Tough to watch and read, but necessary. The stress of that situation must be unbelievable. I can’t imagine the feeling of the door being opened and not knowing if it’s the police or shooter. It’s...
Tough to watch and read, but necessary. The stress of that situation must be unbelievable. I can’t imagine the feeling of the door being opened and not knowing if it’s the police or shooter.
It’s hard to keep up. There was the shooting in NC just a few days ago and then this. It barely even makes the news anymore. Or rather, it’s so omnipresent it doesn’t even make a splash unless there’s a large amount of fatalities. I can only speak for myself, but I hardly even register it any more when I get a news notification, and that’s terrible.
I know that these incidents are vanishingly small, and that most gun deaths are from hand guns or suicides, and that you have more of a chance of dying on the drive to school than in a shooting. I know all of these things, but it is hardly a comfort. Somethings got to change, and we need to look at everything. We need better mental health awareness and access to treatments and healthcare, but that can’t be the whole story. We need to look at guns too and see how we can limit guns getting into the hands of unstable people, while still preserving other’s rights. Everything has to be on the table (and not just to address these incidents, but all gun deaths regardless of the source).
The media has started reporting on shootings with smaller body counts. "School shooting" used to be reserved for incidents with a high body count. These days, any incident with a gun on school...
The media has started reporting on shootings with smaller body counts. "School shooting" used to be reserved for incidents with a high body count. These days, any incident with a gun on school grounds is called a "school shooting."
That may be the case, but to be honest any incident involving a gun at school, especially those that result in a death, are concerning. It seems particularly ridiculous to me to draw an arbitrary...
That may be the case, but to be honest any incident involving a gun at school, especially those that result in a death, are concerning. It seems particularly ridiculous to me to draw an arbitrary line between "low" and "high" body counts when we're talking about body counts at a school, and then to use that arbitrary distinction to dismiss a problem. I suppose this really applies to all mass shootings, of which school shootings are a small portion (which is another ridiculous statement when you think about it), but still.
However you want to look at it, what we're doing to address these incidents just isn't effective. Calling every incident with a gun at a school a massacre isn't helping.
However you want to look at it, what we're doing to address these incidents just isn't effective. Calling every incident with a gun at a school a massacre isn't helping.
okay but, when does the media do this, exactly? you're going to need to back up this claim that the media calls "every incident with a gun at a school a massacre" because i have a strong suspicion...
Calling every incident with a gun at a school a massacre isn't helping.
okay but, when does the media do this, exactly? you're going to need to back up this claim that the media calls "every incident with a gun at a school a massacre" because i have a strong suspicion that even if you qualified that, it'd still be bullshit.
This website has some numbers. So does TOW Here's a "school shooting" where nobody was injured. Here's another. And another one! Google is your friend, buddy.
this is... pitiful, honestly. let's recap what you just gave me: two lists that aren't media and simply aim to give readouts of all the incidents and shootings of this nature at school, not making...
this is... pitiful, honestly. let's recap what you just gave me:
two lists that aren't media and simply aim to give readouts of all the incidents and shootings of this nature at school, not making any pretenses about the severity of the incidents in question.
a story from 2009 about the sentencing (not the actual incident) of a student who fired an assault rifle into the ceiling of his school, then literally tried to repeatedly shoot his principal and was only foiled because his gun was defective (He also tried repeatedly to shoot principal Stephen Gilbreth at near-point-blank range as Gilbreth ushered him out of the school. Joplin police say the attempt was foiled by an improperly seated ammunition clip in the rifle. No one was injured.) no pretenses about a massacre going on here.
a story from 2008 which makes no pretenses about being about a mass shooting, makes no claim of being about a massacre (just an averted tragedy), and is a plain interview with the person who talked the student down
and a 2012 shooting which was also a potential hostage situation that was averted because of a teacher quickly lunging at a student armed with an assault rifle and pinning him until police could arrive after he fired several shots into the air and started threatening people, again with no claims or pretenses of being about a massacre.
you're literally just proving my point for me. you claim the media is calling every incident a massacre and overblowing things, but none of these are even particularly bombastic, much less actively calling the incidents in question massacres.
To be fair to @alyaza, you claimed that the media treats "every incident with a gun at a school a massacre", and your links don't really back that up. They refer to these shootings that happen at...
To be fair to @alyaza, you claimed that the media treats "every incident with a gun at a school a massacre", and your links don't really back that up. They refer to these shootings that happen at schools as school shootings, because that's what they are. Just as we might refer to a drive by shooting as a shooting that happens in a car, even if no one is injured. This is just terminology and I don't think it obfuscates the issue here.
If the media was treating these as massacres, especially when there were no injuries, you might have a point. But again, none of those links have supported that claim. Two of those links seem to be relatively locally reported at that, which again is a completely reasonable thing. Local media often reports on all types of shootings regardless of location.
