Gun violence in schools among parents’ main concerns

[onehandle]

Source: MSNBC

As national headlines continue to spread the news of mass shootings occurring across the country and American families prepare to send their children back to their classrooms, parents rank school violence and gun-related injuries as two of their main concerns for the first time in the history of one poll.

School violence ranked fifth (44%) and gun-related injuries ninth (39%) among parents’ concerns on a national level, according to the most recent University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health. The annual poll, released Monday, included gun violence in schools and communities this year for the first time ever.

Childhood obesity (55%), bullying (52%), and drug abuse (49%) landed in the top three slots, respectively. Smoking and tobacco use, neglect, Internet safety, teen pregnancy, and alcohol abuse also ranked among the top 10 worries.

The national gun debate about gun rights remains at a standstill as shooting rampages continue across the country. Congress failed to pass a bipartisan background checks bill last year, just months after the December 2012 massacre inside Sandy Hook Elementary School when 20 first-graders died.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/gun-violence-schools-among-parents-main-concerns

[cheapdate]

1. I have two kids in public high school. A school shooter is not any concern of mine.

In fact, if I had my way, our school district would get rid of the sheriff's deputies (or "school resource officers&quot in our schools immediately -- the money to be used for educational enrichment.

[onehandle]

2. I'm sure that Sandy Hook parents didn't have any concerns either. nt

[cheapdate]

4. They probably didn't.

Probably 60 million kids go to school every day, including mine, and the odds that any one of them will be shot and killed at school are miniscule.

There are more realistic things to be concerned with around public education than this.

Obviously, I'm in the minority on this question. Our local schools have become so extremely risk-averse that they have practically made real the old saw that "high-school is a prison".

[Recursion]

3. Their kids are much safer in school than the parents were in their day

People assess risks in strange ways, though.

[NickB79]

5. True that

Gun violence in the US has been cut almost in half since the 1990's; our rate of gun-related homicides and shootings is at the lowest level since the 1960's.

[Recursion]

6. People also worry more about Ebola than influenza or heart disease

And more about terrorism than car accidents.

[valerief]

7. Conservatives tell us parents mostly worry about having school prayer and

that parents just LOVE guns. Everywhere.