> All shootings at schools includes when a gun is fired, brandished with intent to harm, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time, or day of the week.
This definition is broad enough to encompass e.g. someone barricading themselves in an apartment a few blocks away with a 5.57 rifle and shooting at the police; this happened at my daughter's HS, and a bullet did land on the campus just because the campus is large and was in the same general direction.
It also seems like it would be broad enough to include a police officer drawing their duty weapon on a student threatening another student with a knife (also happened at my daughter's HS), but I'm less sure about that.
Neither of those would be considered "school shootings" by the vast majority of the population.
Neither situation was hypothetical; they both happened at my daughter's High School. Anecdotal certainly, but not imaginary. Certainly nobody says "There have been two school shootings at that HS in the past few years"
The elephant in this room is that the "school shooting" numbers are being inflated.
People say "oh America is so bad it has so many school shootings" then you look at what counts as a school shooting and it's stuff that poses no danger to students and may not have even happened at a school.
The term should be changed to "school massacre". I think that would cleanly narrow the definition in a way that is compatible with common usage.
Speaking of which, I don't understand why that term fell out of favor. Like we already have a term for "mass shooting". It's not called the "Boston Mass Shooting".
But then you'd have to include things like bombings and maybe bomb threats. And that might re-focus attention away from the chosen tools and towards the people doing it, which would make it less useful for election season.
When people talk about "stopping school shootings" they don't tend to want to substitute a student with a knife getting arrested at gunpoint with that student stabbing another student.
The whole point seems to be to cast as wide a net as possible for the definition as so to claim a higher number of "school shootings" than the majority agreed definition suggests.
Makes me wonder what motive people could have to do this.
A homeless guy shot another homeless guy on my university campus a few weeks ago. It's hard to consider that a school shooting even though it happened on-campus.
Calling a crime-related shooting in the parking lot of a school at 1am on a Saturday a school shooting is not what most people are discussing when talking about school shootings.
I'm more inclined to count students fighting off-campus about classroom grudges than to count non-students fighting on-campus.
And the idea of counting both doesn't seem right to me.
Though I'm not sure how my expectations align, in particular when I hear "school shooting" my first expectation is that there are multiple targets, not just one person. And it's hard for me to react to this data unless I know what percentage are single-target and what percentage are multi-target.
yeah, i can’t imagine raising my kid in an environment where they could actually die from a gunshot. i don’t understand how this is so normalised in a first world country
Getting scared enough to change your perspective sounds like a reason to specifically not expect the people involved to be objective or correctly categorize the event.
> A homeless guy shot another homeless guy on my university campus a few weeks ago. It's hard to consider that a school shooting even though it happened on-campus.
You find it hard to consider a school shooting a shooting taking place at a school?
Absurd that 2021-2024 saw massively more shootings than 1966-2020 combined. Clearly it’s getting out of hands. What’s the reason behind this huge rise?
No one knows for sure, but if I take the perspective of a socially alienated young person who is angry, resentful, and feels a growing desire for revenge, I would say hours of screen time, social media dynamics [1], and widespread economic insecurities only worsen the situation. It is easy to become resentful and aggressive when you are isolated and feel left behind. Additionally, it is much easier to become radicalized as an isolated individual online. I believe that in the last century, it was more difficult to become radicalized from your own bedroom, and people had more social interactions, even if they weren't actively seeking them out.
The media has historically, starting with Columbine, been extremely irresponsible when it comes to school shootings, showing little of the discretion that it does when it comes to youth suicide (for which they've adopted professional standards informed by CDC, WHO, etc. recommendations: https://afsp.org/ethicalreporting/), to the point that it's given perpetrators fame that's endured decades after their demise: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/us/school-shootings-colum...
And they're doing this not just out of recklessness, but out of a pretty clear bias and desire to leverage these events to produce support for gun control.
Youi're showing a lot of cognitive bias here. It's very reasonable for the media to cover mass casualty events, that's definitely their job.
Another thing that has changed (which you haven't addressed at all) is that there are communities of mass shooting enthusiasts online who collect data on them, lionize the perpetrators, spread their manifestos, and encourage others to commit similar acts. People write guides with a mixture of justification for motives and sharing of practical techniques and advice, similar in format to the magazines periodically published by Al Qaeda. At least one such outfit has been designated as a terrorist group in several countries and several of its members have been arrested and are facing criminal charges.
