How the Columbine Shooting Changed American Teenhood

theatlantic.com

6 pointspseudolus3 comments

As someone who started high school post 1999, I simply can't identify with this. My school never had locked down doors, and nobody was anxious about someone coming onto campus and shooting up the place. The only schools that had police were schools that had lots of kids from bad neighborhoods.

The article talks about Columbine because it's the 20th anniversary and they need to fit it in, but my perception is that lockdown drills didn't become popular more recently. They cite numbers from 2016... do they have numbers for 1999-2016?

My admittedly cynical suspicion is that this has more to do with a shift in gun control strategy and less to do with safety. In the 90s, pre-Heller, gun control efforts mostly focused on handguns using the threat of street crime. With crime rates way down and handgun bans nonviable, gun control efforts have shifted to focus on semi-auto rifles using the threat of mass shootings. Lockdown drills keep children and parents fearful, which encourages voters to support gun control, even though mass shootings are statistically quite rare.

Talk about American exceptionalism. The stagnation is deafening...

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