MAKING SCHOOLS SAFER
In our quest to reduce school murder, we ought to be sure that our efforts can be generalized beyond the most recent incident. Rampage killers usually do not target first-graders, as was the situation at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. The last episode of a massacre at an elementary school occurred in January 1989, when a 22-year-old man shot to death five children on the playground of Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, Calif.
Comments
From the article: "firearms still account for a high proportion of childhood deaths in the United States".
Actually, they do not. If one goes to the FBI website and gathers up the statistics, one learns that typically about 100 +/- children 12 and under are murdered each year by firearms. That statistic was also reported here in the Boston Globe. Further research indicates that approximately
240 +/- will be murders by "fists, hands, feet",
40 +/- by blunt objects "hammers, etc",
44+/- by "knives, sharp edged instruments".
In other words, about 324 murders are committed with something other than a gun, or over 3X as many. That is not a high proportion.
More importantly, those numbers speak to the violent nature of some people. Hammers and knives are used almost as much as guns. Anyone care to suggest we start licensing, registering, locking those up too?
The data I have quoted comes from: Expanded Homicide Data Table 9, on the FBI website.
If a person spends any time on that site, another fact will surface: about 12,000 murders occur each year. Approx 350 of those murders are committed with rifles. The site does not specify what "type" of rifle, so one can assume that many of them are just typical hunting rifles. Even if they were all "assault" type rifles, the number represents an extremely low percentage of the murders committed. A person is more likely to be murdered by hands or fists than a rifle.
Data like this is more than likely WHY the AWB was not renewed in 2004, it didn't make a difference then, and it won't make a difference now.
It was interesting that this article had two segments concerning guns and then one about sex offenders. I would point out to whoever composed this article, gun owners are not convicts. The linkage is reprehensible, even under the guise of "making schools safer". My suggestion is that if you would like to make "schools safer", you talk to Feinstein and her cronies about all the political capital they made with the Gun Free School Zones and how that has worked protecting our children?