Every parent wants to know any time a gun is fired at their kid’s school. I was a guest on the “Talking About Kids” podcast with R. Bradley Snyder to discuss the importance of collecting data on gun violence at schools.
We talked about:
Government definitions of “school shooting” exclude domestic violence and gun violence in marginalized communities
Difference between “active shooter” versus “school shooting”
Failure of one-size-fits-all approach to school security by locking down for every scenario
Problems with using exclusionary discipline to punish a student who is identified as a threat (an expelled student can come back to the school with a gun)
Looking at planned attacks from the 1970s and 1980s to remove the noise (e.g., social media, video games, current culture war issues) and identify the root causes
Shootings are most common during transition periods (arrival, lunch, dismissal, after school) and this is a time period that is rarely in school security plans
Subscribe to Bradley’s show for new episodes each week focused on parenting and education. You can listen to the full episode with my interview on any podcast app.
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database and a national expert on school shootings. Listen to my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio, New England Journal of Medicine, and Iowa Public Radio the day after the Perry High shooting.
Podcast: Defining "school shooting" and exploring the root causes