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This meme, from a Washington Post reporter @RobertKlemko, reached levels of likes and shares usually only seen by Barack Obama. It even resulted in news stories making the same claim. This is a great example of being factual but not truthful, something the press is notorious for.
To check this I used the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s database. This is the most comprehensive school shooting database out there. It gets data from the Secret Service, FBI, Dept. of Ed., media and other databases like Everytown, Gun Violence Archive, and Wikipedia.
The problem with citing school shooting statistics, as with mass shootings, is that there is no official definition of a school shooting. When people hear the term they envision Columbine or Parkland, but most often school shooting incidents bear little resemblance to these.
Thus, the media can cite school shooting statistics while not telling you this includes things like accidental discharges or BB gun attacks. The CHDS database includes all instances “a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the
number of victims, time of day, or day of week.” Using this database, I could find no school shooting in March of 2010, so it appears the meme is actually false in this regard. But perhaps there’s an obscure case I’m missing somewhere so I won’t call it false at this time.
Also, there were 7 incidents this March, including one shooting resulting in a death on a football field. Most wouldn’t consider this a school shooting as it didn’t occur inside a school or during school hours, but as we’ll see there’s a lot of events which are equally dubious.
Ironically, the meme claims there were no shootings since 2002, when there was a student who walked into a classroom with 35 students and pointed a gun at a teacher. He had 50 rounds of ammo and a list of 8 teachers to kill. But it’s not considered a school shooting by some
because no shots were fired. Yet, this is far closer to a school shooting than most others cited since then. If we remove that, and the 2020 incidents which apparently didn’t happen, there were 57 incidents of “school shootings” in the month of March since 2002. An average of 3/y
Here are some characteristics:
38 resulted in zero deaths, 17 resulted in 1 death, 2 resulted in 2 deaths and only 1 had 3 or more deaths. In 9 of the school shooting events no one was even wounded. 8 were suicides or suicide attempts only in loving the shooter.
38 resulted in zero deaths, 17 resulted in 1 death, 2 resulted in 2 deaths and only 1 had 3 or more deaths. In 9 of the school shooting events no one was even wounded. 8 were suicides or suicide attempts only in loving the shooter.
12 were accidental discharges of weapons. 4 were drive by shootings. 5 were other gang shootings. 4 were over a girlfriend or love. 4 of the gunmen were teachers, 2 were school police. 3 were BB or pellet guns. 1 was an officer shooting an criminal on the run unrelated to school.
One was a father who killed his wife and tried to pick up his kid from school, but was shot by officers on school property. Some were demonstrations of firearms by teachers or officers where the gun discharged.
One was 2 students holding down another and shooting him with a pellet gun (resulting in bruises but no broken skin). One was a student who tried to run over a school cop, who then fired at him. One was a Parks & Rec Department employee grazed in the leg by a passing car’s bullet
What gets lumped in as “school shootings” is often not what most think, which is why it’s a misleading statistic. I could only find 3 March incidents since 2002 that would match up with what most would consider a school shooting.
The Red Lake, MN shooting in 2005 killing 10. Pine Middle School in 2006, which resulted in just 2 injuries but the shooter studied Columbine and wrote similar journal entries. The third was the one in 2002 which wasn’t considered a school shooting by this meme.
