Quote

Since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School three years ago, we have lost over 90,000 Americans to gun violence. This is a manmade crisis that needs to be treated as the public health epidemic it has become.

It's hard to say whether the general incidence of school violence of all types is increasing or not.

One in four children being victimized? That's about seven children in every classroom. That's a significant proportion of the population.

The funny thing is all these school shootings that we have, always happen in very religious communities. Maybe it's because the centre of their lives is a big fat nothing and it's just a fantasy and there's nothing there. I think maybe that might have something to do with it.

I made 'Bowling for Columbine' in the hope the school shootings would stop and that we would address the issue of how easy it is to get a gun in the United States, and tragically, those school shootings continue.

Every week, we read about horrific tragedies resulting from children who play with firearms and accidentally shoot themselves or their family members.

After every massacre in a school, Americans grasp at quick cures. 'Let's install metal detectors and give guns to teachers' Let's crack down on troublemakers, weeding out kids who fit the profile of a gunman. Let's buy bulletproof whiteboards for the students to scurry behind, or train kids to throw erasers or cans of soup at an attacker.'

School shootings were invented by blacks... and stolen by the white man.

There is no accurate or useful 'profile' of students who engage in targeted school violence. Some come from good homes, some from bad. Some have good grades, some bad.

Moments of crisis, like the shooting in Newtown, tend to produce brief spikes of popular interest in gun control. My research on media attention suggests these spikes are extremely short-lived, and that they may be decreasing in intensity.