Knoxville high school shooting

[Lennyjoe]

Still develop but looks like multiple people shot at a high school in Knoxville.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/multiple-people-shot-including-police-officer-high-school-knoxville-tennessee-n1263874

[Hawkmoon]

Apparently the only person killed was a student with a gun. The only person injured was one of the responding police officers. No other students were injured.

Okay, it was a shooting and it happened at a school, so I have to include it in my database. But as a rule I don't include the shooter in the casualty count. In this incident, the kid hadn't fired a shot until he was cornered by the cops. Do I include him in the numbers, or not? For the moment I have done so, but I'm leaning toward saying I should take him off the casualty count.

[230RN]

Follow your own rule and don't include him in the body count.

Had I set up the data base, though, I would not have excluded the perpetrator(s) in the body count.  Your reasoning "may have been" to not make the data look worse in terms of the size of the tragedy, but I would have voted to include the "perps" if it were a committee decision.  Even if it were four "perps" (I hate that term) and only one innocent killed, it was all blood on the floor, so make it five deaths, not just one.  One could asterisk it as "including the shooter(s)" or "not including four of the shooter(s), to keep it clear.  Or, better, add two more cells, one for the number of dead shooters, the other for the number of shooters who unfortunately survived.

There was some thinking on one of the boards a while ago that counting the villain in the deaths could somehow glorify him, and we should just let any vestige of him (or her) fade from the memory of mankind.

I thought that was too Unicornly symbolic and did not reflect the true facts of the incident.

Terry, 230RN

[WLJ]

This is not the shooting you (the dems) were looking hoping for

[Lennyjoe]

Yea the initial headline read mass shooting but quickly changed to multiple. Still doesn’t fit the definition of multiple which is more than 2....lol

[Hawkmoon]

Yea the initial headline read mass shooting but quickly changed to multiple. Still doesn’t fit the definition of multiple which is more than 2....lol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting

A mass shooting is an incident involving multiple victims of gun violence. There is no widely accepted definition of the term mass shooting. The United States' FBI follows the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012 definition for active shooter incidents and mass killings (defined by the law as three or more people) in public places. Based on this, it is generally agreed that a mass shooting is whenever three or more people are shot (injured or killed), not including the shooters.

And that's why I don't include the shooter(s).

So the Knoxville incident makes my database only because it was a school shooting, not because it was a mass shooting.

[zxcvbob]

Follow your own rule and don't include him in the body count.

Had I set up the data base, though, I would not have excluded the perpetrator(s) in the body count.  Your reasoning "may have been" to not make the data look worse in terms of the size of the tragedy, but I would have voted to include the "perps" if it were a committee decision.  Even if it were four "perps" (I hate that term) and only one innocent killed, it was all blood on the floor, so make it five deaths, not just one.  One could asterisk it as "including the shooter(s)" or "not including four of the shooter(s), to keep it clear.  Or, better, add two more cells, one for the number of dead shooters, the other for the number of shooters who unfortunately survived.

There was some thinking on one of the boards a while ago that counting the villain in the deaths could somehow glorify him, and we should just let any vestige of him (or her) fade from the memory of mankind.

I thought that was too Unicornly symbolic and did not reflect the true facts of the incident.

Terry, 230RN

IMHO, you include him in the body count, but if he's the only death you might put an asterisk.  You don't name the perpetrator as a casualty or victim or even a perp; if you must refer to him (her) at all, use a term like "loser", "criminal",  or "*expletive deleted*bag".

But maybe that's too much precision :)  (yes, that's a thing)

[kgbsquirrel]

Apparently the only person killed was a student with a gun. The only person injured was one of the responding police officers. No other students were injured.

Okay, it was a shooting and it happened at a school, so I have to include it in my database. But as a rule I don't include the shooter in the casualty count. In this incident, the kid hadn't fired a shot until he was cornered by the cops. Do I include him in the numbers, or not? For the moment I have done so, but I'm leaning toward saying I should take him off the casualty count.

Victims for the count only and then a separate data point for "perpetrator survived/suicides/killed".

[230RN]

Opinion:

Total body count, but with two extra cells (as mentioned) to conform with facts and clarify it for the reader.  I'm not on board with the FBI's "not including the shooter."  Admittedly, if 50 bad guys were killed and only one innocent, including the bad guys could be confusing a gang shootout with what is intended as a mass shooting of innocents.

However, two extra cells would clarify that, avoid any challenges to your veracity, and still have the data conform to FBI standards.

Yes, there is such a thing as too much precision, but in the "two extra cells" case, the user of the data base could make up his own mind as to how to present it.

Opinions vary.

Re "precision," yes, 22/7 = pi, but you can't get pi=3.141592653589793 from 22/7ths. On the other hand, you can get 22/7ths from pi=3.141592653589793

So include the poopy-heads in extra cells, but allow the user to figure out how he (or she, talk about excessive precision), wants to present it.

Terry, 230RN

(Edited after the following post.)

[Hawkmoon]

IMHO, you include him in the body count, but if he's the only death you might put an asterisk.  You don't name the perpetrator as a casualty or victim or even a perp; if you must refer to him (her) at all, use a term like "loser", "criminal",  or "*expletive deleted*bag".

