The Labeling Theory Of The Columbine High School Shootings

On April 16, 2007 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado one of the deadliest school shootings in the history of the United States took place. Two teenagers by the name of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold rigged two bombs fitted inside duffel bags to explode in the middle of Columbine High School, when these bombs failed to detonate Harris and Klebold began there killing spree. Resulting in thirteen casualties and twenty injured before committing suicide (History.com). People have come up with many theories but none have been proven. , This could be due to many factors but the one that I have found to be the most realistic is self fulfilling prophecy. This is when one is given a label such as a bully, geek, nerd or psychopath people get stuck into believing they are what they have been labeled to be. Some of the reasons most people will say they did this is because of violent video games, movies, or music, but it could also be due to the fact that they were members of …show more content…
This could be closely related to the Labeling Theory. This theory is based on the principle that if one is labeled as something such as a social deviant, their behavior will change to that of a deviant. In addition, a solution to this would be to find a way to prevent cliques from being formed, but this would amount to a dictatorship, and resulting in a loss of freedom. Although, we cannot prevent the forming of cliques, we can put certain rules in place in schools to prevent bullying of all kinds. As well as putting rules in place we must enforce them. Often schools have the proper rules in place but they are rarely enforced to the proper extent. If these rules were to be properly reinforced, we would see a great decrease in bullying and depression caused by