Mass killings look different than you think.

Picture this: You’re a ninth grader attending a high school in Miami, Florida.

Every morning, you have to pass through a metal detector and let campus security go through your backpack to get inside. Twice a year, your school holds active shooter drills, simulations which include gunshot noises and fake wounds. Some of your teachers carry guns to school. On the drive to school, it’s not uncommon for you to feel anxious that something bad will happen to you.

This is the experience of many students today. The majority of states currently mandate schools to have some form of active shooter preparedness, and over 95% of schools in the United States reported having a written plan, per the Department of Education.

In reality, of the 613 mass killings (killings that left four or more people dead) that have taken place since 2006, only 14 of them were in schools.

Let’s take a look at the data.

As you can see, although school shootings are awful, they’re also relatively rare. The fear surrounding school shootings has been inflated for a few reasons, according to James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law, and public policy at Northeastern University. Fox created the Mass Killing Database to dispel common misconceptions about mass killings in the United States.

First of all, the way mass shootings are defined differ depending on the source — some databases, like the Gun Violence Archive, define mass shootings as incidents where four or more people were shot rather than shot and killed, which results in much higher numbers. Similarly, the K-12 School Shooting Database defines school shootings as any shootings that took place at a school, regardless of whether the shooting occurred inside the school or during school hours. This results in data that claims there are around 300 school shootings a year, an alarming statistic that is certainly cause for panic.

“When people hear hundreds of school shootings, they think, ‘we need to have more security inside school and more lockdown drills,’” Fox said. “But most of them have nothing to do with the school. They just happen to be on school property.”

That’s why Fox thinks resources should be going elsewhere — toward making schools safer and more welcoming environments for students.

Let’s return to our ninth grader in Miami — what if that student went to school in a place that didn’t feel like a disaster waiting to happen? What if they went to school on a campus blissfully free of armed campus police? What if they went to a school in an environment where they felt safe enough to report any kind of trouble they may be facing at home to their guidance counselor?

Wouldn’t that be much more safe?

Since the large majority of mass killing is committed by family members, prevention approaches that would actually provide more safety are rooted in family-focused, holistic care.

Take a look at the resources below for violence prevention approaches that are more promising: