January 13, 2013

Some Statistics

by Jim Cullison

I've come across some interesting statistics in my recent reading. The most authoritative criminology research that I could find (courtesy of Professor James Alan Fox At Northeastern University) concludes that the chances of a child being murdered at school or on the way to and from school is one in two million. ONE IN TWO MILLION. That is the equivalent of being struck by lightning. That one in two million figure is only for high school and middle school students in the U.S. For elementary school students, the probability of such a scenario is much, much lower. The chances of a child dying from drowning in a swimming pool or from some kind of bike accident are much, much greater than anything lethal befalling them at school, whatever the school. Furthermore, school shootings are exceedingly rare events. In 2012, there was a grand total of six school shootings in the U.S., and of those six shootings, three were suicides with no related homicides. In 2011 there was one school shooting, no fatalities, and in 2010 there were no school shootings in the U.S. That said, it's the one in two million stat upon which I'm hanging my hat.