A Grim Education: 72 Years of School Shootings

October 29, 2018 8:10 PM

The Class of 1946–2018: Twenty-seven school-shooting survivors bear their scars, and bear witness. "Over a half-century's worth of school shooting survivors share their memories of life-changing trauma, as well as insights from living with the scars — physical and mental — of gun violence."

There have been more mass school-shooting deaths in the past 18 years than in all of the 20th century. The long list of casualties includes a classroom full of first-graders, an event that shocked the nation — but not enough. Deadlier weapons have become more available, bullets can be ordered online.

So why don’t we talk about this all the time? Partly because it scares us. And partly because the problem can seem so intractable, even as polls show majority support for measures that could curb the violence.

In the midst of this amnesia, we wanted to conduct an exercise in remembrance, seeking out the survivors of school shootings from as far back as we could find them. What, we wondered, could their memories teach us about our inattention? The people whose bodies — in many cases — won’t let them forget.

posted by homunculus (17 comments total)

...at least 75 other shootings in schools barely made the news and then slipped right out of it (which often happens when victims are people of color).

I wonder how many people in the US heard about this shooting, which took place yesterday. I realize there is a lot of other stuff going on, but it seems to be getting very little attention.
posted by TedW at 4:22 AM on October 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

The cover photo, of Anthony Borges, is breathtaking. As the shooter was approaching his classroom at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, he got up and locked the door, saving twenty people and getting shot five times in the process.
posted by Aubergine at 7:18 AM on October 30, 2018 [7 favorites]

I wonder how many people in the US heard about this shooting, which took place yesterday. I realize there is a lot of other stuff going on, but it seems to be getting very little attention.

I think that one may have gotten more attention for the misunderstanding over whether or not classes remained in session than for the shooting itself.
posted by homunculus at 7:37 AM on October 30, 2018

As the shooter was approaching his classroom at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, he got up and locked the door

Anthony was the last of 20 students who fled into a room and was trying to lock the door when he was shot, Carlos said. He held his ground in the doorway, putting his body between the bullets and his classmates, who all survived uninjured[…]

posted by zamboni at 7:38 AM on October 30, 2018

It's a goddamn epidemic.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:52 AM on October 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

Thank you for posting this. More attention needs to be paid to victims and less to the shooters. If you are an American and are fed up with the NRA I implore you to join your local chapter of Moms Demand Action / Everytown for Gun Safety. We are winning battles against the NRA at the state and local level and more candidates than ever are proud to have an endorsement from MOMS.

This Thanksgiving when your crazy [insert type of relative here] starts mouthing off about how only more guns will solve the gun problem ask them to consider this --

If you are in the middle of an active shooter event and you pull your gun out and go "hunting" for the shooter and there are OTHER "good guys with guns" also looking for the shooter and they see you with your gun drawn -- they very well may shoot YOU. And when the police show up and they are running around looking for someone with a gun, they could very well think YOU are the person they are looking for and shoot YOU. Cause nobody knows who YOU are and the first responders are looking for someone with a gun and YOU MATCH THAT DESCRIPTION. More guns do not make us safer.
posted by pjsky at 7:53 AM on October 30, 2018 [10 favorites]

The cover photo, of Anthony Borges, is breathtaking.

I thought so too; all the photographs add to the power of the piece. They were apparently done by Michael Avedon, whose paternal grandfather was Richard Avedon, and maternal grandfather was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, which is a pretty impressive pedigree.

Another powerful magazine piece about school shootings which has been getting a lot of attention lately comes from of all places, Mad Magazine; NPR, NYT coverage. I wish I could find the whole thing online.
posted by TedW at 8:03 AM on October 30, 2018 [4 favorites]

It's on imgur: The Ghastlygun Tinies (MAD Magazine)
posted by homunculus at 8:50 AM on October 30, 2018 [3 favorites]

This Thanksgiving when your crazy [insert type of relative here] starts mouthing off about how only more guns will solve the gun problem ask them to consider this --

If you are in the middle of an active shooter event and you pull your gun out and go "hunting" for the shooter and there are OTHER "good guys with guns" also looking for the shooter and they see you with your gun drawn -- they very well may shoot YOU. And when the police show up and they are running around looking for someone with a gun, they could very well think YOU are the person they are looking for and shoot YOU. Cause nobody knows who YOU are and the first responders are looking for someone with a gun and YOU MATCH THAT DESCRIPTION. More guns do not make us safer.

