Mass School Shootings and the Limit of Statistics

Why the extent and intensity of impacts matters, as well as how frequent they are.

Recent school mass shootings have caused outrage. In response, researchers note that in previous years, particularly during the 1990s, there were even more school shootings than now. They also emphasize that students are more likely to die from suicide or overdose. There are over 100,000 American public schools, so even three or four mass shootings a year makes them extremely rare events.

This misconstrues school mass shooting impact. Suicide and overdose are horrible events. But their traumatic shadow impacts, severely, a family and some friends. Those number ten or twenty. A school shooting scars an entire community. It becomes a damaged place, like the area around Three Mile Island or Love Canal. Unlike environmental scars, however, mass shootings leave social ones. People don’t know what to say to family members of a suicide. Entire communities are shunned after a shooting.

High Schools like Columbine or Stoneman Douglas serve thousands. They’re the largest public organizations in towns where 50,000 people live. A mass school shooting impacts a majority of those residents. Being America, that probably translates into home values. But it’s worse. It changes the perception of community, a bedrock institution. An overdose changes how parents and siblings view family. Mass school shootings undermine our idea of neighborhood and citizenship. The trappings remain, football banners and graduation celebrations. But they ring hollow. Students risk losing their belief in social improvement.

That’s why the response of Stoneman Douglas students is very healthy. They forced legislative change in Florida. They also pushed back the nihilism that victims feel. By taking control of their situation, they deny trauma its foothold. Parkland, Florida isn’t sinking into shameful oblivion, but has become a symbol of strong community.

School mass shooting’s scale of impact should make us reinterpret the statistical results. They effect, at minimum, 100 times more people than a suicide or overdose.

Between 1998 and 2012, 3.3 students died per year from school shootings. According to the National School Safety Committee, 4.6 died per year riding in school transport vehicles, though almost as many adult drivers, and even more pedestrians, also died. 4.08 students died per year because of interpersonal fights. However about 33 students are murdered every year. These are the ones not reported as much in the media, because they’re often the result of gang violence in poor communities. 8.62 suicides considered “school-related” occur annually, a problem many wealthier communities face. Still, suicide was only the 10th leading cause of death among school-age children in 2010. Various diseases came first.

There are two ways to gauge the impact of student deaths. One is extent of relationships impacted. The other is the intensity of impact. A death of a child in an accident hurts a family badly. Murder also impacts a family, but more intensely, because injustice is involved.

Mass school shootings impact 1,000 people, at minimum. So their extent, regardless of intensity, exponentially multiplies their impact. If the extent of suicide impacts is 8.62 X 10, 86.2, school shootings are 3.3 X 1000, 3300. Yet in a way that’s on par with the social impact of school-related homicides, which have an extent of 33 X 10, 330. That’s because both invoke government injustice, which triggers intense emotions that don’t fade.

Injustice undercuts one’s trust in society. Both poor and wealthier communities have severe impacts from gun violence, that scars them both. I hesitate to say the impacts are equivalent, because gang-related homicides undermine community trust in ways that mass school shootings can’t. Suburban families lose faith in their government, while poor urban families lose faith in the police and courts, among other things. Once one can’t trust the justice system to bring justice, it’s very human to carry out vengeance oneself. A cycle of violence results.

Feeling the corruption of one’s legislators causes one to lose faith in democracy. That promotes anarchy or Fascism, perhaps, but only tangentially.

Statisticians should recognize that mass school shootings have a wider extent of community impact than any other school-related death. Their impact is intense, because government inaction is partly to blame. Not as intense as homicide, which kills 10 times more children, but impacts a far narrower network. Twitter trolls reveal that both are important. They spew invective at Black Lives Matter activists, and attack the character of student activists.

The nation should be focused on gun deaths in schools. We should improve justice, to reduce homicides. We should curb gun access, to reduce mass shootings. It isn’t misplaced for the nation to be focused on mass school shootings, despite their relative infrequency, because they have such wide impacts.