Your criticisms seems to me that "shooting that happens at school" is different than a "school shooting", because a "school shooting" has to have a high body count. But the only reason there is that association in the first place is because there have been a decent amount of high profile "massacre" like shootings. And none of this is to mention that any school shooting is an issue, especially when shots are fired indiscriminately or the shooter does not have a single target. If there's someone with a gun at your school, the fact that they were just targeting one person they had a conflict with isn't going to alleviate any of the psychological harm caused of thinking that serious injury or death is imminent for ~20-40 min, if not longer.
i'm not getting this criticism, to be honest. the media isn't allowed to call a school shooting a school shooting because it doesn't meet a basically arbitrary high body count criteria?
The media has started reporting on shootings with smaller body counts. "School shooting" used to be reserved for incidents with a high body count.
i'm not getting this criticism, to be honest. the media isn't allowed to call a school shooting a school shooting because it doesn't meet a basically arbitrary high body count criteria?
These incidents used to fly under the media radar as shootings that just happened to occur at a school. It was drama that got brought to school, and typically had very little (if anything) to do...
These incidents used to fly under the media radar as shootings that just happened to occur at a school. It was drama that got brought to school, and typically had very little (if anything) to do with the school itself. It was usually some stupid argument over a girl, or gang violence. Now, every incident with a gun on school grounds is portrayed as another Columbine even if it's just an idiot popping a few shots into a wall. We've even had the media reporting on shootings where nobody was injured simply because it was another "school shooting." The motivations of the perpetrators are relevant. If it's a hot headed teenager pissy about getting oregano then it shouldn't count as a "school shooting." Only the incidents where the perpetrator intends to murder a large number of random people should qualify.
...i'm sorry, are you saying that the media should not report on a shooting which killed one person and injured eight people because it's not subjectively large enough for your liking to...
These incidents used to fly under the media radar as shootings that just happened to occur at a school.
...i'm sorry, are you saying that the media should not report on a shooting which killed one person and injured eight people because it's not subjectively large enough for your liking to constitute a school shooting the media should report on? what? we're really not talking some asshole popping three holes in the wall here.
if they can report on what they like, then they're at free will to make it or not make it a national headline. more importantly though, you're still not really answering my point here: what basis...
if they can report on what they like, then they're at free will to make it or not make it a national headline. more importantly though, you're still not really answering my point here: what basis do you give for something like this not being a national story? mass shootings of this style are almost unheard of outside of the US and countries which are involved in things like civil wars. i think there's a better case to be made that we should give more weight to stories like this than the other way around, actually, because they're so anomalous. literally no other developed country has a comparable issue with violence of this sort at and around schools.
I get your point. There is definitely a distinction between a gang fight incident or external rivalry brought on to school grounds and a student who arrives to school to get the students just...
I get your point. There is definitely a distinction between a gang fight incident or external rivalry brought on to school grounds and a student who arrives to school to get the students just because. And generally the term "school shooting" has come to mean the latter rather than the former in my mind too; although I think we should be using the term "Mass shooting".
In any case, you guys have far to many shootings of all kinds in schools.
Living somewhere that a student being caught BRINGING an unloaded gun to school and never even pulling it out in anger would be front page news... your country is sick. As in there is a deep...
Living somewhere that a student being caught BRINGING an unloaded gun to school and never even pulling it out in anger would be front page news... your country is sick. As in there is a deep seated illness in it that is causing you all significant harm. I don't say that in the way of 'your country is worse than my country', I say it in the way that a doctor would tell a patient they have a problem they need to stop everything and deal with right the fuck now.
The fact it is even possible to spin that as media sensationalism like you did is utterly incomprehensible to me.
I posted about it on a group chat im in and one of the Americans there replied "I'm surprised such a small shooting made it to the news in Australia" Are Americans really so desensitised that...
I posted about it on a group chat im in and one of the Americans there replied "I'm surprised such a small shooting made it to the news in Australia"
Are Americans really so desensitised that there is such a thing as "Just a small school shooting"?
yes, although i don't think it's necessarily a result of desensitization--more that we have a lot of data points to draw from. just owing to their nature, most school shootings can be fairly...
Are Americans really so desensitised that there is such a thing as "Just a small school shooting"?
yes, although i don't think it's necessarily a result of desensitization--more that we have a lot of data points to draw from. just owing to their nature, most school shootings can be fairly easily categorized as either large or small casualty affairs, with relatively few falling in the middle. take for example school shootings and incidents since 2015: purely from most fatalities to least, we can see a progression of 17, 10, 10, 6, 3, lot of small incidents; from 2010-2014 we see a similar progression of 28, 7, 6, 5, 3, lot of small incidents; and from 2000-2010 we see another similar progression of 33, 10, 6, 6, 4, lot of small incidents. if you add in injuries this gets more complicated, but you sorta get my idea. going against the standard of the big school shootings, 1 fatality and 8 injuries is relatively small.
