School Shootings epidemic is not real

Page 1 of 1 [ 9 posts ] 

ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,122
Location: Long Island, New York

03 Apr 2018, 12:28 am

Schools are safer than they were in the 90s, and school shootings are not more common than they used to be, researchers say - Northeastern University

Quote:
The deadly school shooting this month in Parkland, Florida, has ignited national outrage and calls for action on gun reform. But while certain policies may help decrease gun violence in general, it’s unlikely that any of them will prevent mass school shootings, according to James Alan Fox, the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern.

Since 1996, there have been 16 multiple victim shootings in schools, or incidents involving 4 or more victims and at least 2 deaths by firearms, excluding the assailant.

Of these, 8 are mass shootings, or incidents involving 4 or more deaths, excluding the assailant.

Mass school shootings are incredibly rare events. In research publishing later this year, Fox and doctoral student Emma Fridel found that on average, mass murders occur between 20 and 30 times per year, and about one of those incidents on average takes place at a school.

Fridel and Fox used data collected by USA Today, the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report, Congressional Research Service, Gun Violence Archive, Stanford Geospatial Center and Stanford Libraries, Mother Jones, Everytown for Gun Safety, and a NYPD report on active shooters.

Their research also finds that shooting incidents involving students have been declining since the 1990s.

Four times the number of children were killed in schools in the early 1990s than today, Fox said.
“There is not an epidemic of school shootings,” he said, adding that more kids are killed each year from pool drownings or bicycle accidents. There are around 55 million school children in the United States, and on average over the past 25 years, about 10 students per year were killed by gunfire at school, according to Fox and Fridel’s research.

Fox said, however, some policy changes aimed at decreasing school shootings and gun violence in general certainly have merit. Banning bump stocks and raising the age of purchase for assault rifles from 18 to 21 are good ideas, and may lead to a decrease in overall gun violence, he said. But he doesn’t believe these measures will prevent school shootings. “The thing to remember is that these are extremely rare events, and no matter what you can come up with to prevent it, the shooter will have a workaround,” Fox said, adding that over the past 35 years, there have been only five cases in which someone ages 18 to 20 used an assault rifle in a mass shooting.

After the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, schools across the country began holding active shooter drills in which they huddled together in a corner or hid under their desks. Such exercises—which may include someone walking around pretending to shoot students—can be very traumatic, Fridel said, and there is no evidence that they help protect students. “These measures just serve to alarm students and make them think it’s something that’s common,” she said.

Other safety precautions, such as installing metal detectors and requiring ID cards for entry, have also proven ineffective in past school shootings.

Fridel pointed to a few examples.

In 1989, a shooter killed five and injured 32 elementary school children in Stockton, California, by targeting them on the playground.

In 2005, a 16-year-old killed seven people at his Minnesota high school by walking through the front door metal detector and fatally shooting a guard.

In a 1998 shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas, two students pulled a fire alarm and began sniping people as they filed out to the parking lot, killing five and wounding 10 others.

In addition to being ineffective, Fox said increased security measures of these kinds can do more harm than good. He called the suggestion to arm teachers “absurd” and “over the top.”“I’m not a big fan of making schools look like fortresses, because they send a message to kids that the bad guy is coming for you—if we’re surrounding you with security, you must have a bull’s-eye on your back,” Fox said. “That can actually instill fear, not relieve it.”


What has increased is mass shootings(not just schools) involving the killing 10 to 58 people in the last few years.


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


DarthMetaKnight
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 16 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,105
Location: The Infodome

03 Apr 2018, 12:31 am

Additionally, people are becoming more educated and so more people are willing to talk about this issue, rather than merely sweeping it under the rug.


_________________
Synthetic carbo-polymers got em through man. They got em through mouse. They got through, and we're gonna get out.
-Roostre

READ THIS -> https://represent.us/


ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,122
Location: Long Island, New York

03 Apr 2018, 12:53 am

DarthMetaKnight wrote:
Additionally, people are becoming more educated and so more people are willing to talk about this issue, rather than merely sweeping it under the rug.

Lack of safety in the schools was a big issue in the 70's. It just was not about mass shootings. Then it was about stickups and shakedowns for lunch money and drugs and gangs flexing their muscle. Another difference was unlike the wave of mass shootings that was largely confined to inner city black schools or perceived to be.


