This column was excerpted from the Los Angeles Daily News (June 5, 1998):
Advocates of gun control have been thrown into a tizzy. Instead of going after guns sold out of automobile trunks in the inner city, they are forced politically to deal with the hunting guns used by kids in the rural shootings
In 1992, 55 killings occurred in America's schools. In 1997 it was down to 25. By contrast, 88 people were killed by lightning in 1997. Schiraldi [Director of the Center for Justice Policy Institute] says he hates to see rural schools start spending money on metal detectors and security guards instead of books.
"It's the functional equivalent of everyone buying lightning rods," he says.
... Above all consider that while the homicide rate in the United States dropped 20 percent between 1992 and 1996, the number of homicides reported on network news increased by 721 percent.
It's good for ratings, even if it may be bad for the psyches of children, voters and politicians. Fear sells. Kids are impressionable and may become copycats. Adults are impressionable and may pass bad laws.
The following is excerpted from a Los Angeles Times Opinion column (May 31, 1998, where emphasis appears, it has been added):
Of 20 million middle-school and high-school students, fewer than a dozen have killed at school this year. Of 20,000 secondary schools nationwide, only about 10 have reported a murder on campus...
The school shootings by students over the last eight months killed 11 youths and six adults. That is fewer kids than are murdered by parents , and fewer adults than are killed by partners, in just two days of household violence in the United States.
The president struggles to "make sense of the senseless" student shootings. His struggle should expand beyond "youth violence"-- which comprises 13% of violent crime and 8% of murder...On the day of the Jonesboro, Ark, school killings, a Daly City, Calif. mother was arrested for suffocating her three children with duct tape. A few days after the West Paducah, Ky., student shootings, three West Virginia parents were arrested for burning down their house, deliberately immolating five children. The day after the Springfield, Ore. school cafeteria massacre, an Arleta [Calif.] mother was arrested for murdering her two young children and burying them in the national forest.
Recent studies estimate that gunplay at school kills 20 to 30 youths a year, though there is no evidence the toll is higher today than in the past. By contrast studies...show that 2,000-3,000 children and youths are murdered each year by parents or caretakers, a toll that clearly is rising. Annual surveys... report that weapons-related violence in schools is no higher today than in the 1970s. But the rate of children being murdered by their parents doubled during that time.
In response to the school shootings, the president wants to enhance children's safety. But his own agencies' figures show that the best way to do that would be to target the American family. Three of four young murder victims- 90% of them under age 12 and 70% of them aged 12-17 are killed by adults, not by juveniles.
Odds and statistics are of no comfort to those victimized by violence, to be sure. But larger policy, resource allocation and academic analysis should focus on the biggest dangers to kids. The Clinton administration's own agencies have assembled reams of ignored statistics showing that today's teens are being raised by a parent generation displaying exploding rates of domestic violence, property crime, drug offenses, addiction and family instability...
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Maybe it's not the guns.