about his mother’s death. “His mother’s death was what had finally destabilized the boy and sunk him in a deep depression”, unfortunately finding out about his mother’s death took a huge toll on his life and it became a major variable in why he took certain actions that he did. He wasn’t given the proper help that he should’ve gotten after experiencing so much trauma in his life and at a young age without having anyone to turn to. The school or even the doctors who diagnosed that he fell into a deep depression should’ve provided him the help he needed, whether it was a psychologist, medicine, or even someone who could look after him in school.
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However, Cruz didn’t get the necessary help he should’ve gotten which allowed him to have someone he could speak to about his problems or to just motivate him to do better, but none of that happened. His mother’s death wasn’t the only variable that took part in Nikolas Cruz, many people believed that what could have caused Cruz to open fire was because of getting revenge on the people who would bully him. “When students or former students attack their own school.
The attacks are public acts, committed in full view of others. In addition, although some people might be shot because the shooter held grudges against them, others are shot randomly”, this explains that most of the time school shootings happen because the shooters will directly target people to get revenge or simply just shoot random people to get that “satisfaction”. As stated in the article by Dr. Raj Persaud & Dr. Peter Bruggen, “from a fellow student seems particularly opposite– “How tired he was of everyone picking on him and the staff doing nothing about it.” this is implying that there are certain students who can confirm that Cruz was being bullied for either being “weird” or a “loner” and yet nobody, not even the staff members did anything to stop it, which is why Cruz believed the only way he could get revenge was by shooting up the school and targeting certain people. Almost everyone around him would neglect him for what they believe and see of him, many students would be categorized and assume that “he would be the one to shoot up the school” or he’ll be a possible “school shooter,” this is where many people failed as a society because not only did they say that, but it could’ve caused him to become one so he can make everyone happy and give them the 'satisfaction” that they were correct.
Even though society contributed to Cruz acting the way he did, it wasn’t the only thing. Nikolas Cruz, himself, caused him to be the way he was and act the way he did. Most people know that Cruz lost both his adoptive parents and his birth mother which caused him to fall into a deep depression, which usually consists of antidepressant medications, and sometimes these types of medications have side effects that are different for each user. There are plenty of people who would agree that Cruz was mentally unstable caused of all the medication he would take, and his depression wasn’t the only thing that showed he wasn’t stable to be alone or own anything that could hurt himself or others. “Cruz showed an early obsession with guns and a record of violence against animals, classmates, and neighbors: he tortured, killed or dismembered some of the neighborhood pets, he had quarrels and fights with his classmates that led to his temporary expulsion of the high school”(Flynn C. P), Nikolas Cruz not only showed signs of being a possible threat to others and himself due to the fact that he was obsessed with violence and mistreating animals, which is the number one sign that criminologist and psychologists believe has to do with mental instability. Due to studies, “research has employed a psychopathological explanatory model, assuming that animal abuse is an indicator or symptom of some mental defect or personality disorder”, meaning that humans that mistreat animals are most likely to be entitled with a mental or personality disorder that could be harmful to both humans and animals.
Many studies out there would prove and agree that seeing how people treat animals could define whether the person could have a mental disorder, nowadays there’s deer hunting for some people who do that as a hobby but that isn’t considered to be a mental disorder. What is the mistreatment of animals would be any animal that isn’t typically being hunted down.
Law enforcement and other criminal justice institutions took part in not properly offering help to protect or even stop the shooting to have occurred. The school security guard, Scot Peterson was the first responder on the scene when Cruz opened fire. According to the state law enforcement department, Scot Peterson 'refused to investigate the source of the gunshots, retreated during the active shooting while victims were being shot and directed other law enforcement who arrived on scene to remain 500 feet away from the building,' (Burk, M.) and typically any officer should address to the scene where they should attempt to prevent any harm from occurring, but Peterson did not address the scene. He neglected from entering the school and instead went to call on his radio for backup, which caused many people to lose their lives.
