This isn’t accurate historically or realistically. There are long stretches of time in which a number of States have largely ignored Federal court rulings (including those of the Supreme Court.) One of the most famous of course is the case that helped us along our path to the Civil War–Dred Scott v Sandford was not just denounced as one of the worst decisions ever, it largely never held power in almost any of the Northern States, as officials in those States simply refused to adhere to almost any of its rulings.
Another prominent one of course is Brown v Board, which was decided in 1954; there is a popular myth that the issues surrounding that case came to a head in 1957, when Eisenhower used Federal military power to prevent the State of Arkansas, and segregationist Governor Orval Faubus from blocking the enrollment of the “Little Rock Nine” from Little Rock Central High School.
The reality is by 1968 (over 10 years later) most school districts in the South were still meaningfully resisting the court ruling, were not meaningfully integrated, and had constructed myriad ways to disobey the order without immediate consequence. After 1968 Civil Rights legislation integration increased, but was still significantly and effectively resisted–in fact huge swathes of the American South still have functionally segregated schools.
So - statistically - how dangerous are schools? How likely is it for a minor to be injured/die as a result of an armed attacker while in a school? Compared to other “health” dangers?
What is the point of turning schools into armed camps, if they can be defeated by one fool wedging a door open? And then compounded by (apparently) confused/dithering/incompetent LEOs. Another huge budget item.
I’m not saying it is anything other than a tragedy that these people died. But if we choose to style our society such that a troubled 18 yr old fast food worker is able to amass this sort of firepower, seems kinda foolish to expect to harden all public places against potential assaults.
Much of the discussion about school hardening is basically theatrical in nature, it has no real relationship with reality. On some very thin meta level, yes having more physically secured schools is good because if they will prevent any mass shootings it’s probably worth the level of investment seen thus far, but it’s mostly a ploy by politicians who don’t want to legislate on guns to change the topic to a more palatable political discussion about throwing some money at school districts.
The dramatic expansion of armed police in schools, however, is potentially questionable. Not just due to cost, but because there is a negative cost of having police in schools if they serve no positive purpose, and there’s at least some decent evidence that many school resource offers arrest black and brown students for minor behavioral infractions at much higher rates than is found in majority white schools. This suggests that having these officers in our schools may be enough of a negative, that it isn’t worthwhile for what appears to be a very low percent chance such an officer could stop or preven ta school shooting (since several large scale school shootings have occurred at schools that have such officers.)
Wasn’t there a shitload less driving in 2020? I suspect it’s more of an issue of car deaths going way down than gun deaths going up. (On reread, up 30% is a huge increase no matter how you slice it.)
It’s still very unlikely that any individual child will die by firearms, much less in a school shooting. But firearms are now more likely to kill a child than car accidents are, or cancer, or drowning, or poisoning, or any other kind of disease or accident. And unlike those other risks, the gun death risk for children has been increasing. So it’s understandably a cause for concern even though the likelihood is still quite low on average.
While that may be a factor, most civilized people should agree that it shouldn’t even be so close in the first place that a single anomalous year with less driving would flip things.
Here’s another NPR article, with a graph showing a large decline in motor vehicle deaths since 2000, and a smaller but steady increase in gun deaths over the same period. The drop in driving in 2020 may have accelerated the cross-over between the two rates, but it was going to happen, I would say.
ETA: just noticed that there was actually an uptick in motor vehicle deaths in 2020, according to that chart. Just that the uptick in firearms deaths that year was higher.
That’s interesting, and my hypothesis was clearly wrong.
I wonder why car deaths have been steadily declining since 2000? Seatbelt laws had already been in effect for 20 years by then. Airbags becoming more standard, maybe?
School shootings are one of the ways children die by guns, which is the single largest cause of death in children. And it’s preventable. School shootings are an entry point for improving public safety by establishing reasonable gun control measures.