A homeless guy shot another homeless guy on my university campus a few weeks ago. It's hard to consider that a school shooting even though it happened on-campus.
Calling a crime-related shooting in the parking lot of a school at 1am on a Saturday a school shooting is not what most people are discussing when talking about school shootings.
If you're going to count shootings at universities as school shootings, then it's reasonable to include shootings that happen over the weekend, because they still have students around on the weekends and at night.
You're being obtuse. Assuming GP is stating the truth and it happened in a school's parking lot in the middle of the night, then the entire location is incidental and not meaningful in the least.
It's simply not helpful to group them with the shootings that happen during school hours and target students/staff.
No, not really. Think about it: who is somehow trying to argue away school shootings based on arbitrary assertions? Do you think you can argue away the gun violence out of school grounds?
I would dare say that gun violence is bad all around, but here we are, trying to argue that some episodes should not count because of reasons. That would certainly reassure those attending those schools, as well as their family and communities.
Arguing that gun violence is bad all round is fine. But this isn't that? It's exploiting the special emotive value of the term "school shooting" - something that will obviously be read to refer to a specific kind of circumstance that everyone understands - in an attempt to colour as many possible instances of gun violence with the seriousness with which the authors think they should be regarded. Or so it seems to me.
> Calling a crime-related shooting in the parking lot of a school at 1am on a Saturday a school shooting is not what most people are discussing when talking about school shootings.
Aren't you getting it entirely backwards, though? You're faced with a crisp definition of what a school shooting is, and you're somehow invested in arguing that a shooting taking place at a school isn't a school shooting because of your own arbitrary criteria.
Arguing whether a shooting should be considered a school shooting or not feels like you're completely missing the whole point that there are shootings taking place at schools, which I would imagine would be very concerning.
I'm more inclined to count students fighting off-campus about classroom grudges than to count non-students fighting on-campus.
And the idea of counting both doesn't seem right to me.
Though I'm not sure how my expectations align, in particular when I hear "school shooting" my first expectation is that there are multiple targets, not just one person. And it's hard for me to react to this data unless I know what percentage are single-target and what percentage are multi-target.
yeah, i can’t imagine raising my kid in an environment where they could actually die from a gunshot. i don’t understand how this is so normalised in a first world country
> What are you doing, personally, to improve any of those things (beyond just wasting time on the internet)?
Pretending it's not a problem is a good start. From the looks of this thread, that seems to be a low-hanging fruit that's already out of reach for some.
Also, resorting to ad-hominem arguments is a show of bad faith. Your random person on the street has absolutely no influence on how someone has access to a gun.
Getting scared enough to change your perspective sounds like a reason to specifically not expect the people involved to be objective or correctly categorize the event.
> A homeless guy shot another homeless guy on my university campus a few weeks ago. It's hard to consider that a school shooting even though it happened on-campus.
You find it hard to consider a school shooting a shooting taking place at a school?
Let's go a different way. Say you arrive home and you hear that there was a shooting at a school. What can possibly lead you to argue "oh that doesn't count, because X" ?
> Also if you've ever been to a school like NYU, you'd naturally ask: Where does the school start and end?
Why do you believe this is any relevant? I mean, to start off can you point out which incident fits your hypothetical scenario?
> All shootings at schools includes when a gun is fired, brandished with intent to harm, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time, or day of the week.
This definition is broad enough to encompass e.g. someone barricading themselves in an apartment a few blocks away with a 5.57 rifle and shooting at the police; this happened at my daughter's HS, and a bullet did land on the campus just because the campus is large and was in the same general direction.
It also seems like it would be broad enough to include a police officer drawing their duty weapon on a student threatening another student with a knife (also happened at my daughter's HS), but I'm less sure about that.
Neither of those would be considered "school shootings" by the vast majority of the population.
Absurd that 2021-2024 saw massively more shootings than 1966-2020 combined. Clearly it’s getting out of hands. What’s the reason behind this huge rise?
No one knows for sure, but if I take the perspective of a socially alienated young person who is angry, resentful, and feels a growing desire for revenge, I would say hours of screen time, social media dynamics [1], and widespread economic insecurities only worsen the situation. It is easy to become resentful and aggressive when you are isolated and feel left behind. Additionally, it is much easier to become radicalized as an isolated individual online. I believe that in the last century, it was more difficult to become radicalized from your own bedroom, and people had more social interactions, even if they weren't actively seeking them out.
If somebody got into with somebody else after the high school football game and popped a few off before running away and nobody snitched, they're not going to find them.
Take note of the "parking lot" and "escalation of dispute" data points.
Interesting that 2% of school shooters are the school's police officer. I guess that's not surprising, since they're presumably the only person who'd regularly have a gun on campus.
Because this DB doesn’t just consist of what most people would consider a school shooting, but likely includes any discharge of a firearm on school property.
