A joint report from the National Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Department of Education concluded that children and youth were 87 times more likely to die by murder or suicide outside of school than in it. How does the country weigh their awareness of the overall safe character of U.S. schools against the compelling desire to prevent more school shootings if at all possible? How do people find balance between these two perspectives? In the view of the authors, achieving such a balance means taking rational and effective actions to prevent school shootings while also being cautious not to sacrifice educational goals or the school climate for the sake of exaggerated safety concerns. This article presents statistics on school gun violence and sensible measures that can be taken for prevention.