I wish this worked, and yet the fact that the Pittsburgh shooter injured FOUR police officers, who presumably had more firearm training than 90% of rando non-cop civilians with guns, hasn't stopped even our fucking president from saying "but good guys with guns!"
posted by nakedmolerats at 9:08 AM on October 30, 2018 [3 favorites]

I was also struck in the synagogue shooting by the average age of the victim being in the 70s or 80s; expecting a frail senior citizen to be armed and accurate just to be able to leave their house is as ludicrous as...expecting a kindergarten teacher, or a junior high student, or a suburban mom at a grocery store.

A world where only armed sharpshooters are safe* is world without kids, or old people, or the handicapped, or almost all other groups of humans you can think of. It's a world of empty streets patrolled by warring snipers and tanks while the rest of us sit barricaded in reinforced rooms without windows.

*they wouldn't be, either
posted by emjaybee at 9:52 AM on October 30, 2018 [9 favorites]

Shit, that's a really good point. And add people of color: I've already seen black Jews on social media who are worried and afraid about increased police/gun presence in their synagogues.
posted by nakedmolerats at 10:39 AM on October 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

I was nine when Columbine happened. I remember watching the news with my mother and being scared to go to school. I also remember my mom talking about home schooling me (there is no way she could/would have done this--it was just her responding to the stress) and me thinking that seemed reasonable. I could go to elementary school and maybe middle school but then I would need to be home schooled by the time I got to high school, since it was so violent and people brought guns. In a way, that's not really wrong.

I was eleven when 9/11 happened. I remember watching the news in school and all of the adults around me being really scared, but it was very abstract to me in a way that Columbine wasn't. Columbine was the first time I really realized you could go out in the world and just be killed for existing. The first time I really realized the world wasn't a safe place.

I moved to Pittsburgh in August. My apartment is in Squirrel Hill, just a few blocks from where the Tree of Life Synagogue is located. I was out of town this weekend, so when I returned on Sunday there was a police barricade but besides that everything had been cleaned up and traffic patterns were normal. As a non-Jewish person who is new to the neighborhood, nothing felt so different. Is that because I'm used to the violence? Is that because I don't care? I'm not sure. I do know I went to the grocery store on Sunday after I got back and all of the bouquets of flowers were sold out by people who wanted to place them on the make-shift memorial located next to the barricade. Somehow that empty display, more so than seeing the flowers by the barricade, are what made me feel any emotion.

Thank you for sharing this.
posted by lucy.jakobs at 10:47 AM on October 30, 2018 [6 favorites]

This Thanksgiving when your crazy [insert type of relative here] starts mouthing off about how only more guns will solve the gun problem ask them to consider this --

Whenever I mourn the loss of my extended family after the death of my grandmother, I'm comforted by the fact that I don't have to deal with this anymore.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:13 PM on October 30, 2018

Charles Pierce, Oct 2, 2017: If Newtown Wasn't Enough, Why Would Las Vegas Be Enough?

Subsequent events have proven that LaPierre had the right of things and that William Lloyd Garrison and Robert Jackson were wrong. The Constitution is not a pact with the devil, nor is it a suicide pact. It is a formalized, legalistic ritual of blood sacrifice. There are some things that we as a society, alas, must tolerate in order to stay true to our founding beliefs and to remain free. Schoolchildren shot to pieces is one of those things. The massacre of country music fans is another one of those things, the 273rd blood sacrifice to that one provision of the Constitution this year.

...

We have become a nation that accepts the blood sacrifice of our children as an ineffable part of our constitutional order, one of those things you have to tolerate, like pornography and the occasional acquittal of an unpopular defendant, in order to live in a free society. Better that one Stephen Paddock go free than a hundred law-abiding gun owners wait a week before buying an Uzi. This is a vision of the nation that has been sold to us by a generation of politicians who talk brave and act gutless, and by the carny shills in the employ of the industries of death. Better that one Stephen Paddock go free than a hundred law-abiding gun owners wait a week before buying an Uzi. We are all walking blood sacrifices waiting to happen.

posted by homunculus at 4:02 PM on October 30, 2018 [5 favorites]

America’s teens are extremely stressed out about school shootings: "Two things in the report are clear. Teens are especially concerned about guns. And they are most likely of any of us to describe their mental health as poor."
posted by homunculus at 11:28 AM on October 31, 2018

California bar shooting: At least 12 killed in Thousand Oaks. The bar in Thousand Oaks, California was packed with college students when the gunman opened fire.
posted by homunculus at 9:04 AM on November 8, 2018

Thousand Oaks parents: ‘I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts. I want gun control.’
posted by homunculus at 12:38 PM on November 9, 2018 [1 favorite]