Informative Essay On School Shootings

School shootings in recent America has become a phenomenon that has reached unfathomable levels. Since 2013 there has been allegedly 306 school shootings and the number rapidly continues to grow. This is an astonishing statistic but is it true? What is the definition of a school shooting? According to EverytownResearh.org a school shooting is defined as anytime a firearm is discharged in school or on school grounds. This definition may seem legit, however it has some faux pas in it. There has not been 306 shootings since 2013 and there especially hasn’t been 18 school shootings so far in 2018. One faux pas is where it states “anytime firearm is discharged”. This error basically states that anytime even before school or after school a gun is fired it’s declared a

One example comes from John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich of The Washington Post, stating “A week later, as a basketball game was being played at a Michigan high school, someone fired several rounds from a gun in the parking lot. No one was injured, and it was past 8 p.m., well after classes had ended for the day, but Everytown still labeled it a school shooting”(Cox and Rich 2). This quote shows the inconvenience of the definition, providing an example of a shooting which took place hours after classes had ended meaning since no one was at the school except for a basketball game, which was not targeted it should not classify as a school shooting. Another example from Washington Posts article states, “ In January 2016, a man in an Indiana high school parking lot whose gun accidentally went off in his glove box, before any students had arrived on campus”(Cox and Rich 3). This banter provides once again another shocking statistic, where an accidental round went off before school, where no students around, and yet this was still classified as a school shooting. Another shocking fact from Washington Post has stated,”Just five of Everytown’s 18 school shootings listed for 2018 happened during