Saturday, February 24, 2018

School shootings are still not the new normal

School shootings are still not the new normal
"...It is easy to believe that school shootings are the “new normal” as has been intimated, or that we are facing a crisis of epidemic proportions. 
When schools are placed on lockdown based on an active shooter alert (which many times is a false alarm), cable news channels immediately inform their viewers of the danger, and word is tweeted and retweeted to millions, most of whom have no direct connection to the event.
Image result for School shootings...For all those who believe that schools are under siege like never before, it is instructive to take a statistical road trip back in time.
Since 1990, there have been 22 shootings at elementary and secondary schools in which two or more people were killed, not counting those perpetrators who committed suicide.
Whereas five of these incidents have occurred over the past five-plus years since 2013, claiming the lives of 27 victims (17 at Parkland), the latter half of the 1990s witnessed seven multiple-fatality shootings with a total of 33 killed (13 at Columbine). 
In fact, the 1997-98 school year was so awful, with four multiple-fatality shooting sprees at the hands of armed students (in Pearl, Miss.; West Paducah, Ky.; Jonesboro, Ark.; and Springfield, Ore.), that then-President Clinton formed a White House expert committee to advise him. 
Nearly a decade later, President Bush convened a White House Conference on School Safety in the wake of multiple-fatality incidents during his administration...
...Notwithstanding the occasional multiple-fatality shooting that takes place at one of the 100,000 public schools across America, the nation’s schools are safe. 
Over the past quarter-century, on average about 10 students are slain in school shootings annually.
Compare the school fatality rate with the more than 100 school-age children accidentally killed each year riding their bikes or walking to school..."
Read on!

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