Multiple people believe this was wrong of Peterson to do because he could’ve been able to save at least one person’s life. As stated in the records of the FBI, “FBI did receive two separate tips that we now know were related to the alleged shooter, Nikolas Cruz.” In other words, the FBI did receive tips about Nikolas Cruz being a possible threat but failed to address the issue and provide the appropriate resources to prevent something from happening, this is where the criminal justice institutions messed up in. Multiple people trusted their lives in the different criminal justice institutions that are here to ensure their safety whether on the streets or in schools, but because of the failure of both Peterson and the FBI to act accordingly, it has left people traumatized or losing their life. There were many possibilities where the FBI or even the district police could've put a stop to this because it wasn’t just the tips but there were students as well who said they told staff members and even high authorities about Nikolas Cruz but said “We warned them multiple times, but they still didn’t do nothing” (Emma Gonzalez). Nobody gave it too much mind believing that he wouldn’t actually open fire when knowing the consequences that could happen.
This massive shooting caused an outburst all over the United States because there are multiple people who are tired of school shootings happening since it’s supposed to be a safe place for kids. After approximately weeks or even months of Stoneman Douglas students trying to recover from the traumas that were left behind. Emma Gonzales who was a former student from Stoneman Douglas was one of the many different activists who were behind the “Never Again” movement, which targeted the NRA and President Donald Trump for their incompetence in not realizing that letting people have easy access to weapons can and will destroy lives. As Emma stated, “Congress and President Donald Trump had repealed a law that made it harder for people with certain mental illnesses to buy guns,” meaning although it was still the NRA’s fault for selling guns to mentally ill customers, which they couldn’t do anything about it as well because of Trump and the lawmakers taking away the one law that could save multiple lives. Of course, Trump and the NRA didn’t stay quiet, in fact, they believe it isn’t completely their fault and can’t make the gun laws stricter because it could cause some people to get angry for them invading their second amendment. Emma Gonzales and other activists are trying up until now to get lawmakers to put stricter gun regulations on the NRA when they sell their guns and they specifically were targeting AK-47 semiautomatic rifles, but there were times when the NRA became ignorant towards all the accusations they faced from the activists and other citizens. The government and lawmakers would say it wasn’t their fault for this tragic incident to happen and that they had nothing to do with it. Politicians were ignorant of the fact that it was their fault because they took away the one law that could’ve stopped so many lives from being lost. They also failed at not making stricter gun regulations, which involved having all gun stores do thorough background checks, equipping them with more modern technology that would help them stay more organized and search up anything they need to make sure the weapon is being purchased by the right person.
There are many theories that could be used to determine if Nikolas Cruz did what he did because of genetics, rational choice, or even caused by social control. Biology, genetics, and evolution theory have to do with the criminal inheriting any criminal aspects from either the mother or father, although it isn’t determined if either his father or mother inherited into Cruz any criminal aspects. In various news outlets, there seems to appear that Cruz’s mother, Brenda Woodard, has been to prison for numerous counts of charges and that it happened 10 years before Cruz was even born, meaning that all of what his mother did before he was born could have transferred to him. All the emotions she felt, all the stress, and everything else that could’ve caused for Cruz to be born and inherit any type of criminal behavior. Throughout that time,
Brenda had two other children with separate fathers, but it turned out to be that one of those half-siblings turned out to have criminal aspects due to the inheritance of the mother, both the half-sibling of Cruz and his mother had similar charges. However, his other brother was adopted by another family and they were able to say that they haven’t experienced any type of misbehavior that includes any criminal acts and that he isn’t the same as his other siblings where he would show signs of being mentally unstable or becoming a potential criminal.
The next theory that could be a possible answer is rational choice because it means that someone decides to take a certain action that will benefit their goals more than cost. This could be applicable to Nikolas because he had only one goal which was to open fire at Stoneman Douglas and even though he didn’t pay much mind to how much his action will actually cost because he only wanted to benefit and think about him committing the crime and winning the satisfaction of going through with his plan. It's important to keep in mind that it took Cruz time to plan out this whole shooting where he was able to benefit from getting revenge back from people who bullied him or even did nothing to help him when he had nobody by his side. The final theory is social control which has to do with society having a major influence on how people act and handle certain situations. There were plenty of incidents that were indicated where the community, and school that Nikolas Cruz was in caused him to act out because there were many people who would assume that he would be the school shooter, and, of course, that has a major influence on someone since the more you accuse him for being something he could possibly not be could turn around causing him to actually become a school shooter to satisfy everyone’s accusations.