> Because this DB doesn’t just consist of what most people would consider a school shooting, but likely includes any discharge of a firearm on school property.
And that's perfectly fine. That's exactly the problem that concerns people. No one is saying "well my kid got shot but thankfully it was by the police/security guard and not a rando".
I haven't seen the raw data (and I'm surprised they require you to request it), but since 280 or so of the incidents are "accident," and since police officers have guns, I imagine a good chunk of that 2% would be police officers accidentally firing their guns.
There seems to be a disingenuous attempt by many respondents to get readers to focus on definitions and ignore the trends.
I suggest you to look at the second graph showing the fatal/wounded data pretty much mirrors the incident data. Then ask yourself if this is problematic.
>The definition used for the K-12 SSDB is: a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims (including zero), time, day of the week, or reason.
Counting yes, but the charts in the article show that the largest group of shooters is students. About 1/3 are unrelated to the school or have an “unknown” relationship .
It’s a short list of charts - worth a quick scroll through if you didn’t already.
I understand it's an emotional topic, but the article is just dry data, and flagging it (along with half the comments in this thread) was unnecessary. I wouldn't even care that much if it weren't for the fact that HN clearly penalizes accounts based on how their submissions and comments are flagged by other users. @dang could you please unflag it?
BTW the point of my submission was to highlight the anomaly that the number of school shootings (and victims) is paradoxically surging despite gun ownership declining and murder rates--while spiking after 2020--still being well-below historic highs: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/26/briefing/murder-rate.html
Not only is there obviously an uproar about pitbulls, it also has nothing to do with the topic. In fact, anecdotally, I think the majority of people I know who are pro-gun-control also think we should ban pitbull breeding.
I'm saying it's clearly people pushing an agenda when there's bigger threats. I'm pointing out that if it was truly about children dying, they would focus on bigger dangers, like suicide (#1 cause of death for teens), drugs, or Pitbulls. Yet there's constant calls to ban guns in the US. When was the last time a senator had a speech about banning Pitbulls?
Dogs who hurt people are put down. Every municipality employs people for animal control. We have "dog control" already.
I honestly can't fathom suggesting people don't pay attention to teen drug use. It takes up a lot of oxygen. Every school has some kind of drug awareness program.
Suicide prevention and mental health outreach deserve more funding and attention, but it's also incorrect to suggest they're wholly ignored.
These are also things which can be addressed by individual action. A parent can intercede if their child starts using drugs or becomes depressed. Gun violence can only be addressed collectively. By the time a child is shot, a parent can do nothing.
The usual suggestion for individual action is to become armed, but I don't think it's really a good idea for most people to own a firearm. Owning a firearm is a huge responsibility that many people aren't ready to handle. I think we all know someone who had a negligent discharge cleaning their weapon, or who struggles to control their anger. Indeed, you mentioned suicide being an issue - access to a gun is a risk factor in suicide, and most gun deaths are suicides.
You must know some very particular people, because I have met a lot of people who want gun control, but this is the first time I've ever heard someone suggest we might ban pitbulls.
COVID. People in semi house arrest mode deprived of social interaction forgot how to be decent human beings. Shortly after I left the US, I vividly recall reading the news about a 6yo shot dead in his mum's car by a road rager on the freeway, and wondered why I ever stayed in the US for so long. Dodging the Gilroy garlic festival shooting because I took over Sunday on-call for a teammate should've been the first sign.
School being back on isn't a satisfactory answer to why there's a such a large increase. It went from 124 in 2019 to 349 in 2023, nearly 3x as many shootings.
I don't know the answer but I would guess it's either Covid's social isolation effects on people, more societal stress with high inflation, an impending recession, and unknown job future for many, or Tiktok/social media becoming a bigger part of our lives.
The federal government can control what constitutes a school shooting, for example, in order to push anti-2A agenda. Idk if that's what happened here, hence the question.
> I wonder why the school shootings went up so much under Biden, and why we heard so little about it.
I think it's shootings in general [1] went up last couple of years. Could it be that there is just more awareness last couple of years so the recorded listings will up?
I would say, any shooting is one too many. I don't life in the US but I think it has nothing todo with politics.
By their definition, if an unused bullet is thrown at a brick wall on school property, that is a shooting. It doesn't even need a casing or propellent.
It's simply not helpful to group them with the shootings that happen during school hours and target students/staff.
No, not really. Think about it: who is somehow trying to argue away school shootings based on arbitrary assertions? Do you think you can argue away the gun violence out of school grounds?
I would dare say that gun violence is bad all around, but here we are, trying to argue that some episodes should not count because of reasons. That would certainly reassure those attending those schools, as well as their family and communities.
Aren't you getting it entirely backwards, though? You're faced with a crisp definition of what a school shooting is, and you're somehow invested in arguing that a shooting taking place at a school isn't a school shooting because of your own arbitrary criteria.
