Rainier High School in Washington State’s Thurston County was the scene of a bizarre suicide that ended an eight-mile pursuit of a 63-year-old woman for whom there were felony warrants for assault and drug-related crimes, according to KOMO News, and now rights activists are waiting for the gun prohibition lobby to declare this as a “school shooting.”
As noted months ago by NPR, there is a good deal of misinformation about what constitutes a school shooting. NPR revealed that more than two-thirds of reported school shooting incidents in 2015-2016 that it checked “never happened.”
And, as reported earlier this year, the claim that there had been 18 “school shootings” by the time that the Parkland, Florida tragedy occurred, was declared false by USA Today.
“Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun-control advocacy group responsible for spreading this bogus statistic, should be ashamed of its blatant dishonesty,” wrote David Mastio, deputy editorial page editor for the newspaper.
But when has honesty, or the lack thereof, ever stopped the gun prohibition lobby from engaging in a canard, rights activists often wonder.
According to the Daily Olympian, the woman involved in the pursuit was stopped by Thurston County Sheriff’s detectives at about 10:30 a.m. She was wanted for third-degree assault and unlawful possession of methamphetamine, the newspaper explained. Instead of surrendering, she reportedly rammed the car being driven by the detectives, and fled.
The pursuit continued for some eight miles and ended when the woman drove into the Rainier High School parking lot, pulled out a gun and shot herself in the head. She died at the scene.
The shooting really had nothing to do with the school, its students or staff. It just happened to be where this chase ended.
But that doesn’t mean it will not somehow show up as a statistic for some gun control organization. As USA Today’s Mastio wrote, “Amping up fears, and muddying the search for fixes that can cut back the senseless violence, only undermines efforts to reconcile the real concerns of parents and the legitimate desire of civil rights advocates to protect the Bill of Rights.”
