John Stossel, “The School Violence Myth”:
The randomness of the Virginia Tech shootings, and the way we hear the gory, horrific details reported over and over can make us lose perspective. One psychologist issued a press release saying, “We need to take action now to … end this epidemic of violence.”
California legislators held special hearings on campus safety, and Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., said she hoped this would “reignite the dormant effort to pass common-sense gun regulations in this nation.” Please. That’s a lot of reaction for something that almost never happens.
[…]
In the early ‘90s  the first years records were kept  there were more than 40 deaths just from K-12 school shootings per year. Since then, the death toll has been trending down, not up.
Media bad news bears love crime and violence. Terrible things are happening, and everyone knows they’re happening much more often. The gory pictures and the excited copy conceal the actual truth: America is safer than almost any country in human history.
The Virginia Tech shooting has resurrected the fears that the Columbine, Jonesboro and Paducah school shootings created during the late 1990s. Those killings triggered a regular spate of stories about “spreading school violence.” But school violence in America had been steadily decreasing. Violent crimes in schools dropped by half between 1992 and 2002, although reporting about school violence increased.
And of course an increase in reporting, in our postmodern age, equates to an increase in the frequency of what actually happened, given that our epistemology is now nearly completely driven by how we are made to feel.
Just ask Barbara Boxer, who is suffering terribly from a series of tragedies this week—from the Virginia Tech slayings to global warming to Iraq to the SCOTUS decision that presumes to take control of just whose tiny brains she gets to suck out of her uterus through a gaping scissored hole.
Senator Boxer doesn’t tell us how we might make her feel better, but presumably a bit of gun control, some permanent risk-assessment teams on school campuses, carbon offsets, abortion on demand, and a Nancy Pelosi-implemented foreign policy might do the trick.
But if that doesn’t work, maybe ABC News can help Boxer “recognize the signs of a potential killer—and how to stay safe.” That, at least, might ease her burden somewhat.
And we’re all about the healing.
(h/t wishbone)
Maybe beating Alberto Gonzales like a pinata filled with FEMA aid will lighten their heavy hearts.
One wonders why there is not more murder at public high-schools. They are extraordinarily oppressive centers, creating bad attitudes and hopelessness imposed through a sentence it otherwise generally requires three criminal convictions to obtain. Perhaps it is only that they have succeeded in their first aim- to desensitize the patient.
Well, Tom, they’re certainly going to try.
As we kids used to say, “Vice is nice, but incest is best.” Yet I’d still be a little leery of pushing the buttons of those with BDS – and next-level paranoid schizophrenia – any further right now, as the progressive nature of the derangement looks to be quite likely developing a Hockey Stick acceleration phase.
And we all know what that means.
Boxer’s imperative is the maintenance of California’s teacher-union vote. Period.
The state’s Dem’s have been farming this captive demographic for decades.
So, whatever the unions want, which, in California’s case is compliant, infirm vessels into which they can pour predigested, viscuous globs of “Global Warming,” therapeutic “social justice theory”, and especially grievance-group/credentialist-patonage, is exactly what California’s democrats will offer.
Empowered self-reliant young people, with concealed weapons permits, need not apply.
I didn’t see any mention of the pain and suffering induced by her husband’s war profiteering…
Oh, that’s right, it doesn’t exist because the MSM won’t report it.
A whole generation of children have absorbed years of anti-competitive, feel-good sports and academic “competition”, where everyone must play, scores aren’t kept, no one gets cut, and no one ever learns the dismay of rejection or loss. Everyone must always be made to feel tremendous self-worth and totally confident: self-esteem is more important than healthy self-estimation.
And then what? In some places reality hits in high school. Apparently, in others, it hits in college. And then what? Failure can’t be due to the individual. It must be others, and now they deserve to die.
Egad. That sounds like BDS…
Sorry Barb, I have a hard time buyin’ it. Either you value human life or you don’t.
In terms of perception defining reality, could someone blind from birth be authentically black or white?
Gosh.
I hope she doesn’t get so depressed she gets out of politics completely!
Oh wait, yes I do.
The 9mm Glock Mz. Boxers carrys in her purse could not be reached for comment.
What james wilson said. There are no free lunches and nature abhors a vacuum and like that. Government school is no different.
Abolish statist schooling before it abolishes reason.
Wouldn’t that just turn the baby into a liberal?
Remember when we had Senators from both parties that acted like grownups?
I swear they existed once.
Scoop Jackson, Barry Goldwater, Jake Scott, Howard Baker, Sam Ervin….
Good times.
Well, wishbone, there was a time when Senators of the Democrat persuasion were not so outrageous, but they were on the that glide path all the while.
The difference between socialism and tryanny is a question of time (Rand). The time is just passing faster now with a head of steam.