Unpopular, but backed by numbers: school shootings are predominantly media hype.

There are a total of 50,000 gun deaths in the United States each year. Half of those are suicide. The total number of fatalities from all school shootings in the US since 1990 is 536, with roughly 1100 injuries over the same period.

School shootings are very disturbing, but they are also flashy and attract media coverage, and so they are overblown, especially relative to other gun deaths. But I think human psychology leads people to see higher risk in situations where they feel like they have no control. The idea of sending your kid off to school and having them get killed evokes sort of the same helpless feeling as the feeling around a plane crashing when you're a passenger. But when it's inner city gang violence, or a depressed man killing himself in his garage, we don't seem to care as much.

This also plays into the narrative around police shootings. There are about 1100 people killed by cops every year in the United States, and that number has stayed pretty consistent over the last decade. But our narrative around it is out of proportion to the actual number of people killed because of the circumstances around the killing.

In any case, it's often easier to articulate the cost of freedom rather than its value.

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insane_dreamer 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> predominantly media hype

hmm, tell that to parents whose kids were killed, or who are genuinely freaked out that there is a chance that their kid could die when they send them to school

as a parent who moved to the US and encountered this fear for the first time -- a fear that's just not present in other countries because while anything can happen anywhere, the chances are much much lower. why? not because there aren't crazy people in other countries, but because they don't have easy access to guns

> so they are overblown, especially relative to other gun deaths

actually, it's the other way around; it's the "other gun deaths" that are _under-valued_ and often ignored in the gun debate -- we should be talking about those _more_ not talking about school shootings less

50K gun deaths a year in the US is absolutely bonkers compared to other developed countries, and on par with Central America per-capita; and even if half are suicides, many who commit suicide may not have done so if guns weren't so readily accessible (sure there are other ways to do, but it's not as easy)

> plays into the narrative around police shootings. There are about 1100 people killed by cops every year in the United States

the reason for the narrative, is that in no other other advanced democracy on earth is there such a high rate of police killing civilians (when calculated per capita) -- it's not even close

they get attention because police shouldn't be killing civilians in the first place; it's pretty simple

if the USA didn't have such an obsession with guns, we wouldn't even be having this conversation

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slg 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Roughly an hour after this comment was made, someone walked into the church at a Catholic school, killed an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old, shot 17 other people including 14 children, and then turned the gun on himself.[1] "Predominantly media hype" indeed.

[1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/live-updates-...

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rpdillon 6 days ago | parent [-]

Yep, an excellent illustration of the point. Two dead, a dozen injured. What other gun violence happened this week that we'll never hear about?

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slg 6 days ago | parent [-]

Has there been some other incident of gun violence this week that resulted in 3 deaths and 17 injuries that hasn't been reported?

According to Wikipedia[1] this is the largest mass shooting this year in terms of number of injuries. I guess that isn't worth reporting in the media.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

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rpdillon 6 days ago | parent [-]

You're using media coverage to critique my point that media coverage is overblown. My only point here is that less than 1/10 of 1% of the shooting deaths in the United States over the last 30 years were related to school shootings.

This shooting is definitely newsworthy. I'm mostly concerned about the other ~800 shooting deaths, mostly suicides, that statistically happened this week that we don't discuss. Suicides in the US are on the rise, and murder rates are down.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-...

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slg 5 days ago | parent [-]

>You're using media coverage to critique my point that media coverage is overblown.

That isn't what I'm doing. I pointed to an instance of a school shooting, asked you if any other shootings of that scale have occurred without receiving similar media coverage, and then pointed to reference material that indicates there have been any in this calendar year.

I truly don't know what point you think you are making. Yes, not every act of gun violence receives the same media coverage as a school shooting. But what is your desired alternative? Should any individual act of gun violence not be reported on because there is so much gun violence? Or are you demanding that every singular act of gun violence should receive national coverage? What is the specific change you want to see in the media coverage?

It is true that school shootings are only one facet of this country's gun problem, but I just don't know how you get from that point to the conclusion that they're "predominantly media hype".

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rpdillon 5 days ago | parent [-]

I'm saying that if we want to address the bulk of gun deaths, even entirely eliminating school shootings and mass shootings won't move the statistics more than by about 1%. I don't think most adults understand this, because they base their perception on what's reported, rather than reality.

> What is the specific change you want to see in the media coverage?

Editing to answer this, since it's a good question. I'm interested in massively reducing deaths from guns in the US. I think voters turn to the news to understand these issues. I'm worried that politicians will claim to be tackling gun violence through measures that try to reduce the number of high-profile events, while ignoring the larger societal problem that underpins the violence. So what I would like to see in media coverage is using school shootings, which get clicks, to devote time and attention in the article to the larger trends of gun violence in the US to help citizens better evaluate what sorts of measures would be most effective in reducing the bulk of the deaths.

I'm basically trying to push for a setup where we can more effectively tackle gun violence by understanding it well.

	▲	slg 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think the general argument that the media is not effectively using the attention these events draw is in direct conflict with the idea that these shootings are "predominantly media hype". Also, I quite frankly think this mindset is naive to how both politics and the media work. Nothing materially is being done to reduce school shootings and today's tragedy is just another example of that. So why the fear that this need for a solution to general gun violence will be satiate by a solution to school shootings? We aren't getting any solution to school shootings either. Plus most of the mainstream media has a desire for neutrality that would prevent them from doing what you suggest. And those that aren't opposed to being seen as partisan and agree with you about overall gun violence are already advocating for greater gun control in a way that is not exclusively set to address school shootings.