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June 23rd, 2014
One School Shooting Per Week – The Absurdist’s Argument
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That's why I let it drop… expressed my opinion, read his counterpoint, we had an exchange of reasoning, I think I have a better understanding of where he's coming from, and hope he has the same re me, but even if not, no biggie, and I'll keep enjoying this fine comic.
Is anyone forgetting this is a COMIC, for goodness sakes? No one is running for political office!!!
so was my post too long or you just don't like facts refuting your comic?
You must be new here. Until you've posted a certain number of times, your posts are moderated before they appear.
This stat is "mostly false" according to Politifact. See http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statement… for details.
Yes, I know, but I disagree with Politifact. They arrive at their "mostly false" by excluding all but one type of school shooting. I don't disregard gang-related shootings or shootings that happen during robberies. America only seemed to take notice when it started happening in suburbs and the perpetrators were "kids you wouldn't expect to do this," but this has been a problem for decades. Whatever the motive, and whether the perpetrator belongs to a gang or not, a shooting that happens on school grounds is a school shooting.
The problem with simple definitions like "a shooting that happens on school grounds is a school shooting", is that the phrase brings very specific scenarios to most people's minds.
If one includes every shot fired on a school grounds, that includes ones we would probably agree are neutral or possibly even positive. To name just a few categories off the top of my head, school rifle target shooting teams used to be common, many colleges have ranges for use by ROTC or criminology or gunsmithing programs, police have shot many criminals at schools (including one of Bloomie’s 74), and non-police have justifiably defended themselves with guns from criminals many times at schools (including another on the list, according to Jeff, though I haven’t checked it out myself).
For that matter, since Bloomberg is not restricting his use of “school” to K-12, we could even include the ranges at the police academies and any military base where troops are trained. And of course shots are fired all the time at military schools! I’d even go out on a limb and bet that there are schools out there with property that includes hunting grounds… maybe even schools *of* hunting. We can take this as absurdly far as you like. It’s like shooting a school of fish in a barrel. 😉 Come to think of it, I'm surprised he didn't include incidents of shooting a speargun at a school of fish….
Anyway, surely we can agree that neutral or positive things should not be lumped in with negatives in order to pump up the count, to help someone push a political agenda.
For instance if we ran an anti-divorce organization, with a campaign against child injuries at the hands of the boyfriends of divorced mothers, and giving a count of "babies dropped", we shouldn't include times that the boyfriend dropped the baby *off* at a grandparent's house! That would perhaps fit a linguistically accurate reading of "dropped the baby", but would be quite deceptive, since it's not at all what comes to people's mind when they hear the phrase, isn’t even negative, and certainly provides no support whatsoever for being wary of boyfriends of divorced mothers.
That’s pretty much exactly what Bloomberg is doing with this list.
None of those legitimate programs and none of those hypothetical programs you mention were included in Bloomberg’s study, so I don’t know why you mention them.
To your original point, the “very specific scenario” brought to “most people’s mind” is a very convenient way to ignore the majority of the violence.
At least two of them certainly were on Bloomberg's list (the police shooting a criminal, and non-police self-defense). The rest are more examples of the sorts of not-necessarily-negative things one would have to include, maybe not all of them "since Newtown" but certainly in a broader historical context, under your proposed definition of "school shooting".
I think we're talking about two separate things here: Bloomberg deceptively including not-necessarily-negative things to pump up the count and bolster his anti-gun push, and the public's generally thinking only of suburban "kids you wouldn't expect to do this" when they hear "school shooting". I'm only intending to address the first point.
On the second point, as no politician ever said, I have zero experience and very little knowledge on which to base any stance, so we'll just have to agree to agree. 🙂
Ok, but I'm pretty sure it's obvious we're all talking about shootings that are not part of the actual curriculum of a school, so I disagree they'd have to be included under my "proposed definition of 'school shooting'".
You and Jeff have referenced two "not-necessarily-negative" incidents of self defense or police shootings, but the only reference I can find to those online are on right wing sites like the Daily Caller and the NRA. CNN's examination of the numbers didn't mention them, and neither did Politifact, so I'd take those with a huge chunk of salt. If I've missed something and if those proved to be actual cases, those two wouldn't put much of a dent into the statistic.
From my perspective, the only absurdity in all this is that even though there have been at least 74 shootings in schools since Newtown, people are nitpicking them to death to explain why most shootings that happen at school aren't really school shootings.
In my opinion, all of that nitpicking is an exercise in sophistry. It doesn't matter if your kid gets shot by some lone kid who felt bullied, in a gang-related crossfire, in a suicide, or by an accidental discharge… he's just as shot. And measures should be taken to make it as sure as possible that those sorts of incidents don't happen again.
Michael Bloomberg’s various gun control organizations exacerbated the fears by claiming that there were 74 school shootings since the actual Newtown school shooting in December 2012, and that something must be done. But Bloomberg’s numbers were dead wrong. They inflated the number by including attacks that were off of school property and unrelated to the school, lone suicides well after school hours by adults, a justifiable defensive use of a gun and gang fights outside of school hours.
CNN investigated Bloomberg’s claim and said that over the previous 18 months, there had been 15 incidents where guns were brought onto school grounds in attempts to harm people. (that is not one per week as far as I can tell but CNN could be wrong, I guess.)
I'll repeat my response to Dave:
I disagree with Politifact (and CNN). They arrive at their "mostly false" by excluding all but one type of school shooting. I don't disregard gang-related shootings or shootings that happen during robberies. America only seemed to take notice when it started happening in suburbs and the perpetrators were "kids you wouldn't expect to do this," but this has been a problem for decades. Whatever the motive, and whether the perpetrator belongs to a gang or not, a shooting that happens on school grounds is a school shooting.
Parents were responsible for 61% of child murders under the age of five. 3 or 4 children die daily due to abuse. This has nothing to do with gun control or "school shootings", therefore it does not get reported.
In what universe (or perhaps I should just say state) do you live in where child abuse does not get reported?
Thanks for admitting that this has nothing to do with school shootings though.