1 in 5000 is not low. A disease that occurs 1 in 5000 is not low. Seriously. That’s not low.
And why should we expect one school shooting a year. Your math assumes that as i read it. I mean zero would be nice to expect. Why does a minimally regulated gun market at this point have more rights than a kids right to live without fear of being shot. I’m bothered that someone’s right to own a killing machine outweighs another person right to live peacefully and not die in some random act of violence.
That is just the odds of attending a school where there is a shooting -- any kind of shooting ranging from an incident in the parking lot to an Uvalde massacre. As I also wrote, the odds of being killed in a school shooting is far, far lower -- roughly .0000004% a year. Of course, as others have pointed out, just being present at a school in which a shooting occurs can be a very traumatic event -- depending on the type of shooting and how close to the violence. And it also doesn't count the almost 100% chance that a school will have a lockdown at some point during the child's attendance due to the possibility of some violent risk.
This whole thread has been a bit of a Rorschach test that intersects psychology, sociology and politics.
On the one hand, people have rightly pointed out that in a better society, kids should never even need to think about school shootings -- like most school children around the world. And there has been rightful outrage that the gun lobby has effectively stymied even modest gun reform laws -- regardless of whether such reforms would stop all or even most school shootings.
Another thing about school shootings -- above almost any other mass tragedy event -- is the natural emotional reaction to the death of children. People, especially parents, have an instinctual desire to protect children. And when a group of children are hurt, it results in a very visceral reaction for most psychologically healthy adults.
But none of those valid emotional and political view points can undercut the fact that mass school shootings like today are incredibly rare. And there are negative externalities to treating these kind of events as "realistic" or worth worrying about when you send your kids to school -- just like there were negative externalities to having kids hide under their desks for nuclear bomb threats in the 1950s and 1960s. When
@aGDevil2k worries about his/her child surviving the next 7.75 years of school, that is an unfortunate byproduct of the media coverage of these shootings. It is much, much more likely that the child will die in the car on the way to school or the way back. And that is not an asinine observation. So many risks are taken in a car every day (speeding, maintenance, cell phone use, distracted driving, etc. etc.) and most of us use virtually no mental energy worrying about these very real risks. Instead, we worry about the risks of something that has virtually no chance of affecting our lives or the lives of our loved ones.
None of what I write is intended to discount the problem of school shootings. It is an especially American problem, which means that there are things we can do to make it better. But we don't need to engage in statistical malpractice to elevate the risk of school shootings to members of this board. As a general rule, our lives would be better if we aligned our reptilian brain to the risks we actually face on a daily basis.
