3 ms·

I'm guessing from the rivers thing you probably didn't live anywhere near a major city. Kids getting shot isn't even remotely a new thing. In fact, it's quite a

I'm guessing from the rivers thing you probably didn't live anywhere near a major city. Kids getting shot isn't even remotely a new thing. In fact, it's quite a bit less common now than in the 80s and early 90s. I wasn't exactly inner city, just LA suburbs, but my middle school still experienced three drive-bys while I was there. I knew four kids who were murdered before we graduated and another who shot himself when we were 12. We were banned from wearing red, blue, or Raiders jerseys because the school district was so paranoid we'd get shot. Guns being used for something other than hunting has been around a long time. The 70s were really when it first started to take off, largely because that was when street gangs started taking over domestic drug trade and they suddenly became much better funded and better armed.

matwood 4y ago
You're right, and I should have been more clear with the nuance I was trying to get across. Growing up, guns being used to indiscriminately kill other people was something that happened somewhere else, often associated with drugs/gangs. Even in my smaller city, there were simply some places you didn't go. But, no one considered kids showing up to a school and shooting people. Then Columbine happened which brought it out of the the big/inner city and into everyone's backyard. And around a decade later, Sandy Hook. And to the original post, there's also an income inequality component. More well off parents probably felt (rightly or wrongly) they could move to a safer place. That feeling has been eroded through school shootings, no matter how statistically insignificant they are.