School Shootings: How Many Really?

Panic has erupted over the epidemic of school shootings:

At least 53 new school safety laws were passed in states in 2018. Districts are spending millions of dollars to “harden” schools with new security measures and equipment. A blue-ribbon federal school safety commission led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is holding public events around the country, including one in Alabama Tuesday. Children are spending class time on active-shooter drills and their parents are buying bulletproof backpacks.

It’s no wonder people are running around with their hair on fire when you consider this:

This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, “nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting.”

The data comes from a survey that over 96,000 public schools are required to submit to the federal government. Fortunately, the information is false.

NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened.

NPR was able to confirm only 11 of the reported incidents. The comparably left-leaning ACLU came up with similar results:

A separate investigation by the ACLU of Southern California also was able to confirm fewer than a dozen of the incidents in the government’s report, while 59 percent were confirmed errors.

Even the confirmed “shootings” did not necessarily involve anyone getting hurt.

The bad data apparently resulted from the government form confusing educrats, and from the inclusion by educrats of trivial incidents like a cap gun going off on a school bus.

The lesson: do not believe government data, especially on issues that have been exploited to achieve political objectives, like school shootings and global warming. Above all, do not believe the hype.

On tips from Ken in Florida and KirklesWorth.

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