It’s probably an understatement to say that the U.S. and its Cheeto-in-Chief has really dropped the ball in responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Since America has enough on its plate without us dogpiling on them, let’s look at a silver lining to its horrendous coronavirus response: school shootings have dropped dramatically ever since COVID-19 started wrecking havoc.
The GOAT team also talk about how the coronavirus pandemic has affected homeless people on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
According to CBS News, data from the National School Safety Center and National School Safety And Services reveals March 2020 to be the first March since 2002 where there hasn’t been a school shooting.
Now before we get too excited, there needs to be an asterisk next to that statistic as there have been a number of reported instances of shootings on school campus in March 2020, but these don’t quite fit what the U.S. deems as a “school shooting,” whatever that means.
Anyway, this sobering school shooting statistic coincided with the closing of schools across the U.S. in mid-March in an attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19, though efforts to contain the disease have been horrendous and trying to find a positive by looking at the absence of school shootings goes beyond scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Let’s frame this another way: America not only leads the world in school shootings between 2009 and 2018, it is leading the world in terms of confirmed coronavirus cases and number of total deaths due to COVID-19.
It’s an incredibly grim silver lining to find during these terribly dark times, but America needs every little victory it can get due to the fustercluck that’s going on over there at the moment.
Even with the absence of school shootings in March 2020, the signs aren’t looking too promising once everyone emerges from their coronavirus lockdown as the COVID-19 pandemic has seen a spike in gun sales.
With all those guns out in the wild, this doesn’t bode well for children once things go back to some semblance of normality and schools reopen. Having said that, it may take some time for that to happen as a coronavirus vaccine is still a while away.
It’s a wild world we live in where that piece of sobering news about the COVID-19 vaccine doubles as good news for the safety of school children in America.
But look, let’s look at the, uh, bright side here because school shootings are down in America during March 2020. Good lord.
Not even an eloquent, empathetic speech from Barack Obama can make that depressing statistic go down any easier.
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