Analysis of school shootings by day of the week

[lapfog_1]

I got data from CNN on school shootings from here

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/07/us/ten-years-of-school-shootings-trnd/

and of the 199 shootings I was curious if one day of the week was more dangerous than others...

Given the amount of data, I believe this is statistically meaningful...

So I wrote some software to count shootings by weekdays... and this is what I got:

Sunday - 4
Monday - 23
Tuesday - 38
Wednesday - 31
Thursday - 36
Friday - 61
Saturday - 6

Friday stands out as the most dangerous day at a school. One might think that this could be related to after school activities on Friday nights... but the charts that CNN include do not show that.

Saturday and Sunday are obvious... The other days seem to center around 30 shootings or so for the weekday. Friday is the one that really is statistically different.

The sad thing is that we have this data at all.

The song "I don't like Mondays" maybe should be changed a bit although that was the reason given by a school shooter for a shooting on 29 January 1979.

[Marthe48]

1. TRMS was discussing adults who had survived school shootings

who had survived yet another years later. Kept saying what are the odds? Like it was astonishing. When we have mass shootings every day of the week, in school or out, it is more ashonishing a person hasn't been shot at.

Thank you for posting.

[lapfog_1]

2. yeah as a sort of math person

when she said "astonishing"... I was thinking "no, it would be astonishing if it didn't happen".

In fact, given the number of shootings per year now, and the number of people "involved" (as in either directly involved in the shooting, a relative of a victim, or in the close neighborhood of a shooting), I would not be at all surprised to find that there are people affected by 3 such events.

Each event is affecting some few hundred to low number thousands of people ( including relative such as aunts, uncles, cousins, people next door or across the street, etc). The chances that hundreds of such groups have no overlap with each other in a population of only 330 million have got to be close to 0 at this point).

[Marthe48]

6. And yet, the r's continue to allow

gun sales with little to no regulation. The fascists trying to destroy our country have a free army that they don't pay for, maintain or support, that will do their bidding. All of the incidents of target practice by trigger happy psychos against innocent people is the price they are willing to pay to have an invisible army that will rise to defend an outlaw rule.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. If we define ..., and if we assume ... . . . it comes out to about one a year

By OP data, there were about 18 shootings per year in the 10 years before 2019. Probably higher now, so say 25 per year.

If we define "survivor" broadly, as survivors are likely to do, as "in the building at the time of the shooting", then ...

Most shootings occur in high schools. Wikipedia says high schools in the US vary in size from 200 to 4,000 students. So say the median size is 800 (likely low).

Then there would be 20,000 survivors per year. In one generation (20 years), that is 400,000 survivors. That's about one in a thousand US people are survivors.

High school of size 800 might have 30 teachers and 20 support staff, say 50 adults. That would be 25 * 50 = 1250 adults per year.

So about one school shooting a year would have an adult (one in a thousand) who is a survivor of a shooting in childhood.

[lapfog_1]

10. yes, the data I included was only school shootings.

but Rachael was talking to a "survivor" of the Chicago Highland Park shooting who was in town and, apparently, near by this school shooting. So the math of subsets is much different if you include all mass shootings. Also the number of people "involved" can be much larger or smaller depending on various definitions. If you use very wide definitions... the number per incident is likely to be in the thousands (once you include all the people near the shooing plus all of their relatives).

But I appreciate your math... it looks correct to me if you restrict this to just school shootings.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. As I said, assumptions & definitions count. "Involved" is not "survivor" & "nearby" is not "inside".

[Irish_Dem]

3. I wonder why Friday is a day favored by shooters?

[lapfog_1]

4. I can't speculate.

My first thought was High School / Friday night at school events.

I say that because one Friday night when I was in High School, some friends and I were out driving and we got into a road rage situation with a couple of assholes... one of them pulled a pistol and I think he shot into the air (he didn't hit our car) but he maybe shot in our direction... I will never really know. All I know is that we got the hell out of there in a hurry.

But... CNN does breakdown the data by time of day, and there doesn't seem to be a nighttime school related correlation.

[EYESORE 9001]

5. From the linked article about why Fridays may predominate:

Experts suggest this could be due to tensions that build up over the course of a school week.

“If something has transpired to bring you to the breaking point of committing some type of homicidal action … you may not have had any type of decompression time during the school week,” says Clumpner. “And so that’s kind of five days stacked on top of each other.”

These shootings have tragic effects that ripple beyond the victims and their families. Nearly 200,000 students attended schools where one of these shootings occurred.

[Irish_Dem]

7. Thanks. Interesting speculation.

Maybe, but it appears we have no idea why shootings are more apt to occur on Fridays.

[EYESORE 9001]

12. It does make sense in some twisted way

I remember Fridays as a jubilant time, and all I wanted to do was GTFO.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. My guess is tensions mount all week & shooter doesn't want to think about it another weekend. . nt

[Irish_Dem]

13. I had a similar thought as well.

The shooter identifies the week he is going to take action.

It takes him all week to work up the nerve to do his evil deed.
He knows he will probably be killed.

He wants it done and over before the weekend.