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


Nekomonster
Toucan
Toucan

User avatar

Joined: 25 Mar 2016
Age: 22
Gender: Male
Posts: 271

03 Apr 2018, 7:22 pm

We have shootings/gun-related incidents at least every month. How is that not real/an epidemic?


_________________
god...it's brutal out here


Aristophanes
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 10 Apr 2014
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,603
Location: USA

03 Apr 2018, 10:11 pm

Nekomonster wrote:
We have shootings/gun-related incidents at least every month. How is that not real/an epidemic?

Numbers. Add up all the school shootings and divide by the students in the schools and it's a very, very small minority of students that experience a school shooting-- not quite winning the lottery small, but not that far off statistically. Also epidemic is a biology term to refer to a rapidly spreading disease. The number of school shootings a year has stayed relatively stable over the years, it's not something that's rapidly spreading. A tragedy, yes, epidemic not so much.



ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,122
Location: Long Island, New York

04 Apr 2018, 1:04 am

We have an epidemic of information about school and other mass shootings. In any era the Parkland shooting would have gotten wall to wall coverage. An incident like todays mass shooting at Youtube HQ with 3 injured and the shooter dead would have been a major local story and might have gotten a mention on the evening news. It would not have dominated the news, nor would everybody’s phone have been ringing with updates.


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


EzraS
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 24 Sep 2013
Gender: Male
Posts: 27,828
Location: Twin Peaks

04 Apr 2018, 1:16 am

Aristophanes wrote:
Nekomonster wrote:
We have shootings/gun-related incidents at least every month. How is that not real/an epidemic?

Numbers. Add up all the school shootings and divide by the students in the schools and it's a very, very small minority of students that experience a school shooting-- not quite winning the lottery small, but not that far off statistically. Also epidemic is a biology term to refer to a rapidly spreading disease. The number of school shootings a year has stayed relatively stable over the years, it's not something that's rapidly spreading. A tragedy, yes, epidemic not so much.


I always figured I had a much greater chance of being in a fatal accident traveling to school, than getting shot at school.



DarthMetaKnight
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 16 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,105
Location: The Infodome

04 Apr 2018, 1:22 am

EzraS wrote:
Aristophanes wrote:
Nekomonster wrote:
We have shootings/gun-related incidents at least every month. How is that not real/an epidemic?

Numbers. Add up all the school shootings and divide by the students in the schools and it's a very, very small minority of students that experience a school shooting-- not quite winning the lottery small, but not that far off statistically. Also epidemic is a biology term to refer to a rapidly spreading disease. The number of school shootings a year has stayed relatively stable over the years, it's not something that's rapidly spreading. A tragedy, yes, epidemic not so much.


I always figured I had a much greater chance of being in a fatal accident traveling to school, than getting shot at school.


FACT: The #1 cause of death in America is heart disease.
In other words, don't be afraid of school. Be afraid of McDonalds.

Image
HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG


_________________
Synthetic carbo-polymers got em through man. They got em through mouse. They got through, and we're gonna get out.
-Roostre

READ THIS -> https://represent.us/


Campin_Cat
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 May 2014
Age: 62
Gender: Female
Posts: 25,953
Location: Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.

05 Apr 2018, 6:02 pm

I'm so glad you posted this, ASPartOfMe. T'ward the end of last month, I think it was, it was reported that there had been, something like, 18 school shootings since the beginning of the year. Come to find-out, included on that list were incidents like: A man, sitting in his car in a school parking lot, contemplating suicide, called the cops to tell them what he planned to do. The school had been closed for seven months, or something like that. Another incident included on the list, was 2 guys shooting at each other, on a school's grounds, at 8pm, at night; and, there were several other similar. I don't think either of these things qualifies as a "school shooting"----but, yet, people were willing to drink the Kool-Aid, as though it were fact.




_________________
White female; age 59; diagnosed Aspie.
I use caps for emphasis----I'm NOT angry or shouting. I use caps like others use italics, underline, or bold.
"What we know is a drop; what we don't know, is an ocean." (Sir Isaac Newton)