SWMBO showed me a map this morning of the "18 school shootings" that have occurred since 1/1/2018. I was explaining to her that it was grossly inflated, she wasn't buying it. The Washington Post, of all MSM outlets, has taken that number and Bloomberg (et. all) to task over it. https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2018/02/15/good-work-wapo-completely-crushes-everytowns-bogus-school-shootings-stat/
Good article. The WaPo considers that there have been five "legitimate" (pardon the term) school shootings in 2018. I only know of four. I wish the WaPo had identified which incidents it counts as school shootings, because I'd like to compare it against my list. I have:
- 1/22/2018 - Italy, TX
- 1/23 - Benton, KY
- 2/1 - Los Angeles (Sal Castro Middle School)
- 2/14 - Parkland, FL
I don't pretend to have a solution. Part of the problem is simply the fact that news is more ubiquitous these days. When I was in high school, I never read any part of the newspaper except the sports section and the comics. I paid no attention to politics, finance, fashion, or other subjects that everyone is now exposed to on a daily and regular basis by the Internet and the feeds on their cell phones. That factor, alone, has to contribute to the spread of the misguided notion that shooting up a school might be a good idea. We know that the Sandy Hook shooter compiled a database of school shootings, and I believe I've read that other school (and mass) shooters have likewise studied previous events in planning their own moment of infamy.
So part of the solution probably would require the media to stop acting like the media and rushing to saturate the headlines with the gory details. That's a tough sell. I had a good friend who was a newspaper editor who went on to become a professor of journalism at a well-known university with a respected (then) school of journalism. He died more than twenty years ago, and even well before his death he bemoaned more than twice the axiom that "body count sells newspapers." That's a sad truth, and it hasn't changed in decades.
It should be clear that more anti-gun laws aren't the solution. Schools are, by existing law, "gun-free" zones. Murder is a felony. When someone has made a conscious decision to ignore multiple felony laws to commit an armed attack on a school only a lunatic would think that adding one more law to be ignored is going to make a difference.
I guess turning schools into TSA checkpoints isn't practical, either. At the same time, it still should not have been possible for a kid who had been expelled to enter the building in the middle of the day (not with the morning in-rush), carrying an AR-15, a gas mask, and smoke grenades, without being detected or confronted until after he had opened fire. Metal detectors and TSA screening at the entrance may be security theater, but whatever this school has for security apparently doesn't even rise to the level of security theater. It would appear they had no effective security whatsoever.
I favor arming teachers and staff. That's one prong of the solution. What else?
