Many Americans think of school shootings as mass casualty events involving an adolescent with an assault-style weapon. But a new study says that most recent school shootings orchestrated by teenagers do not fit that image — and they are often related to community violence.
The study, published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, analyzed 253 school shootings carried out by 262 adolescents in the US between 1990 and 2016.
It found that these adolescents were responsible for only a handful of mass casualty shootings, defined as those involving four or more gunshot fatalities. About half of the shootings analyzed — 119 — involved at least one death. Among the events, seven killed four or more people.
A majority of the shootings analyzed also involved handguns rather than assault rifles or shotguns, and they were often the result of “interpersonal disputes,” according to the researchers from University of South Carolina and University of Florida.
Yeah, and you know the underlying cause, and are still advocating for treating only a symptom. A tool doesn’t cause people to use the tool. An inanimate object can not force people to use it; it has no power to compel action . But you insist on treating it as though it does. You insist on treating symptoms as though they were causes, while ignoring the cause entirely.
I’m tired of this. You want to take rights and insist that only the state has the power to use violence. Ultimately, you want to empower fascists rather than the people as a whole.
I’m done, because there’s literally no point at which you’re going to admit that a tool can’t force it’s own use.
A tool can’t force it’s own use. I’m happy to admit it and have never claimed otherwise.
But you’re not arguing with me, you’re arguing with a gun control advocate that lives in your head and believes whatever the gun-lobby has told you they believe.