Giving Compass' Take:

· After a year of tracking school shootings in 2018, Mark Keierleber at The 74 explains that students are more likely to be struck by lightning than shot in class, but fear dominates the country due to mass coverage of the events. Although data shows that mass shootings are statistically rare, the fear and tragedies this year have led to unprecedented calls for change.

· What has contributed to the rise in paranoia over school shootings? What can be done to reduce stress and worries over this matter? What is being done to address school safety? 

· Read more on this topic and documenting school shootings. 

In a Baltimore conference room filled with school-based police officers intent on stopping the next school shooting, psychologist Peter Langman offered a perspective that in 2018 seemed underappreciated, if not profound.

“When you get out of your car and walk into the school building, you’ve just gone from the most dangerous place you’ll be all day to the safest place,” Langman, an expert on the psychology of school shooters, said during a recent National Association of School Resource Officers conference.

This year, however, it was the threat of school shootings, not their statistical rarity, that rose to the top of Americans’ minds. People, Langman said, are far more likely to die in a traffic accident than a school shooting. According to an analysis of such incidents by The 74, at least 50 people were killed and 88 injured in firearm incidents at K-12 schools and colleges in 2018.

Just a few weeks into 2018, the conversation about gun violence in America’s schools poignantly re-emerged when a gunman walked into a rural Kentucky high school and opened fire, killing two people and injuring 18 others. Still, the worst was yet to come. Just weeks later, a gunman killed 17 people at a school in Parkland, Florida — one of the deadliest school shootings in American history. Then in May, 10 people were shot dead at a school in Santa Fe, Texas.

Read the full article about tracking school shootings by Mark Keierleber at The 74.