School Shootings: How Safe Are Your Children? 5/25/18

Recent Tragedies

Earlier today there was a shooting in Indiana, where a student and teacher were both injured. May 18th, 2018 there was another shooting in Texas where there were 10 fatalities and 10 injuries occurred. CNN has created a list of shootings in 2018 here.

The Statistics of School Shootings

In the Washington Post there was an article that said "the statistical likelihood of any given public school student being killed by a gun, in school, on any given day since 1999 was roughly 1 in 614,000,000. And since the 1990s, shootings at schools have been getting less common.

Is the Media Doing More Harm Than Good?

Recently there has been a lot of media coverage and attention surrounding school shootings. This past month Netflix released the 2nd season to 13 Reasons Why. This show was created to get people talking about issues like this. *spoilers ahead*. In this season one student is followed and eventually this student plans a mass school shooting. 

In Psychology Today there was an article from 2012 about how media coverage can glorify the idea of school shootings by doing the following:

1. They named the shooter.
2. They described his characteristics.
3. They detailed the crime.
4. They numbered the victims.
5. They ranked him against other “successful” attackers.

The American Psychological Association created an article about how certain coverage of school shootings can lead to an increase of mass shootings they call this "media contagion". They predict that "we should see at least a one-third reduction in shootings if the contagion is removed.”

Created by Huffington Post in June of 2014

How to Be Prepared?

Schools are aware of the risk of school shootings, and this is one of the reasons students will engage in lockdown drills. These drills are created to help inform the children what to do if there is a threat in or near the school. 

ALICE Training Institute created a program to "provide preparation and a plan" to individuals and organizations to use.
As with most things, there are many opinions of what should be done if you are in an active shooter situation. One common piece of advice is the saying “run, hide, fight.” WikiHow illustrates this here. Basically, if you can escape do so. If not, hide. If that isn't an option, then fight as a last resort. One of the best things your child can do is follow the instructions that they are given by authority figure.

Additional Resources

As an additional resource on school shootings, check out More Parents Buy Bulletproof Backpacks Before 2019-2020 School Year,  by The Carlson Law Firm. 

The following infographics come from ALICE Training Institute