When it comes to mass murders, April 20 is a day of shame. On that date 25 years ago, two teenagers became perhaps the most infamous school shooters in American history by gunning down a dozen classmates and a teacher at Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado.
The 1999 Columbine massacre was neither the first nor the deadliest school shooting in our nation’s history, but it is by all measures the most significant in its impact on school policy, public opinion, and popular culture.
The gruesome drama was broadcast live for the first time. Recordings of the two attackers planning and rehearsing the attack were released publicly. Unfortunately, a Columbine video game, T-shirts and other cultural artifacts gave the two shooters the celebrity status they sought.
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris fully expected to achieve fame and notoriety. As one of the attackers predicted in the so-called Columbine Basement Tapes: “I know we will have followers because we are so divine.” And their influence has continued ever since, with more than 100 copycats committing or attempting to commit similar attacks on schools across America.
The Columbine effect is much broader than the occasional acts of copycats. It includes the ways in which schools have been transformed in terms of safety and the widespread perception among students and their parents that schools are unsafe.
Columbine prompted lockdown drills in schools
In the aftermath of Columbine, parents began buying bulletproof backpacks for their children. And schools began organizing lockdown drills that are of questionable value but unnerve many impressionable children with attempts at realism.
Columbine may have been the catalyst for widespread panic, but several data reports have reinforced and increased the sense of danger.
For example, the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s School Shooting Database shows that the number of incidents has grown exponentially – with nearly 1,000 cases since 2021. Importantly, the definition of a school shooting used in this database is quite broad: “a gun is fired, it is waved, or the bullet hits school property, regardless of the number of victims (including zero), time of day, day, or reason.”
My analysis, as a professor of criminology, of primary and secondary school shooting data over the past three years shows that almost 90% of shootings did not take place in the school itself, but in parking lots, sports fields or school buses. , where lockdown drills and metal detectors are irrelevant.
The math on school shootings: Should parents worry about shootings when students return to school? The math says no.
Naturally, scared parents think of the threat of a Columbine-style massacre when confronted with these statistics. However, the vast majority of incidents have little to do with the safety of their children at school.
The fears of students and their parents are more focused on active shooters, whether students or outsiders, roaming the halls armed with a powerful instrument of death.
Based on my review of FBI documents, there have been 50 attacks of that specific type resulting in injuries or fatalities since Columbine, an average of two per year. Of course, that’s in almost 130,000 schools in America.
Congress has ignored gun violence. Here are the voices of the victims from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
While understandable, our response to school shootings—requiring students to participate in active shooter drills, arming teachers, and installing security equipment—is disproportionate to the actual risk.
These actions reinforce fears instead of alleviating them, by suggesting to students that there is a bullseye on their back.
The threat of school shootings needs context
While there may be a handful of students who idolize the Columbine shooters and decide to follow their lead, history suggests that we can reduce both fear and risk by downplaying the threat of school shootings.
From 1996 through 2001, there were eight school shootings in the United States with multiple fatalities, prompting reporter Dan Rather to declare in March 2001 that school shootings were a national epidemic. But the next four years were none.
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When the terrorist attacks occurred on September 11, 2001, Americans shifted their attention and concerns from the school shootings to another threat to their security.
I’m certainly not suggesting that we provoke a tragedy to distract from school shootings, just that we keep the risk in perspective. Schools are indeed safe. By providing structure and supervision, children are safer at school than outside.
James Alan Fox is the Lipman Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University and author of “Campus Violence and Safety: From Preschool to College.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Columbine wrongly led us to believe that children are not safe at school
