“Every day when I say ‘bye’ to my parents, I do acknowledge the fact that I could never see my parents again.”
Ella Fesler, a high school student in Alexandria, Virginia
In reaction to the murderous rampage of a disturbed youth armed to the teeth with weaponry that no civilian should possess, there have been rallies and marches around the country and others are planned.
To follow are events planned that have come to my attention.:
Wednesday, March 14: #Enough! National School Walkout
One month after the Parkland school shooting, organizers are calling for “students, teachers, administrators, parents and allies” to participate in a nationwide school walkout. The event is being organized by the same people who organized the Women’s March.
The organizers are asking participants to walkout for “17 minutes at 10am across every time zone on March 14, 2018 to protest Congress’ inaction to do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to the gun violence plaguing our schools and neighborhoods.”
The Facebook link can be found here.
Saturday, March 24: March for Our Lives
On Saturday, March 24th at 10:00 AM, the students of Parkland will be leading a march in DC for gun violence protection.
The event posted on Facebook can be found here.
Friday, April 20: National Day of Action against Gun Violence in Schools
On the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting, the Network for Public Education is calling for a day of action to prevent gun violence.
Per the NPE event Facebook page, “After the slaughter of students and staff in Parkland, Florida, the time for action has never been more urgent. The politicians sit on their hands as our children and their teachers are murdered in their schools. We will be silent no more! The failure to enact rational laws that bar access to guns designed for mass shootings is inexcusable. It is past time to speak out and act.”
There is also the March for Life Facebook page where associated events can be posted.
Dora Taylor
While I totally think that public schools and classrooms should be safe and secure places where shootings should never take place (and no child every a victim of bullies), considering the odds of it happening, when someone thinks “Every day when I say ‘bye’ to my parents, I do acknowledge the fact that I could never see my parents again.” … this is proof of how the media stirs unreasonable paranoia and fear.
What are the odds of attending the wrong public school at the wrong time and ending up killed or wounded in a mass shooting?
A few facts first (these facts all came from the same source — link below):
In fall 2017, about 50.7 million students will attend public elementary and secondary schools.
Public school systems will employ about 3.2 million full-time-equivalent (FTE) teachers in fall 2017 …
In 2014–15, there were about 13,600 public school districts (source) with close to 98,200 public schools …
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372
School shooting facts for 2017 come from a 2nd source.
In 2017, there were 9 incidents at 9 schools resulting in 19 deaths and 26 injuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States#2017
In 2017, the odds of attending and/or working at the wrong public school on a wrong day when a nut case shoots up the school are:
9 divided by 98200 = 0.0009 percent. That is 0.99 percent less than one percent.
The odds of being killed are:
19 divided by 53.9 million = 0.000035-percent
The odds of being injured were:
26 divided by 53.9 million = 0.000048-percent
There’s a long list of other ways we can die that all come with higher odds of it happening. For instance, lifestyle diseases that are caused by what we eat and the fact that we avoid regular exercise.
The leading cause of death is #1 cardiovascular diseases follows by #2 infections and parasitic diseases.
Even driving to school is more dangerous — for men the risk of death in a traffic accident is 0.04 percent. For women it’s 0.0106
Death from violence is way down that list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate#By_frequency
Students feel they’re in a lottery and not a good one. What school will be targeted next?
Thanks to a security guard that reported to police two days ago that a student in a school was mumbling about bringing a gun to school, police found a cache of guns in his home.
Quite frankly, if I still had a child in public school, I would be concerned and I can’t imagine how it feels as a youngster to think that going to school could put you in harm’s way.
Yes, of course you are more likely to die some other way but this is heavy on the minds of students. You can repeat statistics to a child, or a parent, but that is irrelevant to their concerns and feelings due to the randomness of these massacres.
How would you feel if shooters were going into random yet related offices in your line of work 129 times in two months around the country?
How would I feel? I’m retired and before I retired I was a public school classroom teacher for thirty years.
I’m also a former Marine and combat vet with PTSD. Because of that PTSD that followed me home from Vietnam, I’m always in combat mode, always, no matter what’s happening out there.
And over those thirty years, there were a few incidents at the school where I taught. When they happened, I became calmer and more focused. We went into lockdown mode and I had my students slide their desks back so no one was in line with the door. Then we talked and I told them what to do if someone attempted to get through the classroom door. I said, I’d stay beside the door to jump anyone that came through it if they shot out the door nob and lock. Some of the boys wanted to join me by the door.
I told them running doesn’t help because as you are running away, your back is a target for a very long distance. If everyone close to the shooter, instead of running, swarmed him, the odds favored that the group would take out the shooter but there would be casualties.
In the Marines, we were trained to not run when we were ambushed but to move toward the ambush firing.
According to the Guardian:
“Just seven weeks into 2018, there have been eight shootings at US schools that have resulted in injury or death.
Seventeen people have been confirmed dead in the latest shooting in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day.
Less than a month ago, a 15-year-old student opened fire at a high school in Kentucky, leaving two students dead and 18 injured. Other incidents have been grave, but on a smaller scale.
In early February, one student in Los Angeles was shot in the head, and another in the arm, when a gun concealed in a fellow student’s backpack went off.”
I’d be paranoid too if I were a student or teacher!
I do not doubt your math, but it is the perception of being unsafe that feeds fear.
In our instant reply, remix, and play again visual culture, facts of any matter are casualties. I appreciate the link… and reminder.
The media plays a vital role in stoking that fear.