In 1999, Columbine had 1,945 students attending school while Penn has a number of 2805 students (2002). So the question about the quality of their school security became more important than before and new measures were introduced which I will reveal later.
A teacher of Penn told me "I personally wonder why we haven't had any major shooting here, since we are such a big school-. .
On the whole lots of reports were published and many discussions took place and a bunch of security measures were introduced since 1999.
But also something else happened as a result of Columbine: as a teacher told me there were several cases where students tried to imitate or really realized the crime Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had committed as copy kills. Another fact is that the violence and shootings at working places have increased since then as well. .
Juvenile gun access - How far has the access to weapons .
for kids changed over the last 20 years?.
In the following text several surveys will be mentioned to give an overview about the gun situation in the U.S. concerning the access to weapons of teenagers and children.
According to Dr. Mark De Antonio's survey, Director of Inpatient Adolescent Services at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, " the biggest difference between adolescents now and adolescents 20 years ago is the incredible access to firearms'."" He stresses that nothing much has changed with kids over the last 20 years except the fact that guns are easier to obtain today. .
"In 1975, according to government estimates, there were 55,000 gang members in the US. In 1996 the US Justice Department estimated there were more than 665,000 gang members and counted 31,000 street gangs in all 50 states'."œ .
Annual surveys of high school students by "Monitoring the Future Researchers- report that weapons-related violence in schools has not increased since the 1970s but the rate of children who are murdered by their parents doubled that time.