CNN has seem to have gone fully moronic on counting school shootings

The Coffee Shop
1

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/08/us/school-shootings-us-2019-trnd/index.html

2 of my personal favorites…

“January 30: Lithonia, Georgia
A man was injured when he was shot outside Miller Grove High School after school hours. The victim, who is not a student, was running on the school’s track when he saw someone trying to break into his vehicle. When he confronted the person, he was shot once.”

“May 4: Eugene, Oregon
A 21-year-old man died from a gunshot wound after being shot outside a fraternity house at the University of Oregon. The victim was not affiliated with the university.”

I’m not sure why they are trying to exaggerate the school shooting numbers. I think everyone agrees one is too many. It’s remarkable they published something so stupid.

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I agree with you on the first one. Is the second one a student living on the school property? The shooter I mean.

3

So if one removes the two incidents that you highlighted, there still 13 school shooting.
In the 128 days of this year, every 10 days or so, there’s another school shooting.

yes, Grant, as you said, way way to many.

4

At this rate, the Breaking News Alerts are going to be about the days there are no shootings.

5

Did you actually read through all of them. Without going back through I’d only count 2-3 as actual “school shootings” where the intent was to go kill a bunch of people at school. Most of them looked like isolated incidents between two people, where a gun happened to be used.

I just don’t see why we are inflating a number for the sake of inflating it. I guess if the talking point is guns are bad then it makes sense. But it discounts the severity of the real school shootings when you include most of the ones listed just to make it look worse.

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Did you actually read through all of them. Without going back through I’d only count 2-3 as actual “school shootings” where the intent was to go kill a bunch of people at school. Most of them looked like isolated incidents between two people, where a gun happened to be used.

I just don’t see why we are inflating a number for the sake of inflating it. I guess if the talking point is guns are bad then it makes sense. But it discounts the severity of the real school shootings when you include most of the ones listed just to make it look worse.

As stated in other threads, as a Parent with 2 college students who have both had active shootings on campus. I don’t really care if someone who’s intent is to kill 30 people, or someone just shooting to kill one other person. If that one other is your child you might change your opinion, or if they or a friend happen to get hit by the gunfire.

I don’t really care how you count them, if there even needs to be a count. This country has demonstrated over, and over, and over again. (In my words people don’t care) more accurately, people are happy with the status quo and there is no great effort to change anything.

Accept that when you kids goes off to school, they may not return. Plan to live through getting texts that their school or univ. is on lock down with an active shooter. Never thought I would be one of those starving for information, or a text to know my kid isn’t laying dead, or shot and bleeding out on their campus, but in the last 6 yrs I have gotten to live through it twice.

Now my H.S. Jr. just wrote an amazing poem/micro-fiction piece for school. About Prom ruined by a school shooting. It’s just the way of life in America try to get use to it, cause its appears its not going to change.

Back on point, if you don’t like the rules for how they count a school shooting, start your own website and make the criteria whatever you want. Maybe it only counts as a school shooting if they fire at least 10 rounds or have one bomb explode. It will be your list use your criteria, in this case its CNN’s list and as long as they clearly state what they consider to be the rules around calling it a school shooting, who am I or you to say they cant or shouldn’t.

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I don’t really care how you count them, if there even needs to be a count.

Well, it’s kind of important to understand how they’re counted if we’re going to try to fix a problem. A mass shooting where someone comes to a school with the intent to kill indiscriminately has a different cause and therefore a different fix than a gang beef that results in two thugs shooting at each other, which is also different than a bullied kid who finally cracks and decides to bring a gun to shoot his bully, which is different from a drug deal gone bad just off school grounds, etc.

Kind of like lumping all cardiac arrests together. They aren’t all caused by the same issue, and therefore can’t be analyzed or fixed the same way.

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Well, it’s kind of important to understand how they’re counted if we’re going to try to fix a problem.

That’s hilarious.

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Did you actually read through all of them. Without going back through I’d only count 2-3 as actual “school shootings” where the intent was to go kill a bunch of people at school. Most of them looked like isolated incidents between two people, where a gun happened to be used.

I just don’t see why we are inflating a number for the sake of inflating it. I guess if the talking point is guns are bad then it makes sense. But it discounts the severity of the real school shootings when you include most of the ones listed just to make it look worse.

Really? You don’t see why?

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Well, it’s kind of important to understand how they’re counted if we’re going to try to fix a problem.

That’s hilarious.
if we’re going to continue to do nothing, except send thoughts and prayers.

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Well, it’s kind of important to understand how they’re counted if we’re going to try to fix a problem.

That’s hilarious.
if we’re going to continue to do nothing, except send thoughts and prayers.

We are at least consistent.

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I don’t really care how you count them, if there even needs to be a count.