I am so happy this was not a thing (and still isn't a thing) where I am from, because that was honestly terrifying just reading it. I still feel a bit off a few minutes after reading it.
I am so happy this was not a thing (and still isn't a thing) where I am from, because that was honestly terrifying just reading it. I still feel a bit off a few minutes after reading it.
Same, and still... I remember, since Columbine, sometimes having those panicky thoughts in the back of my head, what if it happened here? It's honestly something I'm glad I no longer have to worry...
Same, and still... I remember, since Columbine, sometimes having those panicky thoughts in the back of my head, what if it happened here? It's honestly something I'm glad I no longer have to worry about, yet at what type of public space hasn't been a shooting in recent years? Damn.
Ok, I'm a childless male and have been out of HS since the Columbine days but 50 drills in 5 years sounds like a crazy amount. Considering out for summer that is once a month for the last 5 years....
Ok, I'm a childless male and have been out of HS since the Columbine days but 50 drills in 5 years sounds like a crazy amount. Considering out for summer that is once a month for the last 5 years. We never did tornado or earthquake drills but maybe 2 times a year. If you did it monthly it would seem like it'd be so much easier to take less seriously.
So kids, do you all do Active Shooter drills monthly in school now or is this place an overachiever?
Teacher speaking. When they first started rolling them out we did several each year, though most of those were staff-only. We also tended to parcel one drill out into pieces, with a pre-conference...
Teacher speaking. When they first started rolling them out we did several each year, though most of those were staff-only. We also tended to parcel one drill out into pieces, with a pre-conference the day before to get the kids used to the idea, and a post-conference to ensure they were emotionally okay. As such, a single "drill" could technically count as more than one if you look at it that way. Even with the most generous of assumptions though, 50 sounds excessive enough to be completely inaccurate. I've done maybe 12-15 in my career total, and I've been teaching since before they were standard practice. Unless it was policy for the district to run it regularly, I question that detail.
Tough to watch and read, but necessary. The stress of that situation must be unbelievable. I can’t imagine the feeling of the door being opened and not knowing if it’s the police or shooter.
It’s hard to keep up. There was the shooting in NC just a few days ago and then this. It barely even makes the news anymore. Or rather, it’s so omnipresent it doesn’t even make a splash unless there’s a large amount of fatalities. I can only speak for myself, but I hardly even register it any more when I get a news notification, and that’s terrible.
I know that these incidents are vanishingly small, and that most gun deaths are from hand guns or suicides, and that you have more of a chance of dying on the drive to school than in a shooting. I know all of these things, but it is hardly a comfort. Somethings got to change, and we need to look at everything. We need better mental health awareness and access to treatments and healthcare, but that can’t be the whole story. We need to look at guns too and see how we can limit guns getting into the hands of unstable people, while still preserving other’s rights. Everything has to be on the table (and not just to address these incidents, but all gun deaths regardless of the source).
The media has started reporting on shootings with smaller body counts. "School shooting" used to be reserved for incidents with a high body count. These days, any incident with a gun on school grounds is called a "school shooting."
That may be the case, but to be honest any incident involving a gun at school, especially those that result in a death, are concerning. It seems particularly ridiculous to me to draw an arbitrary line between "low" and "high" body counts when we're talking about body counts at a school, and then to use that arbitrary distinction to dismiss a problem. I suppose this really applies to all mass shootings, of which school shootings are a small portion (which is another ridiculous statement when you think about it), but still.
However you want to look at it, what we're doing to address these incidents just isn't effective. Calling every incident with a gun at a school a massacre isn't helping.
okay but, when does the media do this, exactly? you're going to need to back up this claim that the media calls "every incident with a gun at a school a massacre" because i have a strong suspicion that even if you qualified that, it'd still be bullshit.
This website has some numbers.
So does TOW
Here's a "school shooting" where nobody was injured.
Here's another.
And another one!
Google is your friend, buddy.
this is... pitiful, honestly. let's recap what you just gave me:
you're literally just proving my point for me. you claim the media is calling every incident a massacre and overblowing things, but none of these are even particularly bombastic, much less actively calling the incidents in question massacres.
To be fair to @alyaza, you claimed that the media treats "every incident with a gun at a school a massacre", and your links don't really back that up. They refer to these shootings that happen at schools as school shootings, because that's what they are. Just as we might refer to a drive by shooting as a shooting that happens in a car, even if no one is injured. This is just terminology and I don't think it obfuscates the issue here.
If the media was treating these as massacres, especially when there were no injuries, you might have a point. But again, none of those links have supported that claim. Two of those links seem to be relatively locally reported at that, which again is a completely reasonable thing. Local media often reports on all types of shootings regardless of location.
