School shootings are horrible. Anyone that can look at Uvalde or Sandy Hook or Columbine or any other school shooting and not be shocked just doesn't have their head screwed on straight. We absolutely need to protect our children. Legislation CAN have a positive effect on public safety but that legislation needs to be enforceable and effective. To be effective the legislation needs to address a common public safety concern. School shootings, no matter the emotional impact, are NOT common. The average school year is 180 days. In Tucson, my home town, there are 115 public schools which makes for a total of 20,700 school days. In Arizona as a whole we have 2,421 public schools for a total of 435,780 school days per year. The best information I can find is that "since the 1970s" there have been 19 school shootings in Arizona. [https://patch.com/arizona/across-az/arizona-has-had-19-school-shootings-70s-data-show] Of those 19 incidents only one was "preplanned". Four were suicides and 7 were "accidents" or "disputes". The "preplanned" incident was in 1987 so that's 14,380,740 school days without a "school shooting" as we have come to understand them. In the US as a whole there are around 131,000 public schools so 23,570,000 school days per year. There have been an average of 23 school shootings per year in the US over the past 4 years so the probability of a school shooting on a given day is 0.0001%. Again, I get the trauma of having to wrap one's head around a school shooting but is national legislation to ban weapons and burden lawful gun owners really reasonable when the problem is so infrequent?
I've written it countless times, to no avail. Here it is again for the umpteenth time - Criminals do not obey laws.
School shootings are rare; the make the news because of it. They are a big deal to the left and their toadies in the media, because they are a powerful means through which it can push its mindless anti-gun agenda.