
Schools are safer than they were in the 90s - SoMuchToGrok
https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/schools-are-still-one-of-the-safest-places-for-children-researcher-says/
======
Bernard_sha_256
Can someone say "Security Theater"?

In cases like these I like to take the Freakonomics formula for risk, that
outrage factors more into observed risk than actual danger.

We're more worried about Terrorism than Heart Disease, even as we have far
more control over the latter.

~~~
mieseratte
I like to ask my "ban the AR-15" friends how they feel about the TSA.

~~~
frozenesper
I agree that much of what the TSA does is security theater, but... at least we
got that? It shows that we as a society cared enough to "put on a show" of
protecting ourselves from terrorism.

I welcome more research on effective ways to reduce gun violence, but
unfortunately (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment_(1996)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment_\(1996\))
) researchers have been prevented from doing so.

The clear, most effective way to reduce gun violence is to reduce the number
of guns. (cf. every other developed nation.) However, the current
interpretation of the 2nd amendment seems to make that difficult.

------
SonicSoul
_it’s unlikely that any of them will prevent mass school shootings_

 _“The thing to remember is that these are extremely rare events, and no
matter what you can come up with to prevent it, the shooter will have a
workaround,” Fox said, adding that over the past 35 years, there have been
only five cases in which someone ages 18 to 20 used an assault rifle in a mass
shooting._

this seems weak. if shootings are rare events stopping one would make a
considerable difference. just because assault rifles were rarely used in past
35 years in what way does that influence a future projection? What if we had a
Vegas type event around a school? I don't really understand the thesis here

~~~
sunsunsunsun
Also, how come the incidence of these types of shootings are so much lower in
other parts of the world if there is no policy that will help prevent them?

~~~
manjushri
Law is not the only variable and is not deterministic. Social environment and
cultural values are of great influence.

The US media glorifies violence and yet censors the reality of it.

How many of those other countries with stricter gun control laws have been
involved in as many violent conflicts across the globe as the US?

~~~
pjc50
The UK has invaded everywhere and has a total ban on handguns after the school
shooting incident.

(also, perhaps surprisingly to Americans, school trained me on guns at 14:
[http://atc.wikia.com/wiki/L98A2_Cadet_GP_Rifle](http://atc.wikia.com/wiki/L98A2_Cadet_GP_Rifle)
)

~~~
manjushri
This discussion is framed around recent decades, not centuries. The US has
been far more violent than the UK on the world stage in recent decades.

------
0003
>Since 1996, there have been 16 multiple victim shootings in schools, or
incidents involving 4 or more victims and at least 2 deaths by firearms,
excluding the assailant.

17.

Literally happening just as this was posted:
[https://www.wxyz.com/news/police-responding-to-reports-of-
sh...](https://www.wxyz.com/news/police-responding-to-reports-of-shots-fired-
at-central-michigan-university)

Edit: Actually this may or may not meet the definition since their definition
requires 4 or more casualties. Still.

~~~
cimmanom
IIRC there was a wave of school shootings in 1992-96, almost a dozen total;
Columbine was the worst of them in terms of casualties, but in some ways just
the culmination of a pattern. I don't know why you would start counting
_after_ 1996.

~~~
Torgo
New York was putting metal detectors into schools in the 1980's. They were for
gangs, but I guess a school shooting is a school shooting.

------
welcome_dragon
I can only imagine the level-headed discussions this is going to spark.

------
ghufran_syed
Perhaps they should do a case control study - places that had mass shootings
vs places that didn’t? I’m pretty sure there have been no mass shootings at
gun shows or gun clubs, I wonder if there might be some relationship there
worth exploring?

~~~
pjc50
Interestingly the NRA national convention reduces gun injuries _everywhere
else_ : [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/for-
these...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/for-these-three-
days-nra-reduces-gun-injuries-research-shows)

~~~
CompanionCuuube
"In relative terms, the decline is small -- accounting for one fewer injury
for every 300,000 Americans."

~~~
DrScump
But there are 1,100 times as many Americans.

"The difference in his study amounts to a reduction of _several hundred_
injuries per convention per year"

------
mlechha
Shouldn't the comparison be made against school shootings world wide? Or at
least be normalized for overall crime rate or something?

~~~
danielvf
The numbers are so tiny that comparisons are pretty much irrelevant. Since
1996 there have been just 8 mass k-12 shootings (incidents involving 4 or more
school deaths, excluding the assailant), in a nation of 330 million people.

That's so far into small numbers territory that any comparisons are guaranteed
to be overwhelmed by noise.

~~~
pjc50
> incidents involving 4 or more school deaths

That number seems suspicious; you'd get a very different answer if your
criterion was "any gunshot wound at a school", for example. But that
definition might be a better match for what people think of as a school
shooting.

(e.g. Northern Ireland had a very large number of terrorist attacks where a
warning was given allowing evacuation - would they not count as terrorist
incidents even if nobody was killed? I suspect not)

~~~
toast0
Any gunshot would at a school probably includes a very different pattern of
behavior. If someone wants to murder (or maim) a specific person, or small
group of people, they may carry that out with a gun, because it's expedient,
but might switch to a knife if guns aren't available. If someone wants to
murder (or maim) a large number of people, guns or explosives are really the
only practical means; mass knifings have happened, but are even more rare than
mass shootings.