But maybe that's too much precision :)  (yes, that's a thing)

I don't "refer" to the shooters at all. I'm not writing articles, I'm recording numbers. Since the consensus national standard is that the number used to determine whether or not an incident is a "mass" shooting does not count the shooter(s) -- I don't count the shooter(s).

So, for the Knoxville incident, I have removed the shooter from the spreadsheet.

[MechAg94]

Officer wounded in school wasn't shot by student's gun
https://www.yahoo.com/news/officer-wounded-school-wasnt-shot-223041872.html

On Wednesday, the TBI revised its account in a second statement on the shooting, saying the student’s gun was fired during a struggle with an officer.

“Preliminary examinations indicate the bullet that struck the KPD officer was not fired from the student’s handgun,” the TBI statement released Wednesday said.

The only other gunshots cited in the report were fired by officers. The TBI declined to answer a follow-up question about whether the officer was struck by an officer's bullet.

So what exactly happened?  Was the kid planning to use the gun?  This makes me question the whole thing.  I hope they release more information on this.

[RoadKingLarry]

OK, so the cop wasn't hit by the kids gun

The TBI declined to answer a follow-up question about whether the officer was struck by an officer's bullet

Kid didn't shoot him, who the hell else was shooting if not a fellow officer?
 

[MechAg94]

OK, so the cop wasn't hit by the kids gunKid didn't shoot him, who the hell else was shooting if not a fellow officer?
 

And if that part was not true, what else might be incorrect?  This is what conspiracies are built on.

I can see how this part could get misreported up the chain, but someone knows they let a round off and maybe didn't report it and someone was reviewing body cam footage and should have seen this.. 

[WLJ]

It's was a ghost gun, someone call the Ghostgunbusters

[230RN]

 

OK, so another cell: "Officers shot by officers." (Of course we don't know that at this point in time.)



That's the trouble with cookie-cutter data matrices.  You can't include outlying incidents unless you provide a "data point" (cell) for outlying incidents.  So here's a "mass shooting" (or whatever)  with two people shot, one person killed --or no persons killed, using the FBI data restrictions --so why bother with it at all?

Apparenly, Hawkmoon, the only reason you included it was it was a "school shooting," but you took it out of the data set because of the inconsistencies.  That's OK with me.

Damn them outlying incidents.  Damn them, I say.

Cookie cutter matrices don't cut it.

I still think the FBI setup (as Hawkmoon presented it) doesn't account for all the blood on the floor and just opens up other questions.  I also think the requirement to add in school shootings to "mass shootings" was a result of someone having an axe to grind.

As someone said, this kind of thing is what makes conspiracy theories grow. 

BTW, thanks for amassing this data, Hawkmoon.  You've been doing it for a while now.  Any tentative conclusions you can draw?

Terry, 230RN

[Hawkmoon]

So what exactly happened?  Was the kid planning to use the gun?  This makes me question the whole thing.  I hope they release more information on this.

Well, the cops ordered the kid to come out of the bathroom and he refused. Contempt of cop has to be met with escalation of compliance enforcement techniques. As has been demonstrated innumerable times, bad things happen when people don't "respect mah aw-thaw-rih-tay."

[Hawkmoon]

OK, so the cop wasn't hit by the kids gunKid didn't shoot him, who the hell else was shooting if not a fellow officer?
 

Shot in the upper leg. Cop might have shot himself. (Maybe he thought he was reaching for the Taser.)

[Hawkmoon]

That's the trouble with cookie-cutter data matrices.  You can't include outlying incidents unless you provide a "data point" (cell) for outlying incidents.  So here's a "mass shooting" (or whatever)  with two people shot, one person killed --or no persons killed, using the FBI data restrictions --so why bother with it at all?

Apparenly, Hawkmoon, the only reason you included it was it was a "school shooting," but you took it out of the data set because of the inconsistencies.  That's OK with me.

I didn't delete the incident from the tabulation -- it was still a school shooting. I changed the number killed from 1 to 0 because I don't list shooters. If, as it appears, the student wasn't the shooter, then I'll restore it to show 1 killed.

[Angel Eyes]

(Maybe he thought he was reaching for the Taser.)

Oh, snap.

[MechAg94]

Well, the cops ordered the kid to come out of the bathroom and he refused. Contempt of cop has to be met with escalation of compliance enforcement techniques. As has been demonstrated innumerable times, bad things happen when people don't "respect mah aw-thaw-rih-tay."

Agreed.  In my wild imagination, I am thinking if the kid had his pants down when the cop(s) ordered him out, I can see him saying no or not immediately complying.  Did he actually fire the gun they said he had?  Or worse, did this officers ND trigger the other officers to start shooting?  Of course, I have no evidence of this and it is a worst case for the cops, so I really want to see badge cam video to see how this went down.  This is being reported like the cops stopped a school mass shooting before it happened, but I want to know if that is actually true.  The kid could certainly have issues and been contemplating something, but now he is dead so they need to release all the information.