“No way to prevent this” says only nation where this regularly happens.
There is a way: have classes at NRA Conventions
https://www.businessinsider.com/nra-conference-wont-allow-attendees-to-bring-their-guns-2022-5?op=1
One of the best (worst) headlines ever…
This is depressing, but it also bothers me that there’s such a large distinction between how the average person would picture a “school shooting” and what these articles are talking about. Is there a name for that in journalism?
Like, if someone told me “there was a school shooting at school X today”, like most people I would immediately picture someone walking into the building and firing indiscriminately at everyone. Not, “a couple of teens got in a fight in the parking lot, and one pulled out a gun”, or “someone shot at the school’s sign”. (Which are also horrible, but I feel like we need separate terms)
From the article:
According to the report, the most commonly known situations associated with such incidents included “escalation of dispute,” “drive-by,” “illegal activity,” “accidental firing of a weapon” and “intentional property damage.”
As a parent, the distinction means very little to me. They all have the same premise: somebody brought a gun to school. That just doesn’t happen elsewhere outside the US aside from edge cases like tiny rural towns where they legitimately need to look out for wild animals.
It’s horrible, don’t get me wrong. I worry about my own little one, but the distinction is an order of magnitude of a difference in my head. Like the distinction between a troublemaker throwing a lit match in a trash can vs some maniac dousing a building in gasoline.
I guess for me, all I can think is “who cares if the ultimate result is the building burning down?” Not critiquing you don’t worry. Just providing a different perspective.
If guns go off at my kids’ school, guns went off. The backstory means very little to toddlers.
To me, that’s like the people who complain that gang-related shootings count as gun crimes. Not everything has to be Columbine/Las Vegas/Sandy Hook/Virginia Tech… (too many to list, honestly too many to keep track of, and I read the news daily. They’re all symptoms of the gun problem in the US. A lot of fun crimes are done by criminals? What a shock! But they have drug dealers and gang members in other countries, and we don’t see the levels of gun violence we do in the US. America is literally off the charts when they do international studies.
A shooting at a school is a shooting at a school, period. I can’t think of anyone who would defend calling it anything else. It doesn’t matter if it’s two kids fighting over who gets to sell drugs or just someone who doesn’t like Mondays.
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It’s already a sad state of affairs that you hear the phrase “school shooting” that your mind goes to the Columbine style shooting. That the concept has happened enough that people have a mental model for it.
I hear your desire to better classifications, but as the other reply noted to a parent, even someone shooting at a stop-sign is a red flag. None of that should be happening with any regularity. The fact that kids are carrying around guns and can even have them on school property is enough for parents to want something done to ensure their children are safe. It’s enough for parents with money, to leave an area for fear of losing their children.
None of it should be happening is right. I just get a skeezy feeling when articles use language they know will get people thinking one thing when they mean another.
Sure, but you shared the clarification the journalist used, so they’ve actually spelled out that it’s not just school massacres in the article. It also doesn’t necessarily imply the core title isn’t true.
The more you read, the more you start to realize there are never clear definitions for anything. You always have to look for the author to clearly define what they’re talking about.
Why do we need such a distinction? These are shootings at schools. They are school shootings.
Because a columbine type of school shooting is different than property damage.
And people writing these articles know that “some destructive teens did donuts in the school parking lot at night and shot the stop sign” isn’t what people think when they say that a “school shooting” has happened.
If they kill a Columbine -1, is that a school shooting? What if they try to massacre people but there are no fatalities, is that a school shooting? The attempt to make “school shooting” fit only the worst case scenario means we ignore a problem until it has had its absolute worst outcome.
Is it a school shooting if it’s two people in a parking lot at midnight on a Tuesday that are selling drugs? I would say no. Calling it a school shooting implies that the school/children are targeted specifically. Being dishonest about the facts backfires basically every time, as it shows you aren’t acting in good faith.
Axios didn’t make the term up, the National Center for Educational Statistics did.
Your premise seems to be that these are mostly no big deal and the term school shooting is being used deliberately to conjure images of Columbine. It’s not clear how you reached that conclusion when the number of casualties of school shootings has nearly doubled year over year, per the article.
Me, I like looking at Wikipedia’s data:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2023
- 2023, jan-jul: shootings: 427, 6 at schools
- 2022, same: 441, 3 at schools
- 2021, same: 413, 0 at schools (thanks covid!)
- 2020, same: 344, 2 at schools
I think we can safely say 2023 is a bad year for schools, but a normal year for mass shootings in the USA.
Because it’s perfectly normal to have hundreds of mass shootings every year and doing nothing about it. Amazing.
2023 isn’t over, and school will be in session through the end if the year. We’ll get an impressive record setting year on both those numbers probably.
All those numbers are for the same time periods.
Including more deaths this year means including more deaths that were truncated from the other years.
But hey, we can always strive for new heights.
Look, if we all dig deep and really commit, we can achieve mind-blowing numbers. Let’s not throw in the towel just because we’re ahead. Let’s shoot for the stars! /s
The problem isn’t the guns the problem is the politicians (maybe it’s the guns but really it’s our corrupt immoral politicians who refuse to do anything at all about it.)
We need to weed out corruption in our government, I don’t think a lot of people understand how our of hand it is.
Access to weapons is the one thing that stands out in the US compared to every other developed country.
