SINCE JANUARY 1, THERE HAS BEEN 1 SCHOOL SHOOTING PER WEEK

…This is what it looks like for shootings in U.S. Schools

In the U.S., there are more than 2 guns for every American resident.

 

 

Please note that the United States is the only nation in the world that has on-going shootings inside our Elementary Schools, Middle Schools, High Schools and Colleges.

 

Since January 1^st, 2018, there have been 18 school shootings in these United States.  That averages approximately one school shooting per week for this year to date.  That data point comes from a gun-control-advocacy organization called Everytown for Gun Safety and includes calling any discharge of a firearm at a school as a “shooting.”

 

But since the year 2000, evaluated by the type of school, there have been more than 130 shootings at elementary, middle and high schools, plus 58 additional shootings at colleges and universities.

 

Actually the term “school shooting” refers to something very specific: “It is the targeting of students or teachers at a US school.”  This is “Everytown’s” standard for the term.

 

Using a more strict standard for school shootings, there have still been at least seven school shootings, just in 2018, that’s more than one each week. These shootings were near New Orleans, Los Angeles and in Kentucky, Arizona and Texas.  The latest shooting in Parkland, Fla., left 17 people dead and 14 wounded, as of this writing.

 

A shooting of more than once a week is bad enough.  But at high schools, including preliminary data from the Parkland shooting, there have been almost 70 people killed and nearly 200 wounded. In addition, at elementary and middle schools, about 60 people have been killed and 60 wounded.

 

Those death numbers at elementary schools were driven upward by the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., back in 2012.  But there have still been shootings at elementary schools in seven other states as well, since Jan. 1, 2000.

 

There have been nearly twice as many shootings at middle schools, the deadliest of which targeted an Amish school in Pennsylvania.  This school was included as a middle school because of the ages of the older students who were killed.

 

Since 2000, there were five times as many shootings at high schools, than at middle schools, affecting most of the heavily-populated areas of the country.  But there were a number of shootings in rural areas as well.

 

Since 2000, there have been school shootings in 43 of the 50 states.  The exceptions are in: Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Wyoming.  These shootings have taken place at a rate of about one a month and left about 250 students and teachers dead. 

 

This is apparently what happens when you have an National Rifle Association (NRA) that is against virtually any sensible regulations such as background checks for purchasing a gun, or not allowing mentally disturbed individual to purchase guns and ammunition, and of course any regulations for purchasing large, multiple quantities of over-size ammo magazines.  In addition, purchasing what is referred to as semi-automatic assault rifles that are designed not for hunting, or for target practice, but are for killing other humans.

 

This latest shooter at the Florida Parkland High School, this shooter was a former student that had been expelled from this same school for disciplinary issues.  He owned a large collection of guns, and he had planned this attack using a gas mask and he had multiple full ammo magazines and smoke grenades.  He also pulled the school's fire alarm to get more students out of their class rooms for more human targets.  This was not a small, rural high school. There were 3000 enrolled high school students. 

 

 

The shooter was known as having some mental issues and of being extreme character.  He had bragged to other students that he killed small animals and said at one time that he would kill other individuals if he were ever threatened.

When will our politicians in the state and federal legislators finally have the “cojones” to go against the NRA and start passing some sensible legislation for reasonable gun regulation.  After a school killing decades ago, a federal law was passed against selling assault weapons.  But due to the efforts and donations to politicians by the NRA and the gun manufacturers, that 10 year law was allowed to die.

 

However, even if appropriate laws were passed, it might already be too late for this nation.  That’s because, already in the United States, there are so many available guns, the statistics say there is already more than 2 guns for every alive individual living in this country.  And that number of weapons is increasing every day.

 

There was a news report this week that one of the mothers of a Florida Parkland High School student had reported that after her daughter had gone through the school's rehearsal for what to do if there was a school shooter, the daughter said the exercise had scared her and she asked her mother if she could she become home-schooled.

 

If something isn’t done to deal about this issue, we will either have to have all of our school campuses to be locked and guarded facilities with metal detectors at the front doors, or more students will become educated via on-line teaching or yes, there will be more home schooled students like it was back in the log-cabin days…..very sad.

 

These school shootings have gotten totally out of hand.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2018