Mass shootings in the US have been predominantly at schools.
Let's be scientists, and define terms.
By the FBI definition of 3 (or 4) or more victims, this is flatly untrue.
By the commonly accepted definition of "spree killing" it's still only going to get you nearly there. Churches, malls, etc. are similarly common.
What definition do you use for the term "mass shooting" that places them "predominantly at schools"?
We can either bury our heads in the sand with reasons we shouldn't do something about it or we actually do something about it. Sure percentage wise the probability is very low as shooting will happen at any particular school.
No. The probability of being a victim of a spree shooting is vanishingly small. Like less than 200 individuals per year across the US, small. Statistically, this is definitional noise.
But it makes good TV. As
@drgrant likes to say, the memetic value of a handful of dead, suburban, white kids remains quite high.
Surely you know that most minors whose deaths involve firearms live in cities, are poor, and black or brown. Most often, it's one or two at a time, but their group activities are most of what contributes to the "mass shooting" stats. And, since most cities are awash with schools, they're usually "within [x] miles" of one, and get counted as "school violence" as well.
But the end result of one goes beyond measure. We either come up with a realistic way to handle it or we get more useless gun control that will not stop it.
Here's an idea, start with:
SSI Final Report - Ch. V said:
Taken together, the findings from the Safe School Initiative suggest that some future attacks may be preventable. Most incidents of targeted school violence were thought out and planned in advance. The attackers’ behavior suggested that they wer e planning or preparing for an attack. Prior to most incidents, the attackers’ peers knew the attack was to occur. And most attackers were not "invisible," but already were of concern to people in their lives.
In light of these findings, the use of a threat assessment approach may be a promising strategy for preventing a school-based attack. Educators, law enforcement officials and others with public safety responsibilities may be able to prevent some incidents of targeted school violence if they know what information to look for and what to do with such information when it is found. In sum, these officials may benefit from focusing their efforts on formulating strategies for preventing these attacks in two principal areas:
- developing the capacity to pick up on and evaluate available or knowable information that might indicate that there is a risk of a targeted school attack; and,
- employing the results of these risk evaluations or "threat assessments" in developing strategies to prevent potential school attacks from occurring.
What choice would you make if you had a kid in school. Doing nothing, as you seem to suggest above, isn't an option.
Something must be done.
This is something.
This must be done.
![[smile]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/001.gif "Smile [smile]")
![[thinking]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/010.gif "Thinking [thinking]")
sorry I had to