No guns = no gun violence.
I will agree that no guns = no gun violence if you can say it also = no gun defense. If guns take lives, they also preserve and defend them even without firing a shot.
I dont want hurt to come to anyone but it can happen regardless of the best intentions. Media and politicians happily ignore this because they have people with guns standing next to them at all times. I don’t have enough money for a personal bodyguard. I do not live across from the police station. I only have myself same goes for my family.
But it doesn’t matter.
If you could remove all guns, would you? I wouldn’t because I know we would still be faced with the same level of violent people. It’ll shift from guns to something else but now, my elderly parents, my wife and I wouldn’t be able to defend ourselves apparently. I’ll say that children in schools will still be targeted by violent people even without guns.
I lament the loss of life that has been brought by the use of guns. But there must be a way to allow law abiding citizens unrestricted access for defense while removing access to would-be criminals for violence.
If you get your way, I’d like to know how you propose I defend my kin from a person or persons who wish me harm? Because I know you won’t be there for me, personally.
Remove the tools that make gun violence possible, guns and especially assault weapons, and address the root cause of the violence: The inequality, the poverty, the lack of opportunity for many groups of people, etc.
That’s what many European countries have been so successful at doing and they have more or less eradicated gun violence with few exceptions (like gang violence that rarely affect schools children and other innocent people).
Unfortunately, in the US, the policies required to address these issues are often labeled as “socialism” or even “communism” by 40 percent of the population and don’t make it through the Senate filibusters.
I do not believe it’s possible to remove the “tools of violence” from the ones who want to cause it. You would only remove them from me, making me less able to defend myself.
I do agree with going after the “root cause” which is exactly as you said it is. Poverty, lack of opportunity, inequality, mental health, etc. These should be addressed as priority. I believe we would see a decrease in violence in general as a whole if proper care was achieved for everyone.
There is a medium somewhere that satisfies (or dissatisfies) both sides of the argument.
I think it requires both. Attack the root cause of crime and remove the tools of violence.
The second amendment never meant to protect military style weapons. It’s absolutely crazy that random people run around with AR-15s for “defense.” Makes no sense.
Unfortunately, the “bad guy with a gun” all too often used to be a “good guy with a gun,” but life turned sour and now they are going to take it out on a bunch of 2nd graders. And because they have the good-guy tools, they can. Nuts.
“believe”. Because it’s a belief, like a religion. Ignore all other other humans who got rid of guns, because Americans can’t because they’re a special magical people who can’t give up guns.
Jeezus. Americans aren’t special. Other countries have given up guns. America could do it do.
You’re just scared. You - specifically you - are ruled by fear. Look at you. Thinking having a gun is going to help you defend shit.
You’re a baby with a binkie who never grew up.
America is special. There’s no country with this amount of diversity of culture or people. It’s an experiment that works and has kept working.
Prior to having a family, I wasn’t nearly as scared. I was absolutely invincible. After having one? You bet your ass I’m scared and willing to protect them at all costs.
I don’t think there’s any weakness in admitting that.
Edit - also belief has nothing to do with religion in the context I’m using it here. To frame it another way: I have accepted that there is nothing that can be done to remove guns.
You guys are missing the point, the reason we still have guns is because of corrupt politicians Jesus fucking christ, the first part is tounge in cheek
I forget. 2023 is an odd year, so do we do thoughts or prayers?
Thoughts and pears.
Wishes and spells
Thots and pyres.
Hey, it’s Americans right to protect themselves from sweet innocent children.
“Won’t anyone
think ofgun down the children?!?!”
Looks like all those thoughts and prayers are working
It probably should’ve been a clue when this became a metric we started tracking like the daily temperature.
Really gross when you see politicians wearing AR-15 lapel pins. You almost get the idea that they are actively supporting this. Every time there is a school shooting, they get to stand up in front of their base and talk about how people are trying to take their guns away, which really lights a fire under them.
This article is using an overly broad definition of school shooting to make the situation appear as if is worsening in America as opposed to improving.
“The report defines a school shooting as an incident where “a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time of day, or day of week.”” & “Shootings that occurred during the COVID pandemic “on school property during remote instruction” were within that definition, the report noted.”
This is a redicuilusly broad definition that inflates the numbers of shootings without indicating how many victims there are.
Using the study referenced in the article you can clearly see a reduction in the average number of deaths of “youth[s] ages 5-18 at school” from 1992 to 2020. Scroll down to the line graph on the study and filter out suicides (the trend line is less clear there and needs a separate discussion).
The article even sort of acknowledges this downward trend when it says “interpret these data with caution” given that latest figures are “outliers compared to prior years.”"
I’m not saying this to pretend everything is fine and nothing needs to change. No its the opposite, something IS reducing the number of deaths and we need to isolate what it is and do it more. And its not gun control laws getting tighter. 1994 saw the advant for the American Assault Weapon ban and gun laws were arguably the tightest they’ve ever been in the US. Gun laws in the nation have only loosened since then such as: Permit-less concealled carry is in 26/50 states, all states are now shall issue CCL, and the AWB ended.
They’re comparing 2021-2022 vs 2020-2021. Weren’t many, if not most schools, closed for most of that study?
Seems disingenuous. That’s definitely not to say it isn’t an issue, because it is.
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USA 🇺🇸 USA
