EnglishLFC

It's always amusing when someone discovers DNS TXT records. ClamAV has been using them to announce the latest versions for more years than I care to remember.

$ dig +short -t txt current.cvd.clamav.net "0.103.8:62:26972:1689593340:1:90:49192:334"

For anyone interested, Freshclam interprets this as:

Latest ClamAV version: 0.103.8 Latest Main DB version: 62 Latest Daily DB version: 26972 UNIX Timestamp 1689593340

...and then some other version numbers and things I don't remember, one is probably a bytecode DB version 334, f-level 90 maybe.

Anyway, nothing new, works as designed. You can do all kinds of neat tricks with it. DNS has a lot going on that most people don't (ab)use.

Yes, I looked at your source data. I mentioned one case of a woman being shot outside an early learning center in a domestic dispute. That is clearly not a "school shooting". You need to understand the source data before trying to represent it in a meaningful fashion.

If a "school shooting" happens outside a school when there are no children actually in school at the time (during vacation for example), how many children are actually affected?

If a shooting happens in a school parking lot at 3:00 am because two people decided to meet there for a drug deal and it went bad, is that really a school shooting?

If you want to go with a simplistic "it happened on school property", then maybe we should be tracking "grocery store shootings", "nail salon shootings" and "corner of 3rd avenue and West Isles street shootings"?

When the term "school shooting" is used it connotes something very serious that has an impact on parents and children alike, society in general has an idea of what is meant by "school shooting" and to ignore that to keep it simple, merely exacerbates the problem and like I said, opens up the opportunity for argument that distracts from the very serious nature of the issues at hand.

This is extremely misleading. The source data is the problem here, no account is taken about what constitutes a "school shooting". For example, if someone parks in a school parking lot at midnight and discharges a weapon, that is counted as a "school shooting" because it's on school grounds. In reality it's not what anyone considers to be a school shooting, and none of the school children are affected.

Lots of shootings happen in the parking lot at high school football games, one woman got shot outside an early learning center in a domestic dispute and that too is included as a "school shooting". There are many other incidents like these which are not what we know as "school shootings" but are included in some school shooting data sites.

The problem is serious enough and there is no need to add hype to it by using poor source data. All you do is create the opportunity for counter-arguments that have nothing to do with the actual issues.