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billpalto t1_jdd152d wrote

Reply to comment by KimJongFunk in Body is 17-year-old accused of shooting 2 at Denver high school, Colorado coroner confirms - CNN by oldschoolskater

I went to an elementary school that had grades 1-8. There were so many gangs and knife fights that the school cafeteria didn't have any knives at all, not even butter knives.

That was in 1964.

School shootings weren't a thing back then, at least not yet.

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Miketogoz t1_jdddn8q wrote

Huh, really? As a non-American, I've read someone else talk about how Columbine changed everything. What's your thoughts on how and when things changed?

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frodosdream t1_jddohxu wrote

Not the person you replied to, but IIRC "Columbine changed everything" generally means "raised widespread public awareness" for what had always happened occasionally and then vastly increased in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and then expanded again in the 2000s. There was a brief lull in the late-90s and then Columbine took place on April 20, 1999 ushering in the present epidemic of school shootings.

Others have correctly pointed out that while there was often school violence, mass school shootings were far rarer in the 1960s and 70s even though firearms were much easier to obtain then, and poverty rates were worse than today.

Many things changed in America since that time and no one knows if there was one cause or many. But it's interesting that the 1980s saw the birth of the internet, while the 1990s saw the first widespread social media. This same period also saw an enormous increase in psychiatric drugs prescribed for school children. The early 1980s also saw the infamous crack epidemic which fostered the explosive spread of modern gang culture.

Much later, President GHW Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, which has caused so many schools to end expulsions for behavioral problems (and to lower educational standards for test scores). Many educators discuss the negative impact of NCLB over on r/teachers. But there are probably other factors equally significant as all these; we only know that kids snap more violently and resort to guns more quickly now than they did two generations ago.

From the late 1980s to the early 1990s the United States saw a sharp increase in gun and gun violence in the schools. According to a survey conducted by The Harvard School of Public Health "15% said that they had carried a handgun on their person in the past 30 days, and 4% said that they had taken a handgun to school in the past year." a sharp increase from just five years earlier. By 1993, the United States saw some of the most violent time is school shooting incidences. ... (then) the late 1990s started to see a major reduction in gun related school violence, but was still plagued with multiple victim shootings.

https://www.k12academics.com/school-shootings/history-school-shootings-united-states

Edit: a word

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Miketogoz t1_jddz2t4 wrote

Fascinating read, thank you. I was really under the impression that shootings were a thing in the US since public schools, honestly. I can now better understand why the problem is so divisive.

I think you deserve more lines, but the only thing that comes to my head is that the sense of defeat on dealing with this issue is what has made me believe it was a thing since the 19th century.

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Castelpurgio t1_jdelf2p wrote

Hey, somebody my age! Yeah in he seventh grade one of my best friends was expelled for stabbing the principal and the math teacher. It was over a false graffiti accusation he was about to be punished for. We were all telling them it wasn’t him but they wouldn’t listen.

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