The school shooting in Red Lake, Minn., last month -- the worst
school massacre since Columbine -- didn't receive the magnitude of
publicity the Columbine shootings received six years ago. A number
of possible explanations have been offered as to why, including the
intense media focus on the Terri Schiavo case and that the shooting
took place on an Indian reservation rather than in a wealthy
suburb.
A recent Gallup instant-reaction poll to the shootings suggests
there may be a simpler -- and even more disturbing -- explanation
for the lack of media coverage: School shootings simply may not
shock Americans anymore, because so many have occurred in recent
years.
Can School Shootings Be Prevented?
The day after the Red Lake shooting, Gallup asked Americans if
they think government and society can do something to prevent
shootings like that from happening again or if shootings like that
would happen again regardless of what government and society do*.
Only about a third (36%) think the government and society can
effectively prevent such shootings. Six in 10 (60%) say school
shootings will happen again regardless of what measures are
taken.
Gallup asked a similar question just after the Columbine
shooting in 1999, and Americans were much more optimistic then.
More than half (53%) of Americans thought government and society
could take effective measures to prevent school shootings, while
43% thought such shootings could not be prevented.
Can School Shootings Happen Close to Home?
Prior to the Columbine massacre, there was a rash of shootings
between 1997 and 1998, including incidents in Pearl, Miss., West
Paducah, Ky., Jonesboro, Ark., and Springfield, Ore. In May 2000, a
Lake Worth, Fla., honor student made news when he shot and killed
his teacher after being reprimanded for throwing water balloons.
Yet another school shooting took place in Santee, Calif., in May
2001, when a 15-year-old boy killed two classmates and wounded 13
others.
Given that these incidents have been widespread and occurred in
urban, suburban, and rural communities alike, it's understandable
that Americans tend to believe their own areas are not immune from
the threat of school violence. Nearly three-fourths (73%) say a
school shooting like the one in Minnesota is very likely (30%) or
somewhat likely (43%) to happen in their communities. The
percentage of Americans who think a school shooting could likely
happen in their communities has edged up only slightly since April
1999.
*Results are based on telephone interviews with 620 national
adults, aged 18 and older, conducted March 22, 2005. For
results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say
with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is
±4 percentage points.
