A year after the shooting tragedy at Columbine HS, millions of Americans have lost their confidence in school safety – believing kids are safer on the street than in class, a new poll says.
“I don’t know of anything that has affected the nation like Columbine,” federal Education Secretary Richard Riley said after the poll was released. “Literally the whole nation wept.
“It doesn’t surprise me at all that people overestimate the occurrences [of school violence] because this one occurrence was such a shock,” he said of the April 20, 1999, Littleton, Colo., bloodbath in which two teens killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves.
The poll, by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University, surveyed 1,015 adults across the nation and found that 19 percent of Americans believe their children are safer at a shopping mall than at school.
A full 30 percent feel kids are safer walking on a street than sitting in a classroom and 81 percent believe kids are safest in their own homes.
Lawmakers in many states – but not Colorado – have pushed for stricter gun laws since the shooting.
Politicians in the pro-gun state rejected new gun-control laws, prompting a citizens’ initiative on the November ballot that would require background checks on all gun-show buyers.