Overall, Nikolas Cruz was influenced by many different things throughout his lifetime, which caused him to commit this crime which left 17 people dead plus others left with severe trauma physical and or emotional. He was socially influenced by society, genetically inherited it, and his own rational choice theory. Society didn’t do anything to help him but push him to the verge of him realizing he has no one who’ll be there for him and there’s nothing left for him, meaning he didn’t have much to lose. Genetics took a bigger part of his personality because inheriting his mother's criminal personality made Cruz most likely to come out as a criminal at some point even if he was adopted by another family, that wouldn’t stop Nikolas from ever committing a crime once in his life span. Everyone's biological background is important to know because sometimes people can tell how you will act or become in the future, but of course, not everyone is the same and it could change. This comes to our next point of finding out a logical explanation of why it occurred, rational choice contributed a lot to Nikolas Cruz because he decided to do such a thing just to either feel satisfaction or get the benefits he was hoping to get without caring what the actual cost would be, in this case, the cost of multiple lives being lost. There are many things that could come to perspectives that we’re able to determine why certain actions were taken. Thus, Nikolas Cruz didn’t have only one theory but had two other theories that could back him up in classifying why his actions occurred. However, there are multiple people who would say that what he did was heartless, and that’s extremely true, but there are many videos and students coming forward where they explained and told news outlets that before he even started opening firing he would tell some students to run and get out from the school because it was going to get messy. If Nikolas Cruz was as heartless as other school shooters, he wouldn’t have spared some of the students' lives that he encountered before opening fire, he would’ve killed them there in that insistent when he got the chance.
Criminologists can determine that the theories they have figured out to learn can apply to figure out why exactly male criminals are the way they are especially on school shooters who have multiple motives to even open fire at any school, although, some of the times there aren’t reasons why they opened fire. When comparing the Columbine shooting with the Parkland shooting there are similar aspects that were taken. Both of them had the motive of harming and taking the lives of innocent people who either bullied them or never gave them a chance to even talk to them and see who they are, leaving them all alone. On the other hand, the sandy hook shooter didn’t have the same motives as the other two shootings, he was never bullied or caused any type of neglect, which isn’t the only thing different, his targets/victims were elementary students and his own mother.
References:
- Crevillén, D., Gutiérrez, B., & Training and Research Department. (2019, January 6). About guns & red flags: Parkland school shooting. SPECIAL REPORT. Retrieved from https://www.grupodcsolutions.com/single-post/2018/03/05/About-guns-red-flags-Parkland-school-shooting-SPECIAL-REPORT.
- Flynn, C. P. (2001). Acknowledging the “Zoological Connection”: A Sociological Analysis of Animal Cruelty. Society & Animals, 9(1), 71–87. https://libproxy.sunywcc.edu:2590/10.1163/156853001300109008
- Persaud, R., & Bruggen, P. (2019, September 26). Psychology Gets Inside the Mind of Florida School Shooter. Retrieved from https://pro.psychcentral.com/psychology-gets-inside-the-mind-of-florida-school-shooter/.
- Never Again. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=qDt_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA28&dq=+march+for+our+lives+movement+parkland+shooting&lr=&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q=march for our lives movement parkland shooting&f=false.
- Oversight of the Parkland Shooting and Legislative Proposals to Improve School Safety. (2018, March 14). Retrieved from https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/oversight-of-the-parkland-shooting-and-legislative-proposals-to-improve-school-safety.
- Burke, M. (2019, June 5). Former Parkland security officer Scot Peterson was charged with neglect for not entering school. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/former-parkland-security-officer-scot-peterson-charged-neglect-not-entering-n1013831.
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