------
xg15
I have seen those studies pop up from time to time on HN with conclusions
altering between "it's reachin worrying proportions", "there is an increase",
"there is no increase", "they are so rare as to not worth considering".

From what I understand, the decision of what kinds of shootings are included
has a large influence on the conclusion - e.g., the "there have been 18
shootings in 2018 so far" articles from a while ago used a comparatively low
threshold for inclusion.

The threshold for this study seems to be "4 or more victims", which I think is
similar to the threshold official publications used at the beginning of the
Obama administration. I believe there were complaints that the threshold is
unreasonably high which caused it to be adjusted - however, I don't have any
sources for that ready, so if anyone knows more, please correct me.

In any case, it's important to look at the criteria if one wants to compare
those studies.

~~~
cliff_hanger
It's not clear to me why this study would set those thresholds for the
underlying data (4+ Victims & 2+ deaths), this seems to downplay the number of
incidents. At the very least there should be some explanation of why this
limit is in place, as it has a significant impact on the findings.

Closest thing I can find to an accurate data-set is here:
[https://www.kaggle.com/ecodan/us-school-shootings-
dataset/no...](https://www.kaggle.com/ecodan/us-school-shootings-
dataset/notebook). Data seems to be a blend of a northwestern study and the
wikipedia list of shootings.

~~~
xg15
Absolutely. Even if there is some research question by which this criterion
would be useful, it doesn't lead the underlying conclusions that school
shootings in general are a rare event, declining in frequency.

Interestingly, according to [1], the criterion used by the FBI to assess mass
shooting used to be "at least 4 persons killed _or_ wounded" \- until it got
changed to "at least 3 persons" in 2013. So the criterion the study uses is
stricter than both the old _and_ the new way of counting the FBI uses.

Note also that, according to [2], even though the rate of mass shooting _at
schools_ seems to be decreasing, the rate of mass shootings _in general_ is
increasing.

See also [3] for more information about the different definitions and ways of
counting.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting)

[2] [https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-
study-200...](https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-
study-2000-2013-1.pdf)

[3]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/02/anothe...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/02/another-
school-shootingbut-whos-counting/553412/)

------
crescentfresh
Help, I cannot find the actual study (paper). It's referenced (in this
article) as:

James Alan Fox and Emma E. Fridel, "The Three R's of School Shootings: Risk,
Readiness, and Response," in H. Shapiro, ed., The Wiley Handbook on Violence
in Education: Forms, Factors, and Preventions

But from Wiley's listing of papers in this volume ([https://www.wiley.com/en-
us/The+Wiley+Handbook+on+Violence+i...](https://www.wiley.com/en-
us/The+Wiley+Handbook+on+Violence+in+Education-p-9781118966679)) the only
article written by Fox and Fridel is called "The Menace of School Shootings in
America: Panic and Overresponse".

Maybe it was renamed since?

------
codemac
Why don't they have the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007?

This data seems to be missing what a lot of people would call "school
shootings".

~~~
huffmsa
I think this is k-12 only data

------
patch_collector
Based on a variety of comments here, I was curious about how many mass
shootings there have been over the years. Mother Jones had a list that looked
pretty good (well cited). I put it into a graph, which I think makes it a lot
easier to understand.

Reasonable additions to this might be adding a line for type of weapon used.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mwNeZ_KHL_nLd85eOeI-...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mwNeZ_KHL_nLd85eOeI-
ZATaiUFpkaZ3nTlw8ujZXtc/edit?usp=sharing)

------
dv_dt
Compared to the US in the past schools are safer, but in terms of school
killings compared to those in other nations, the US is still ridiculously
high.

[https://qz.com/37015/how-school-killings-in-the-us-stack-
up-...](https://qz.com/37015/how-school-killings-in-the-us-stack-up-
against-36-other-countries-put-together/)

------
bhldr
Can we get the word 'american' inserted in the title. It's a very local
problem.

------
dmritard96
Personally not sure I care about a 90s baseline at all.

And most relevantly, the difference now is access to information
anywhere/everywhere and in more detail/angle/opinion without a lot of latency.

------
epanchin
This is garbage.

A drop in the number of deaths might just demonstrate an improvement in
emergency medical procedures.

------
Tech-Noir
Analysis of two decades in the UK, where in 1997 they banned video games and
mental illness:

    
    
        1996: 16 children and their teacher shot dead
        1997-2018: 0 shot dead

~~~
ng-user
How does a nation ban mental illness?

~~~
d0lph
And I'm pretty sure the UK still has video games?

~~~
Tech-Noir
Sorry, it was a reference to some people claiming the causes of gun sprees are
video games or mental illness.

In fact in 1997 the UK simply banned handguns.

~~~
ng-user
Thanks for the clarification, I also did not realize the sarcasm.

------
adammichaelc
The data they use in the study, don’t match the data gathered by the
community.

There is a clear upward-trend since the 60’s.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States)

~~~
danielvf
I looked through that list, and once you filter out the non-school deaths, it
seem to line up with the article.

For example, Rancho Tehama Reserve, California is listed as six deaths, but
that was a shooter who killed five adults at other locations, then fired at a
locked down school, injuring one student, before killing himself. So zero
students killed. There are quite a few like that in the list.