Arguing whether a shooting should be considered a school shooting or not feels like you're completely missing the whole point that there are shootings taking place at schools, which I would imagine would be very concerning.
And the idea of counting both doesn't seem right to me.
Though I'm not sure how my expectations align, in particular when I hear "school shooting" my first expectation is that there are multiple targets, not just one person. And it's hard for me to react to this data unless I know what percentage are single-target and what percentage are multi-target.
people are homeless
homeless guys in a school
a homeless guy in a school with a gun
a homeless guy shot another in a school
and all you care is if it's a school shooting???
wtf
am i the only one who think all of these listed above are unacceptable???
Pretending it's not a problem is a good start. From the looks of this thread, that seems to be a low-hanging fruit that's already out of reach for some.
Also, resorting to ad-hominem arguments is a show of bad faith. Your random person on the street has absolutely no influence on how someone has access to a gun.
I'm afraid there's nothing i can do to improve this
the only thing i can do is trying to avoid rationalizing it
there are so many things like this that I'm incapable of changing
You find it hard to consider a school shooting a shooting taking place at a school?
Also if you've ever been to a school like NYU, you'd naturally ask: Where does the school start and end?
How can you misuse data on school shootings?
Let's go a different way. Say you arrive home and you hear that there was a shooting at a school. What can possibly lead you to argue "oh that doesn't count, because X" ?
> Also if you've ever been to a school like NYU, you'd naturally ask: Where does the school start and end?
Why do you believe this is any relevant? I mean, to start off can you point out which incident fits your hypothetical scenario?
This definition is broad enough to encompass e.g. someone barricading themselves in an apartment a few blocks away with a 5.57 rifle and shooting at the police; this happened at my daughter's HS, and a bullet did land on the campus just because the campus is large and was in the same general direction.
It also seems like it would be broad enough to include a police officer drawing their duty weapon on a student threatening another student with a knife (also happened at my daughter's HS), but I'm less sure about that.
Neither of those would be considered "school shootings" by the vast majority of the population.
And that's perfectly fine. This criteria covers all conceivable scenarios where a kid going to school can be shot. Isn't that the whole point?
[1] Anxiety surges in GenZ around its introduction: https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/
They don't really have a future. At least not a fun one to look forward to.
Take note of the "parking lot" and "escalation of dispute" data points.
What's the success rate of catching any random shooter?
And that's perfectly fine. That's exactly the problem that concerns people. No one is saying "well my kid got shot but thankfully it was by the police/security guard and not a rando".
I suggest you to look at the second graph showing the fatal/wounded data pretty much mirrors the incident data. Then ask yourself if this is problematic.
EDIT: Here's one account of what these statistics mean for those involved: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/23/health/teacher-shooting-p...
>The definition used for the K-12 SSDB is: a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims (including zero), time, day of the week, or reason.
It’s a short list of charts - worth a quick scroll through if you didn’t already.
Do you think that shootings at school are not school shootings?
Is "gang banger" automatically racist? And even if it is, saying that data should be excluded doesn't sound like it's playing into any stereotypes.
And when they criticize the previous data collection, that's not "preconceived", it's a real observation.
Also school shootings are not really a thing outside the US, e.g. there's been a handful in Europe in this decade.
I honestly can't fathom suggesting people don't pay attention to teen drug use. It takes up a lot of oxygen. Every school has some kind of drug awareness program.
Suicide prevention and mental health outreach deserve more funding and attention, but it's also incorrect to suggest they're wholly ignored.
These are also things which can be addressed by individual action. A parent can intercede if their child starts using drugs or becomes depressed. Gun violence can only be addressed collectively. By the time a child is shot, a parent can do nothing.
The usual suggestion for individual action is to become armed, but I don't think it's really a good idea for most people to own a firearm. Owning a firearm is a huge responsibility that many people aren't ready to handle. I think we all know someone who had a negligent discharge cleaning their weapon, or who struggles to control their anger. Indeed, you mentioned suicide being an issue - access to a gun is a risk factor in suicide, and most gun deaths are suicides.
Mr. Worldwide is absolutely not known for killing children.
Bing showed me 5 varieties of doggie prozac and Trazodone
https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/health/antidepressants-for...
School shootings are down during summer too.
Depressing.
I don't know the answer but I would guess it's either Covid's social isolation effects on people, more societal stress with high inflation, an impending recession, and unknown job future for many, or Tiktok/social media becoming a bigger part of our lives.
I think it's shootings in general [1] went up last couple of years. Could it be that there is just more awareness last couple of years so the recorded listings will up?
I would say, any shooting is one too many. I don't life in the US but I think it has nothing todo with politics.
[1] https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
The surge the last 4 years is interesting, but in order to know if it's Biden or just "the kids are not alright", we'll have to wait...