Delivering remarks at a memorial to honor victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012, President Obama suggested that school shootings had become “endless” and perhaps were becoming “routine.”

He was merely echoing a common belief that America is gripped by an epidemic of violence. People believe schools are especially unsafe, a locus not only of shootings but also of theft and bullying. This fiction has penetrated the national psyche so far that fear of school violence has led to a rise in homeschooling.