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School shootings are tragic but rare

Being prepared shouldn’t mean traumatizing kids

By James Alan Fox, Updated September 18, 2024

According to a Gallup poll published last month, as many as 44% of parents are concerned for their child’s safety while at school, a level of fear as high as any time since the shooting at Columbine High School a quarter century ago. The recent massacre at a Georgia high school may only intensify those fears.

What’s causing such anxiety, which is arguably well out of proportion with the risk? It is due at least in part to the alarming figures on the prevalence of school shootings, statistics that are often mischaracterized and easily misunderstood.

The widely cited K-12 School Shooting Database, for example, indicates that there were 349 school shootings in 2023 — increasing almost threefold since 2018 when both the Parkland, Fla., and Santa Fe, Texas, massacres rocked the nation. No wonder parents are nervous.

Although the numbers are accurate, what constitutes a school shooting surely does not align with what parents are thinking. Included are shootings that take place inside school as well as outside on school grounds, that occur during school hours as well as evenings or weekends, that result in injury or death as well as those in which no one is harmed and that victimize students or school personnel as well as those having no connection to the school.

From 2018 through 2023, the K-12 database shows more than 1,200 shootings, just over half resulting in any injury or death. Only half of these victims were students or staff members. Of the more than 600 shootings involving victim injuries or fatalities, one-quarter occurred during school hours and only 11% took place inside the confines of the school building.

That 9 out of 10 school shootings involving casualties happen on school grounds — at school but not in school — is especially noteworthy. The overwhelming majority of the frightening tally of school shootings has no relevance to most of the security measures that parents and politicians advocate, like metal detectors, locks on classroom doors and lockdown drills.

Of course, even one fatality is too many, and we mustn’t overlook the 116 students who never returned home from school during the past six years, regardless of where and when they were shot. However, the yearly average of about 19 student fatalities is out of approximately 50 million schoolchildren. For context, children are many times more likely to die by drowning than by a school shooter’s bullet.

What is particularly unnerving for parents is the prospect of an active shooter roaming the school halls, firing off dozens of rounds indiscriminately.

Between 2018 and 2023, according to FBI data, there were 13 active shooter incidents in K-12 schools, claiming the lives of 65 students and staff members. The average of two active-shooter events each year in schools across America is out of 130,000 schools. Although these episodes are undeniably terrifying, they are also undeniably rare, not justifying the all too frequent and much too realistic drills in which students are mandated to participate.

Do students really need to practice over and over again how to sit quietly in a corner of their classroom? Is there really the need to traumatize students by engaging in a simulated attack, complete with fake blood and a pretend assailant? Can’t we just verbally instruct students on safety protocols (like flight attendants do for passengers right before takeoff) and quiz them for understanding and recall?

There are proponents of repetitive lockdown drills who argue that they are no different than the fire drills forced upon students for generations. However, fire drills aren’t disturbing in the absence of any fake smoke. Plus, who can even recall the last time there was a fatal school fire in America?

Our overemphasis on school shootings by both word and deed has had the counterproductive effect of scaring students about something that in all likelihood will not happen.

However, in the process of trying to protect them through tight security and lockdown drills, we send the message that the bad guy is out to get them — that there is a target on their backs. This is hardly conducive for learning and good mental health.

James Alan Fox is a criminologist at Northeastern University and author of Violence and Security on Campus: From Preschool through College.
He wrote this for The Dallas Morning News.
Website: https://jamesalanfox.com
Follow him on Twitter @jamesalanfox
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChjnRFAoQJt6sQTSRp1uozw

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