Your criticisms seems to me that "shooting that happens at school" is different than a "school shooting", because a "school shooting" has to have a high body count. But the only reason there is that association in the first place is because there have been a decent amount of high profile "massacre" like shootings. And none of this is to mention that any school shooting is an issue, especially when shots are fired indiscriminately or the shooter does not have a single target. If there's someone with a gun at your school, the fact that they were just targeting one person they had a conflict with isn't going to alleviate any of the psychological harm caused of thinking that serious injury or death is imminent for ~20-40 min, if not longer.
i'm not getting this criticism, to be honest. the media isn't allowed to call a school shooting a school shooting because it doesn't meet a basically arbitrary high body count criteria?
These incidents used to fly under the media radar as shootings that just happened to occur at a school. It was drama that got brought to school, and typically had very little (if anything) to do with the school itself. It was usually some stupid argument over a girl, or gang violence. Now, every incident with a gun on school grounds is portrayed as another Columbine even if it's just an idiot popping a few shots into a wall. We've even had the media reporting on shootings where nobody was injured simply because it was another "school shooting." The motivations of the perpetrators are relevant. If it's a hot headed teenager pissy about getting oregano then it shouldn't count as a "school shooting." Only the incidents where the perpetrator intends to murder a large number of random people should qualify.
...i'm sorry, are you saying that the media should not report on a shooting which killed one person and injured eight people because it's not subjectively large enough for your liking to constitute a school shooting the media should report on? what? we're really not talking some asshole popping three holes in the wall here.
They can report on whatever the like, but these incidents shouldn't be making national headlines.
if they can report on what they like, then they're at free will to make it or not make it a national headline. more importantly though, you're still not really answering my point here: what basis do you give for something like this not being a national story? mass shootings of this style are almost unheard of outside of the US and countries which are involved in things like civil wars. i think there's a better case to be made that we should give more weight to stories like this than the other way around, actually, because they're so anomalous. literally no other developed country has a comparable issue with violence of this sort at and around schools.
I get your point. There is definitely a distinction between a gang fight incident or external rivalry brought on to school grounds and a student who arrives to school to get the students just because. And generally the term "school shooting" has come to mean the latter rather than the former in my mind too; although I think we should be using the term "Mass shooting".
In any case, you guys have far to many shootings of all kinds in schools.
Living somewhere that a student being caught BRINGING an unloaded gun to school and never even pulling it out in anger would be front page news... your country is sick. As in there is a deep seated illness in it that is causing you all significant harm. I don't say that in the way of 'your country is worse than my country', I say it in the way that a doctor would tell a patient they have a problem they need to stop everything and deal with right the fuck now.
The fact it is even possible to spin that as media sensationalism like you did is utterly incomprehensible to me.
I posted about it on a group chat im in and one of the Americans there replied "I'm surprised such a small shooting made it to the news in Australia"
Are Americans really so desensitised that there is such a thing as "Just a small school shooting"?
yes, although i don't think it's necessarily a result of desensitization--more that we have a lot of data points to draw from. just owing to their nature, most school shootings can be fairly easily categorized as either large or small casualty affairs, with relatively few falling in the middle. take for example school shootings and incidents since 2015: purely from most fatalities to least, we can see a progression of 17, 10, 10, 6, 3, lot of small incidents; from 2010-2014 we see a similar progression of 28, 7, 6, 5, 3, lot of small incidents; and from 2000-2010 we see another similar progression of 33, 10, 6, 6, 4, lot of small incidents. if you add in injuries this gets more complicated, but you sorta get my idea. going against the standard of the big school shootings, 1 fatality and 8 injuries is relatively small.
I am so happy this was not a thing (and still isn't a thing) where I am from, because that was honestly terrifying just reading it. I still feel a bit off a few minutes after reading it.
Same, and still... I remember, since Columbine, sometimes having those panicky thoughts in the back of my head, what if it happened here? It's honestly something I'm glad I no longer have to worry about, yet at what type of public space hasn't been a shooting in recent years? Damn.
Ok, I'm a childless male and have been out of HS since the Columbine days but 50 drills in 5 years sounds like a crazy amount. Considering out for summer that is once a month for the last 5 years. We never did tornado or earthquake drills but maybe 2 times a year. If you did it monthly it would seem like it'd be so much easier to take less seriously.
So kids, do you all do Active Shooter drills monthly in school now or is this place an overachiever?
Teacher speaking. When they first started rolling them out we did several each year, though most of those were staff-only. We also tended to parcel one drill out into pieces, with a pre-conference the day before to get the kids used to the idea, and a post-conference to ensure they were emotionally okay. As such, a single "drill" could technically count as more than one if you look at it that way. Even with the most generous of assumptions though, 50 sounds excessive enough to be completely inaccurate. I've done maybe 12-15 in my career total, and I've been teaching since before they were standard practice. Unless it was policy for the district to run it regularly, I question that detail.