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SEPTEMBER 20, 2024
AIKEN-AUGUSTA’S MOST SALUBRIOUS NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED IN 2006
AUGUSTARX.COM
We have all seen the same scenes far too many times all over the country, and now it has happened just up the road in Winder. Parents hear the awful and unimaginable news that there has been a shooting at the very school their child attends. It’s hard to imagine the nightmare scenarios that play through parents’ minds as they race to the school, and the instantaneous and overwhelming relief and happiness when they get to see and embrace their child, safe and unharmed. No matter how terrible a school shooting may be, there can be a feeling that it could have been so much worse. Some may privately console themselves that maybe a thousand or more students walked away uninjured, including their own child. In a few days or a few weeks, they think, things will begin to return to normal. Let’s examine that hope, and take a fresh look at who the victims of school shootings really are. The hard lesson being learned over time is that almost no one emerges from a school shooting unscathed. Long after news crews pack up and move on, those exposed to the event — whether seasoned educators or little kids — suffer negative effects for years thereafter. Thanks to the frequency of school shootings, there is no shortage of carefully collected data. One study determined that in 2018 and 2019 alone, more than 100,000 children in America attended schools where a shooting took place. A 20-year (1992-2018) Texas study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that public schools where there had been a shooting subsequently experienced years of chronic absenteeism; students in such schools were more likely to have to repeat a grade than students at schools that hadn’t experienced a shooting. High school students at shooting schools were about 3% less likely to graduate compared to the “non” schools, and they were more than 5% less likely to enroll in a 4-year college. Years later, students exposed to a school shooting were less likely to even have a job in their mid-20s compared to those who hadn’t attended a school where a shooting occurred. The study estimated a lifetime reduction in earnings of more than $115,000 for each and every shooting-exposed student. Considering the large numbers involved — an average of 50,000 American students are exposed to some act of school gun violence each year — researchers estimate the total lifetime lost earnings nationwide at well into the billions of dollars. A 6-year study completed in 2020 analyzed 44 school shootings and measured antidepressant prescription data among youth in the affected communities. The data showed an increase in antidepressant use of more than 20% immediately following the shootings, a rate which persisted more than three years afterward. Keep in mind that these negative effects observed and documented are all among the physically unharmed. Nearly three-quarters of all U.S. school shootings in 2018 and 2019 resulted in no fatalities. In one study of 33 school shootings, eighteen resulted in no fatalities, and none of the fatal shootings resulted in more than one death. Despite that, the broad-reaching negative impacts on people’s lives were profound and long-lasting, impacting the school community directly as well as the entire community’s sense of safety and security. It’s one thing to survive a school shooting without being shot. Statistically, that is by far the most likely scenario. But nearly everyone involved in one of these unfortunate events will live with significant consequences for decades at least, if not the rest of their lives. +
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