Students and parents are concerned about mass shootings as the school year begins. But the math says that indiscriminate shootings aren't as common as we think.
The school shootings were repeated after a congressman visited
Shootings again at the site of the Parkland school massacre in reenactment after deputies visit. (August 4)
AP
The new school year has suddenly arrived. Students and their parents head to local stores to stock up on school supplies. Meanwhile, continuing news stories linked to the despicable acts of desperate attackers from Nashville, Tennessee, Uvalde, Texas, and Oxford, Michigan, who targeted their local school provide no summer respite from thought – and the concern – about school shootings.
By any measure, fears about school safety are heightened. A national NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll from May found that 40% of respondents they felt that the schools in their community were not safe in terms of the risk of gun violence, from 30% in 2019.
After all, according to last year's Gallup poll, 44% of parents they fear for their child's safety at schoolthe highest level since the mass shooting at Columbine High School in April 1999. And 20 percent of those parents reported that their child had expressed such concerns, a rate surpassed only in 2001.
Anxiety over the threat of school shootings is understandable given the loss of young lives, the massive media attention these extraordinary crimes have brought, and the anxiety many parents experience while their child is away from their watchful eye. Fears are also fueled by the widely reported – and somewhat misleading – statistics on school shootings: more than a hundred a year, according to databases from Everytown for Gun Safety and Homeland Defense and Security Center.
The majority of school shootings are not indiscriminate massacres
While their numbers are accurate, the underlying details are revealing. The vast majority of these shootings bear no resemblance to the indiscriminate massacres in Nashville, Uvalde and Oxford.
These databases include suicides, accidental shootings, shootings that do not involve students or teachers, shootings on school property that are not related to school activities, and even some that occur on weekends or evenings.
A clearer picture is provided by a Washington Post database which focuses specifically on shootings during school hours. Over the past twenty school years (1999-2000 and beyond), the Post's database includes 384 incidents, an average of 16 per year – not hundreds, but still alarming. However, three-quarters resulted in no deaths and one-third in no one being shot.
Without minimizing the physical and emotional trauma of the surviving victims, only 88 of the shootings were fatal. And only 21 involved indiscriminate fire (as opposed to a person specifically targeted or an accidental discharge of a firearm), the very scenario of randomness that causes so much anxiety.
This is evident from Gallup data showing spikes in fear levels following high-profile indiscriminate massacres.
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As is often said, one is one too many. And in this case, over the past two decades there has been an average of one indiscriminate fatal school shooting per year. This is one of the nearly 130,000 schools across the country.
Of course, tragedy surrounds the students and staff members who are senselessly killed while at school. In all, there have been 188 deaths since the 1999-2000 school year, an average of just eight per year.
That's out of more than 60 million students and staff in America's schools, with a 1 in 8 million risk.
A total of 112 of those victims were shot indiscriminately, and 74 of those were related to four incidents with double-digit death tolls.
Are school shootings on the rise?
My point is not to say that there isn't a problem or a need for proper prevention strategies, but to suggest that those who claim there is an epidemic of school shootings are being fooled by an overly broad recitation of the numbers.
The real epidemic is fear. Perhaps a better understanding of the data will provide some much-needed perspective on the real risk.
Review school exercises: Active shooter drills do not make our children safe. They cause unnecessary stress and fear.
Our country's schools are safe. In fact, only half of 1% of school-aged gun homicide victims are killed at school. Children are safer in school, where they have supervision and structure, than in playgrounds, ball fields and street corners. Indeed, some are safer at school than at home.
We are spends $3 billion a year on school securityincluding surveillance systems and school resources, when the vast majority of shootings take place outside the school building – in parking lots and sports fields.
We force young people to participate in repeated and sometimes unannounced active shooter drills, sending a message of imminent danger and injuring countless students, when active shooter events in schools remain extremely rare, if horrific.
Much of the security funds can be better spent on school psychologists, guidance counselors, school nurses and classroom teachers. Not only are these professionals able to identify students at risk of violence, but they also benefit millions of young people through the full range of valuable services they provide.
James Alan Fox is the Lipman Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University and a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors.
