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It isn't. The number of children that die in school shootings is an average of 35 per year. That is of course horrible, but in comparison to other sources of childhood death it's tiny. 150 a year die of food allergies. Eight are killed by lightning every year. Does lightning get 1/4 as much attention as school shootings despite causing 1/4 as many deaths?

Even comparing, very specifically, intentional firearm homicide of children outside of school to school shooting deaths shows that, per hour, schools are fantastically safer than when kids aren't at school. The US has a gun violence problem but school shootings are just a barely-audible echo of it.

The problem is that a child getting killed by lightning doesn't leave behind a community of survivors and loved ones who go on a crusade against lightning. School shootings lead to political activism, and that activism has been met with a stone wall for decades. Hardly an inch has been given, and the school shootings continue.

They're now finding creative ways around the wall that was constructed, to do something -- anything -- and again it's treated as a big, unnecessary inconvenience. The longer people stand in the way of reasonable reform, the more creative (read: unreasonable) the proposed reforms will become.

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