Things People in Rural America Should Really Be Concerned About. Part III

2.?School-Targeted Shootings

I've always said that my high school was a survival of the fittest situation. Think Lord of the Flies meets Mean Girls.

I was a year younger than most of my classmates because I skipped kindergarten and went right into first grade at five-years old.

I always felt behind – not intellectually because I had to take a test to gain early entry –?but socially. I was a little lost and in my own world.

Growing up on a farm taught me to imagine my own worlds and the characters who inhabited them. Great for my later career as a children's book author, but not so great for making friends.

What happened?

I was bullied. Not terribly, but enough to make this sensitive girl cry on more than one occasion.

Then I decided to copy the popular kids. It was pretty simple and I was able to crawl up the social ladder. It helped that I was pretty. And I had a horse.

Some of the socially awkward kids in my class were never able to navigate school very well. And being in a rural area, there were no other options for them.

The only other school in our whole district – which was huge land-wise because it was rural – was a Catholic school that only went through the sixth grade.

I had classmates that were bullied throughout their school career. Sometimes they were picked on mercilessly. I felt bad for them and never participated.

But you know what I never, ever, not once worried about? One of those kids bringing a gun to school and shooting us.

Based on a U.S. Government Accountability Office?(GAO) June 2020 study, while urban, poorer, and high minority schools had more shootings overall, they were characterized as a dispute or grievance and not as a school-targeted mass shooting event.

Rural, suburban, wealthier, and low minority schools (white) had more suicides and school-targeted shootings, which had the highest fatalities per incident. Overall, more than half of the 166 fatalities in the period studied were the result of school-targeted shootings. This data was compiled from the 2009–10 to the 20018–19 school years.

Why?

Simple. Many rural or suburban area schools are the ones to suffer because:

There is a higher chance a classmate or former classmate will own a gun or have access to one.

Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, many rural areas don't have alternative schools to attend if a particular child is being bullied.

In Los Angeles, where I raised my children, there were a plethora of schools they could choose from. If things weren't working out at one school, you could put them in another school. This can make all the difference when children are being bullied. And sadly, it's often the bullied kids that are the ones to plan and commit school shootings.

If you have school age children and are concerned about sending them to school every day because they might not come home, this is an issue you should care about more than anything; especially if you live in a rural or suburban area.