Despite the media attention that school shootings such as the tragedy in Parkland generate, the number of such incidents has actually gone down considerably over the past three decades, according to a recently released academic study.
James Alan Fox, the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern University and doctoral student Emma Fridel collected data from USA Today, the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report, Congressional Research Service, Gun Violence Archive, Stanford Geospatial Center and Stanford Libraries, Mother Jones, Everytown for Gun Safety, and a NYPD report on active shooters.
“Their research also finds that shooting incidents involving students have been declining since the 1990s,” Allie Nicodemo and Lia Petronio write on the Northeastern web site. Additionally, Nicodemo and Petronio wrote that “There are around 55 million school children in the United States, and on average over the past 25 years, about 10 students per year were killed by gunfire at school, according to Fox and Fridel’s research.”
Of course, that is 10 too many, and one would be one too many. Nonetheless, it does put the media saturation into sharp perspective.
