A day after a 15-year-old girl killed a fellow student and a teacher, the country has already largely moved on.
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Before you read on, please know that it pains us to write the following. It isn’t supposed to sound callous, although, to many people, it probably does. If you were ever affected by a school shooting (and hundreds of thousands of Americans have been) we apologize if you take offense. But then you will also know how quickly these tragedies fade from our collective consciousness, which is a tragedy in itself. Clearly, the traditional approaches to talking about these shootings don’t work.
Just about anywhere else in the world, a 15-year-old bringing a gun to school and killing a fellow student, a teacher, and then herself while injuring a few others would be major news and lead to calls for introspection and change.
And, for a moment, it looked as though the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, might garner some outsized attention… even in a country where these types of massacres are commonplace.
That’s because, when news first broke, it sounded as though there were more fatalities, which could have made this a multi-day story.
In addition, the shooter was a girl, which is unusual. How unusual?
Honestly, that’s tough to say because we don’t even know how many school shootings there are. That depends on the definition and the number of victims. However, no matter how you count them, there have been a lot — somewhere between many dozens, if you “only” count active shooter scenarios, or hundreds, if you count people shooting a gun on school grounds (and don’t get us started on mass shootings in general). In any case, it’s pretty rare.
However, even the combination of having a couple of fatalities and a female shooter likely won’t give this story legs.
So, what determines how much attention a school shooting should get?
Well, there isn’t a rule that they teach in journalism school, but here is how that seems to work:
If there are more than 10 fatalities, it’s a major story with some real staying power. That means wall-to-wall coverage for at least a week, and, depending on extenuating circumstances, there will even be anniversary stories. For example, Columbine started a new rash of school shootings, so we remember that, or Sandy Hook, because most of the victims were elementary school children. Conversely, a shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, in which a shooter killed 10 people in 2018 has largely been forgotten.
If there are multiple deaths and lots of injuries (especially among students), it might be a story for a few days, depending on what else is going on.
Then there are the ones like this week’s shootings. Unless it’s on the local news, we won’t hear much about this one anymore by next week. That is unless investigators uncover something truly unusual.
For example, if the shooter was an undocumented immigrant or LGBTQ, they’ll probably get a bit more coverage on Fox News. Or, if they left a manifesto referencing Donald Trump, then we’ll hear about it for a bit longer on MSNBC.
Anything else, and it’ll barely be a blip.
And, perhaps, that’s the real news.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
