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March 2020 was the first March without a school shooting in the U.S. since 2002
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoBad statistic. School has been either cancelled or online. It's be like saying "No electrocutions" in the 1700s or no "social media anything's in the 1800s".
- tylermac1 7y agoSchool wasn't cancelled nationwide in early March. My area didn't cancel school until March 15th.
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- asdflksdmfskd 7y agoThat's not what it's saying. The headline is suggesting it's notable that there has been a school shooting each March since 2003.
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoWhat's more interesting is how starkly negative and hypocritical HN is. Yes, children are murdering other children with guns in school. If that mattered, we collectively would have done something to stop that. Politically, it didn't matter. Children were acceptable casualties for 'muricans' to have guns. And politically, it's a pointless battle be it online -or- in person. HN certainly makes a point in not doing flamewars.. not much more flames can be stoked than with a gun debate with US politics (well, abortion). So, I looked at their "statistic", in a dry scientific manner. Of course there's no gun violence at schools. They're cancelled or online.
- havenbarnes 7y agoPretty sure that’s the main point of the article. It took a global pandemic for us to not have a shooting
- ravenstine 7y agoIt's a statistic, but not terribly useful. I wouldn't consider ongoing pandemic lockdowns as some sort of solution for what comes down to a cultural problem. Incidentally, we made the problem go away artificially, but that doesn't mean that we really know anything as a result besides that school shootings don't happen when there's no school to shoot up.
- stabbles 7y agoThe point of the article is to explain the happy statistical exception
- gdulli 7y agoRight. The takeaway isn't that it's a victory for gun control. It's that under the status quo, it takes an absence of school attendance for there to be an absence of shootings.
- Davidzheng 7y agoI also think this is a stupid statistic, who the hell is counting the first March since blah year?
- HBKXNCUO 7y agoThat may have reduced the likelihood, but closing them down would not prevent incidents from showing up in this list. For instance, check https://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/violent-deaths-and-school-shootings/school-deaths-2004-2005/ https://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/violent-deaths-and-sch... >March 16, 2005: Covington, KY >A man was shot to death and two people were wounded in an altercation about 40 yards from an elementary school. The school went into a lockdown. The incident did not involve individuals associated with the school, but a teacher at the school had heard the shots and the school was locked down to protect students and staff. The shooting only needs to take place near the school to make it on the list, and by the way this was the only gun-related injury in March on that list.
- drocer88 7y agoThere were a lot of firsts in March 2020.
- prophesi 7y ago"there were a total of seven shootings that took place on school campuses in March 2020. Four of those shootings were classified as unintentional discharges, one took place between adults on a high school football field over the weekend and two occurred on college campuses but involved no students." I find it odd that these don't count, and that they happened in the first place.
- knowaveragejoe 7y agoWhen you include these kinds of incidents in the tallies of "shootings", the picture looks even worse for the US as a whole.
- zepto 7y agoThese kinds of events are in fact normally counted. A veteran committing suicide in the parking lot of a long disused school counts as a ‘school shooting’. It’s dishonest.
- ccffpphh 7y agoMost "school shootings" which are counted in statistics are actually events like this - incidents of violence which simply happen to occur near an educational institution such as universities.
- 1123581321 7y agoSchool shootings refer to mass killings or attempted killings directed at fellow students and staff, usually indiscriminately. Adding “normal” homicides, suicides, gang violence and accidents that could happen anywhere, and that happen due to ancient, well understood motivations, would be too noisy and create the need for a new statistic and term that exclude them.
- xbmcuser 7y agoAnywhere is a misnomer in this case as no other country has such a gun culture so anywhere in the US is probably more appropriate.
- llort2 7y agoEveryone should be carrying pistols on them - California laws be damned.
- clarkmoody 7y agoTwo obvious things: - Schools weren't opened for most of the month - Article is pushing an anti-gun agenda (not surprising for CBS) What is glaringly omitted: how is a "school shooting" defined? The article mentioned some event that happened on campus (in the football field), which probably counts as a "school shooting" knowing the source of the data is an anti gun rights group. I wouldn't be surprised if the definition is quite broad so as to boost the stats. So this is obvious narrative-pushing. But I might counter with, "See, this is a great reason to keep the schools closed. Look at the reduction in school shootings!" Which would fit right in with the level of discourse in American politics. On a meta level, I'm genuinely curious how people's attitudes have changed throughout the COVID pandemic, not only about guns, but about homeschooling, privacy, surveillance, time with family, etc, etc.
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- pjc50 7y agoI mean, yes, there's a "narrative" being "pushed" that kids getting shot dead is bad and unnecessary, and more or less unique to the US and active warzones, so perhaps (like the pandemic) you should do something about it rather than just count the bodies? Or in the case of Alex Jones, libel the parents of the victims?
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- GCSAQCMIYI 7y agoAccording to the article's sources, how many students or teachers were injured in a school shooting in, say, March 2006?
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- rhizome 7y agoYou betray your own politics with the word "agenda," but taking you at face value, what's wrong with being anti-gun?
- Rebelgecko 7y agoUnless my reading comprehension is off this morning, that claim seems incredibly misleading. It seems like they're using two different definitions of school shooting. Even though there have been multiple shootings at schools in March of 2020, it's been decided none of them count because they either didn't involve students or because they were caused by negligence and not a desire to intentionally harm someone. However they're not judging other years as stringently. I spot checked a few years in their cited sources[1][2] and about half the years I looked at seemed iffy. For example, look at their data for 2009. Neither of their "school shootings" actually happened at a school. For 2004, the only school shooting was a suicide, which is technically a school shooting but probably less of a threat to students than the 4 shootings at school this March that were caused by negligent discharges. The only incident they have for 2006[3] was someone who was beaten to death, not sure how that counts as a shooting. (QUICK EDIT, I'm wrong about this one, I thought the events were listed in chronological order but they aren't so I missed some actual shootings) [1]: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED519244.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED519244.pdf [2]: https://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/violent-deaths-and-school-shootings/ https://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/violent-deaths-and-sch... [3]: https://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/violent-deaths-and-school-shootings/school-deaths-2005-2006/ https://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/violent-deaths-and-sch...
- zepto 7y agoYes, this is exactly what they are doing.
- garblegarble 7y agoThe shooting in March 2003 also seems to be a suicide attempt
- pmdulaney 7y agoI protest the flagging of any article on Hacker News as being antithetical to the ethos of free speech. It is unbecoming that HN allows flagging.