Did those shooting involve someone associated with the school in some way? Because if not, your stats are still ascribing one problem to a completely different problem with different policy solutions. Schools are often on the cheapest land in the area. Where do you think most gun discharges happen? That's right, on or near the cheapest land. That's why counting shootings near the schools yields shockingly high numbers.
But if you want to institute good policy that reduces these numbers, mischaracterizing those incidents is a bad way to do it. And on this issue, the track record of those gathering the data is terrible. I'm not pulling these tactics from nowhere, these are all things that specific surveys have done to manipulate the data. And if you do that, you clearly don't care about reducing the number of shootings.
> Did those shooting involve someone associated with the school in some way?
I'm sorry, but why does this matter in the end? We're still talking about students being injured and killed in schools by shootings during school hours. Do you think the parents really care that much in the end if the shooter was affiliated with the school or not? You're needlessly splitting hairs. Nobody should be discharging guns anywhere around schools. No student should be worried about getting shot in school. It's absolutely insane to me you're suggesting "but what if the shooter was unaffiliated?" Absolute insanity.
I do agree, it's frustrating there's dozens of different definitions of "school shooting". It would be nice if there were good, solid, government statistics in this regard. But one party has consistently fought against the government having a standardized method of reporting and studying such incidents. I wonder which party.
You know what though? Most of the developed world doesn't have to worry about the myriad of different definitions, because for all those definitions the yearly average is damn near zero, not 30 or 90 or whatever.
But if you want to institute good policy that reduces these numbers, mischaracterizing those incidents is a bad way to do it. And on this issue, the track record of those gathering the data is terrible. I'm not pulling these tactics from nowhere, these are all things that specific surveys have done to manipulate the data. And if you do that, you clearly don't care about reducing the number of shootings.