No one, including that poster, said it was “not a thing to worry about”.
I’d call the “11” figure misleading. This discussion probably would have gotten off to a better start if you’d done some basic fact-checking first.
But with the phrase “hyped headline,” he was dismissive of minor shootings that did not rise (or sink) to the level of Columbine.
New York Times headline:
“School Shooting In Kentucky Was Nation’s 11th Of Year. It Was January 23.”
The reality is a bit different.
*"Of the 10 other school shootings, four of them were homicides or attempted homicides. Two were suicides — one in an elementary school bathroom in Arizona and another in an elementary school parking lot in Michigan, when the school was closed and there were no children present. Two involved random instances of guns being shot at school buildings (one at a high school near Seattle, Wash., and another in San Bernardino, Calif., at the local Cal State University campus where, in both cases, no one could confirm if there was a shooter or where the bullets came from). One was the case of a student who confused a real gun with a training gun and as a result accidentally fired into a wall. Finally, one involved a man shooting a pellet gun at a school bus in Iowa.
The cases that seem most related would be the four homicides and attempted homicides. But even of these, one took place in a college parking lot, where gunfire was exchanged between two vehicles with no reported injuries or deaths."*
It’s possible to express concern about any or all of these events without being complicit in (at least) careless reporting that tends to instill panic.
In California? I thought their “gold standard” gun control laws were supposed to make them impervious to this sort of thing? Isn’t that the idea? If we were all more like California, these things wouldn’t happen here?
Did you build that strawman yourself, or did you just get it from someone else?
I credit California’s Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and the LA Times:
“And now, online teacher training for active shooters in schools, courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security”
A sad commentary on this sad world.
‘I’m not really shocked’: Florida high school prepared for the worst. Then it happened.
Send your thoughts and prayers. They help sooooo much.
from the original WP article -
This is at least the third school shooting this year and one of the deadliest on record. Beginning with Columbine 19 years ago, more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus, according to a Washington Post analysis of online archives, state and federal enrollment figures, and news stories. That doesn’t count dozens of suicides, accidents and after-school assaults that have also exposed children to gunfire.
Are they saying that 170 schools had a total enrollment of 150K students?
(The 1999 Columbine monsters were bombers who intended to shoot their fellow students as they fled the school.)
Yes, that’s how I read it. An average of 882 students per school. Not unreasonable.
Not unreasonable at all. The school in Florida yesterday has 3,000 students. My daughters grade has 750.
From the Washington Post link above (Mackenzie is a student):
This brought me up short. Think about sending your child off to school every day with a bulletproof vest. Just in case. And then it turns out he needed it that day. 