Posted: 20 Feb 2018 01:23 PM PST
(John Hinderaker)
"multiple bogus “statistics” about the frequency of school shootings have been peddled relentlessly. James Fox at USA Today does a good job of debunking them:
We were informed, for example, that since 2013 there has been an average of one school shooting a week in the U.S., and 18 since the beginning of this year. While these statistics were not exactly lies or fake news, they involved stretching the definition of a school shooting well beyond the limits of most people’s imagination.
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Nearly half of the 290 were completed or attempted suicides, accidental discharges of a gun, or shootings with not a single individual being injured. Of the remainder, the vast majority involved either one fatality or none at all.
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Since 1990, there have been 22 shootings at elementary and secondary schools in which two or more people were killed, not counting those perpetrators who committed suicide.Whereas five of these incidents have occurred over the past five-plus years since 2013, claiming the lives of 27 victims (17 at Parkland), the latter half of the 1990s witnessed seven multiple-fatality shootings with a total of 33 killed (13 at Columbine).In fact, the 1997-98 school year was so awful, with four multiple-fatality shooting sprees at the hands of armed students (in Pearl, Miss.; West Paducah, Ky.; Jonesboro, Ariz.; and Springfield, Ore.), that then-President Clinton formed a White House expert committee to advise him.
If better security is needed at public schools, let’s have better security. But I don’t see anyone on the Left talking about that, just as no one on the Left seems to be talking about failures of law enforcement or our mental health system.
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