U.S. school shootings hit another annual record high

3 years ago by GiddyGap to c/news

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Captain_Jimmy_T_Kirk 21 points 3 years ago

This is depressing, but it also bothers me that there's such a large distinction between how the average person would picture a "school shooting" and what these articles are talking about. Is there a name for that in journalism?

Like, if someone told me "there was a school shooting at school X today", like most people I would immediately picture someone walking into the building and firing indiscriminately at everyone. Not, "a couple of teens got in a fight in the parking lot, and one pulled out a gun", or "someone shot at the school's sign". (Which are also horrible, but I feel like we need separate terms)

From the article:

According to the report, the most commonly known situations associated with such incidents included "escalation of dispute," "drive-by," "illegal activity," "accidental firing of a weapon" and "intentional property damage."

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BolexForSoup 26 points 3 years ago

As a parent, the distinction means very little to me. They all have the same premise: somebody brought a gun to school. That just doesn’t happen elsewhere outside the US aside from edge cases like tiny rural towns where they legitimately need to look out for wild animals.

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Captain_Jimmy_T_Kirk 14 points 3 years ago

It's horrible, don't get me wrong. I worry about my own little one, but the distinction is an order of magnitude of a difference in my head. Like the distinction between a troublemaker throwing a lit match in a trash can vs some maniac dousing a building in gasoline.

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FriendOfElphaba 12 points 3 years ago

To me, that’s like the people who complain that gang-related shootings count as gun crimes. Not everything has to be Columbine/Las Vegas/Sandy Hook/Virginia Tech… (too many to list, honestly too many to keep track of, and I read the news daily. They’re all symptoms of the gun problem in the US. A lot of fun crimes are done by criminals? What a shock! But they have drug dealers and gang members in other countries, and we don’t see the levels of gun violence we do in the US. America is literally off the charts when they do international studies.

A shooting at a school is a shooting at a school, period. I can’t think of anyone who would defend calling it anything else. It doesn’t matter if it’s two kids fighting over who gets to sell drugs or just someone who doesn’t like Mondays.

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30mag 1 point 3 years ago
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geosoco 6 points 3 years ago

It's already a sad state of affairs that you hear the phrase "school shooting" that your mind goes to the Columbine style shooting. That the concept has happened enough that people have a mental model for it.

I hear your desire to better classifications, but as the other reply noted to a parent, even someone shooting at a stop-sign is a red flag. None of that should be happening with any regularity. The fact that kids are carrying around guns and can even have them on school property is enough for parents to want something done to ensure their children are safe. It's enough for parents with money, to leave an area for fear of losing their children.

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Captain_Jimmy_T_Kirk 7 points 3 years ago

None of it should be happening is right. I just get a skeezy feeling when articles use language they know will get people thinking one thing when they mean another.

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originalfrozenbanana 1 point 3 years ago

Why do we need such a distinction? These are shootings at schools. They are school shootings.

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Captain_Jimmy_T_Kirk 3 points 3 years ago

Because a columbine type of school shooting is different than property damage.

And people writing these articles know that "some destructive teens did donuts in the school parking lot at night and shot the stop sign" isn't what people think when they say that a "school shooting" has happened.

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