School lockdown after shots fired

We’re talking Atascadero here… It was probably a .22 the kid got for his birthday and he was not supposed to touch it unless he was with dad, but he couldn’t resist and decided to shoot a couple cans in the back yard (which probably happens to be 5-10 acres). If this is an accurate description then it was stupid, but not really an out of the ordinary shenanigan for a boy growing up in rural America.

The school lockdown was and almost always is a pointless overreaction, as it is unlikely to prevent any injuries. In proper perspective, taking into account history of school shootings, overall crime rates, and population, school shootings are extremely rare and unpredictable. They are almost never the result of violence occurring outside of the immediate school grounds, such as gang-related gunfights or drive-by’s. I would argue that the uptick in school shootings during the 1990s was caused by a combination of increased media hype ( “Art imitates life” and then “life imitates art”) and maybe an increased usage of antidepressants. Fear simply runs our lives now. The possibility that a child in that school getting hurt or killed from riding their bicycle is likely thousands of times greater than being hurt in a school shooting. Furthermore, in an actual school shooting, locking down a school probably greatly increases chances of a higher victim count.