Ideally, policy should be proportionate to the danger faced.
Are schools actually increasingly dangerous?
New research released this week by Northeastern University researchers shows that they aren’t.
Criminology professor James Alan Fox and doctoral student Emma Fridel charted the path of mass shootings and school shootings over three decades, from 1992 to 2015. They used a variety of government and nonprofit data sources, including data collected by the FBI, USA Today, and Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization that advocates for gun reform. Their research is the basis of a chapter that will be published in an upcoming book on school violence, “The Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education.”https://www.wiley.com/…/The+Wiley+Handbook+on+Violence+in+E…
They found that schools are actually increasingly free of mass shootings, which they define as a shooting in which four or more individuals are killed by firearms. “There is not an epidemic of school shootings,” Fox said in a statement about the research, noting that there were four times as many children shot and killed in schools in the early 1990s as today. Their intent is to put the scope of the problem in the proper perspective — allowing for a reasoned response that doesn’t needlessly scare people or encroach on civil rights. Mass murders are so rare that they should not be driving policy,” Fridel said. “If you change gun laws, you’re likely not necessarily going to affect mass murders because they’re such unpredictable events."
http://news.northeastern.edu/…/schools-are-still-one-of-th…/
Schools are safer than they were in the 90s, and school shootings are not more common than they used to be, researchers say news.northeastern.edu
The concise version is, While each of these horrific events are tragic they are actually so rare that policy cannot be made using them and careful consideration is needed before acting upon what is a trend of safer, not more dangerous, schools.
Are schools actually increasingly dangerous?
New research released this week by Northeastern University researchers shows that they aren’t.
Criminology professor James Alan Fox and doctoral student Emma Fridel charted the path of mass shootings and school shootings over three decades, from 1992 to 2015. They used a variety of government and nonprofit data sources, including data collected by the FBI, USA Today, and Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization that advocates for gun reform. Their research is the basis of a chapter that will be published in an upcoming book on school violence, “The Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education.”https://www.wiley.com/…/The+Wiley+Handbook+on+Violence+in+E…
They found that schools are actually increasingly free of mass shootings, which they define as a shooting in which four or more individuals are killed by firearms. “There is not an epidemic of school shootings,” Fox said in a statement about the research, noting that there were four times as many children shot and killed in schools in the early 1990s as today. Their intent is to put the scope of the problem in the proper perspective — allowing for a reasoned response that doesn’t needlessly scare people or encroach on civil rights. Mass murders are so rare that they should not be driving policy,” Fridel said. “If you change gun laws, you’re likely not necessarily going to affect mass murders because they’re such unpredictable events."
http://news.northeastern.edu/…/schools-are-still-one-of-th…/
Schools are safer than they were in the 90s, and school shootings are not more common than they used to be, researchers say news.northeastern.edu
The concise version is, While each of these horrific events are tragic they are actually so rare that policy cannot be made using them and careful consideration is needed before acting upon what is a trend of safer, not more dangerous, schools.