Well, it’s kind of important to understand how they’re counted if we’re going to try to fix a problem. A mass shooting where someone comes to a school with the intent to kill indiscriminately has a different cause and therefore a different fix than a gang beef that results in two thugs shooting at each other, which is also different than a bullied kid who finally cracks and decides to bring a gun to shoot his bully, which is different from a drug deal gone bad just off school grounds, etc.

Kind of like lumping all cardiac arrests together. They aren’t all caused by the same issue, and therefore can’t be analyzed or fixed the same way.

while i agree that it’s important to know the protocol used when determining a metric, according to my best recollection, during my 17 years of education the number of school shootings was: zero. i don’t think using correct methodology for counting school shootings is going to make any difference. school shootings, and mass shootings in general, have already grown to ridiculous numbers. what else do we need to know?

neverthless, if shootings doubled, if they tripled, there would still be an overwhelming appetite for stalling any new gun legislation, and enforcement of existing legislation, among the gun rights crowd.

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You were in school during the University of Texas tower shooting, grade school probably. Best of my recall would be one. This may be incident zero of “school shootings”.

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It is amazing how our views on shootings has changed in 15 years. 15 years ago I was in a job that was going through some layoffs etc. I asked my husband which seat in a conference room based on door location he thought was safest in case something happened. He told me it was crazy to work a job where I worried about that and I should just leave. I got a new job and left.

Fast forward to yesterday where I took a mandatory annual hour long active shooter in the workplace training where they tell you how to analyze where to be relative to doors etc.

Interestingly - my daughter’s school canceled the remaining active shooter training for this year in the interest of mental health. Which I agree with. We already missed a day over a threat and now another schooling nearby.

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You were in school during the University of Texas tower shooting, grade school probably. Best of my recall would be one. This may be incident zero of “school shootings”.

Nope. There were some all the way back to the 30’s IIRC

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I don’t really care how you count them, if there even needs to be a count.

Well, it’s kind of important to understand how they’re counted if we’re going to try to fix a problem. A mass shooting where someone comes to a school with the intent to kill indiscriminately has a different cause and therefore a different fix than a gang beef that results in two thugs shooting at each other, which is also different than a bullied kid who finally cracks and decides to bring a gun to shoot his bully, which is different from a drug deal gone bad just off school grounds, etc.

Kind of like lumping all cardiac arrests together. They aren’t all caused by the same issue, and therefore can’t be analyzed or fixed the same way.
during my 17 years of education the number of school shootings was: zero.

False. I don’t know when it was but I am approaching 1.00 that statement is false

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You were in school during the University of Texas tower shooting, grade school probably. Best of my recall would be one. This may be incident zero of “school shootings”.

yeah, i think you’re right. but i’m right too. i wrote according to my best recollection :wink:

mind, we had our worries. besides the clown that bit off little boys’ dicks and other scary urban mythology. i grew up in the duck and cover days. so, we weren’t worried about our own population coming into the school and shooting us dead. we were worried about the soviets raining nuclear bombs on us.

i just think it’s asinine that the grownups pretty well solved the problem of my youth only to allow a new, and it turns out very real and legitimate, fear and peril to pervade schools today. my generation is, by far, the most venal, selfish, stupid generation of cultural husbanders in american history.

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You were in school during the University of Texas tower shooting, grade school probably. Best of my recall would be one. This may be incident zero of “school shootings”.

Nope. There were some all the way back to the 30’s IIRC

Nope - the list goes back into the 1800’s. Probably happened earlier, as in as soon as both schools and guns existed in the same time and place, just not on the list.

Of course there is a wikipedia page for it - https://en.wikipedia.org/...in_the_United_States

ETA - that list does not count Bath, MI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
That event killed 44 including 38 kids. If the rest of his bombs would have gone off it would have been even worse.
School violence is not a new thing.

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Thanks for the correction and steer to wikipedia. An interesting read is their listing of all school shootings.

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I don’t really care how you count them, if there even needs to be a count.

Well, it’s kind of important to understand how they’re counted if we’re going to try to fix a problem. A mass shooting where someone comes to a school with the intent to kill indiscriminately has a different cause and therefore a different fix than a gang beef that results in two thugs shooting at each other, which is also different than a bullied kid who finally cracks and decides to bring a gun to shoot his bully, which is different from a drug deal gone bad just off school grounds, etc.

Kind of like lumping all cardiac arrests together. They aren’t all caused by the same issue, and therefore can’t be analyzed or fixed the same way.

Now your reading intent of counting into.

If your goal is to count how many people die of cardiac arrests then lump them all together.

I don’t think CNN has stated why (other than reporting) they are counting, but they are, they have rules for how they count.

Again there counting is not bad, just cause you don’t like the rules, or you can’t get the info you want out of it.

I really doubt CNN is counting so that someone can do a deep dive on the analysis, then again if they are, including more is better as the researcher can choose to exclude the events they don’t want to study. If CNN were to narrow there reporting then potentially they have excluded something a researcher would want.