James Alan Fox

Opinion columnist

Correction & clarification: Because of an editing error, Jonesboro, Ark., was mislabeled.

With the high school massacre in Parkland, Fla., several days gone but hardly forgotten, the time seems right to examine closely some of the statistical hype that made frightening news alongside details of the horrific shooting.

In print and on TV, Americans were bombarded with facts and figures suggesting that the problem of school shootings was out of control. We were informed, for example, that since 2013 there has been an average of one school shooting a week in the U.S., and 18 since the beginning of this year. While these statistics were not exactly lies or fake news, they involved stretching the definition of a school shooting well beyond the limits of most people’s imagination.

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Everytown for Gun Safety reported that there have been 290 school shootings since the catastrophic massacre in Newtown, Conn., more than five years ago. However, very few of these were anything akin to Sandy Hook or Parkland. Sure, they all involved a school of some type (including technical schools and colleges) as well as a firearm, but the outcomes were hardly similar. Nearly half of the 290 were completed or attempted suicides, accidental discharges of a gun, or shootings with not a single individual being injured. Of the remainder, the vast majority involved either one fatality or none at all.

It is easy to believe that school shootings are the “new normal” as has been intimated, or that we are facing a crisis of epidemic proportions. When schools are placed on lockdown based on an active shooter alert (which many times is a false alarm), cable news channels immediately inform their viewers of the danger, and word is tweeted and retweeted to millions, most of whom have no direct connection to the event.

And when gunshots ring out, we hear the sounds replayed from cellphone recordings and watch through satellite feed as terrified survivors flee the scene. It makes a lasting impression, to be sure.

For all those who believe that schools are under siege like never before, it is instructive to take a statistical road trip back in time.

Since 1990, there have been 22 shootings at elementary and secondary schools in which two or more people were killed, not counting those perpetrators who committed suicide.

Whereas five of these incidents have occurred over the past five-plus years since 2013, claiming the lives of 27 victims (17 at Parkland), the latter half of the 1990s witnessed seven multiple-fatality shootings with a total of 33 killed (13 at Columbine).

In fact, the 1997-98 school year was so awful, with four multiple-fatality shooting sprees at the hands of armed students (in Pearl, Miss.; West Paducah, Ky.; Jonesboro, Ark.; and Springfield, Ore.), that then-President Clinton formed a White House expert committee to advise him. Nearly a decade later, President Bush convened a White House Conference on School Safety in the wake of multiple-fatality incidents during his administration.

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Of course, I don’t mean to minimize any of the one-per week on average school shootings, but they should not be conflated with the most deadly but rare events.

Unfortunately, most readers and viewers don’t appreciate the distinction when statistics including non-fatal school shootings are cited whenever there is mass killing at a school.

Notwithstanding the occasional multiple-fatality shooting that takes place at one of the 100,000 public schools across America, the nation’s schools are safe. Over the past quarter-century, on average about 10 students are slain in school shootings annually.

Compare the school fatality rate with the more than 100 school-age children accidentally killed each year riding theirbikes or walking to school. Congress might be too timid to pass gun legislation to protect children, but how about a national bicycle helmet law for minors? Half of the states do not require them. There is no NRA — National Riding Association — opposing that.

I’m all for shielding our kids from harm. But let’s at least deal with the low hanging fruit while we debate and Congress does nothing about the role of guns in school shootings.

James Alan Fox is the Lipman Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and co-author of Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder. Follow him on Twitter: @jamesalanfox.