Interesting that 2% of school shooters are the school's police officer. I guess that's not surprising, since they're presumably the only person who'd regularly have a gun on campus.
Because this DB doesn’t just consist of what most people would consider a school shooting, but likely includes any discharge of a firearm on school property.
> Because this DB doesn’t just consist of what most people would consider a school shooting, but likely includes any discharge of a firearm on school property.
And that's perfectly fine. That's exactly the problem that concerns people. No one is saying "well my kid got shot but thankfully it was by the police/security guard and not a rando".
I haven't seen the raw data (and I'm surprised they require you to request it), but since 280 or so of the incidents are "accident," and since police officers have guns, I imagine a good chunk of that 2% would be police officers accidentally firing their guns.
If somebody got into with somebody else after the high school football game and popped a few off before running away and nobody snitched, they're not going to find them.
Take note of the "parking lot" and "escalation of dispute" data points.
I understand it's an emotional topic, but the article is just dry data, and flagging it (along with half the comments in this thread) was unnecessary. I wouldn't even care that much if it weren't for the fact that HN clearly penalizes accounts based on how their submissions and comments are flagged by other users. @dang could you please unflag it?
BTW the point of my submission was to highlight the anomaly that the number of school shootings (and victims) is paradoxically surging despite gun ownership declining and murder rates--while spiking after 2020--still being well-below historic highs: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/26/briefing/murder-rate.html
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This definition is broad enough to encompass e.g. someone barricading themselves in an apartment a few blocks away with a 5.57 rifle and shooting at the police; this happened at my daughter's HS, and a bullet did land on the campus just because the campus is large and was in the same general direction.
It also seems like it would be broad enough to include a police officer drawing their duty weapon on a student threatening another student with a knife (also happened at my daughter's HS), but I'm less sure about that.
Neither of those would be considered "school shootings" by the vast majority of the population.
Neither situation was hypothetical; they both happened at my daughter's High School. Anecdotal certainly, but not imaginary. Certainly nobody says "There have been two school shootings at that HS in the past few years"
People say "oh America is so bad it has so many school shootings" then you look at what counts as a school shooting and it's stuff that poses no danger to students and may not have even happened at a school.
Speaking of which, I don't understand why that term fell out of favor. Like we already have a term for "mass shooting". It's not called the "Boston Mass Shooting".
And that's perfectly fine. This criteria covers all conceivable scenarios where a kid going to school can be shot. Isn't that the whole point?
Makes me wonder what motive people could have to do this.
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And the idea of counting both doesn't seem right to me.
Though I'm not sure how my expectations align, in particular when I hear "school shooting" my first expectation is that there are multiple targets, not just one person. And it's hard for me to react to this data unless I know what percentage are single-target and what percentage are multi-target.
You find it hard to consider a school shooting a shooting taking place at a school?
Also if you've ever been to a school like NYU, you'd naturally ask: Where does the school start and end?
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people are homeless
homeless guys in a school
a homeless guy in a school with a gun
a homeless guy shot another in a school
and all you care is if it's a school shooting???
wtf
am i the only one who think all of these listed above are unacceptable???
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[1] Anxiety surges in GenZ around its introduction: https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/
The media has historically, starting with Columbine, been extremely irresponsible when it comes to school shootings, showing little of the discretion that it does when it comes to youth suicide (for which they've adopted professional standards informed by CDC, WHO, etc. recommendations: https://afsp.org/ethicalreporting/), to the point that it's given perpetrators fame that's endured decades after their demise: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/us/school-shootings-colum...
And they're doing this not just out of recklessness, but out of a pretty clear bias and desire to leverage these events to produce support for gun control.
Another thing that has changed (which you haven't addressed at all) is that there are communities of mass shooting enthusiasts online who collect data on them, lionize the perpetrators, spread their manifestos, and encourage others to commit similar acts. People write guides with a mixture of justification for motives and sharing of practical techniques and advice, similar in format to the magazines periodically published by Al Qaeda. At least one such outfit has been designated as a terrorist group in several countries and several of its members have been arrested and are facing criminal charges.
They don't really have a future. At least not a fun one to look forward to.
And that's perfectly fine. That's exactly the problem that concerns people. No one is saying "well my kid got shot but thankfully it was by the police/security guard and not a rando".
Take note of the "parking lot" and "escalation of dispute" data points.
What's the success rate of catching any random shooter?
Also school shootings are not really a thing outside the US, e.g. there's been a handful in Europe in this decade.