Captain Jimmy T Kirk

Because a columbine type of school shooting is different than property damage.

And people writing these articles know that “some destructive teens did donuts in the school parking lot at night and shot the stop sign” isn’t what people think when they say that a “school shooting” has happened.

None of it should be happening is right. I just get a skeezy feeling when articles use language they know will get people thinking one thing when they mean another.

It’s horrible, don’t get me wrong. I worry about my own little one, but the distinction is an order of magnitude of a difference in my head. Like the distinction between a troublemaker throwing a lit match in a trash can vs some maniac dousing a building in gasoline.

This is depressing, but it also bothers me that there’s such a large distinction between how the average person would picture a “school shooting” and what these articles are talking about. Is there a name for that in journalism?

Like, if someone told me “there was a school shooting at school X today”, like most people I would immediately picture someone walking into the building and firing indiscriminately at everyone. Not, “a couple of teens got in a fight in the parking lot, and one pulled out a gun”, or “someone shot at the school’s sign”. (Which are also horrible, but I feel like we need separate terms)

From the article:

According to the report, the most commonly known situations associated with such incidents included “escalation of dispute,” “drive-by,” “illegal activity,” “accidental firing of a weapon” and “intentional property damage.”

It’s been an internet thing for long before 2016 (at least mid 00s in my memory), so I don’t associate it with them.

They took the pepe frogs for a while too, but I’ve been seeing them come back. Nature is healing.

What an irredeemable monster.