Yep, it was me who said that this was the 18th "school shooting" of 2018. And that was probably a very misleading report I should not have quoted as I did not research it at all before I posted that- shame on me (seriously).
But you didn't do it
intentionally, like Everytown does it all the time. So you are forgiven! The only scary and typically relevant statistic is (1) bad kills good. But most any statistic Everytown and their like throws around include (2) bad kills bad, (3) one kills self, and (4) good kills bad. To me (and most like me) (1) being horrible/tragic/unacceptable/dangerous, (2) being "whatever, you reap what you sow", (3) being "sad but happens", and (4) being perhaps "yay!" And they know it matters
tremendously in their inaccurate messages because 2-4 often account for a
supermajority of the shootings. Then we can further muddy the water when they include "wounding" and even further when it includes "intimidation" or even just "shots fired" hitting nothing. Oh, and involving schools, another one of their favorites is to lump in gun violence that might technically be on school GROUNDS (like a sidewalk) but had no involvement at all with students or even teachers, and usually not even during school hours.
Now, to turn a completely different corner in this discussion: while tragedies such as this Florida shooting get vast amounts of attention, they are relatively rare and statistically almost insignificant in actual fact.
Not really a new corner... remember my "Fighting Lightening".... We humans seem to be programmed to horribly skew risk calculations by emotional reaction, not by examining rational facts. It is exactly the same with the "war on terror." More people are killed by bees or lawnmowers every year in the USA than foreign terrorism. And yet we now spend billions and billions of dollars, scare everyone constantly, and even suspend Constitutional rights in the name of protection from terrorism.
the risk of an American to be shot in a public school approaches zero in actual fact. It is very emotionally moving but in reality, does not reflect much actual risk in the US of attending our public school system.
And thus, doesn't necessarily warrant spending billions of dollars turning schools into oppressive, high security zones? There is one quick and easy way to greatly reduce school mass shootings and deaths. One that costs the government nothing and can be implemented almost instantly. One that not only offers resistance to such events, but even major deterrence from them even happening in the first place. One that "does something" : Allow good people to have guns there.
Which brings us to the really hard question that no one wants to state aloud: do we <really> have a gun problem in the US or is it merely exaggerated emphasis on a meaningless statistic?
I already said it out loud, more than once, actually