4 ms·

This comment takes us off-track a bit, but: ~130,000 K-12 schools in the US, public and private[0] 94 "gun violence" incidents in schools in 2018[1]. This is

This comment takes us off-track a bit, but: ~130,000 K-12 schools in the US, public and private[0] 94 "gun violence" incidents in schools in 2018[1]. This is "each and every instance a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time of day, or day of week" - so far more broad than mass shootings alone. Let's say each incident happened at a different school: that's a 0.072% chance that something happens with a gun at your school in a year. If those numbers are the same each year (and that hasn't been the case; 2018 is higher than normal), it's a ~1% chance that something happens at your school over 13 years of schooling. Without doing a ton of research, I'm sure the odds would be much more or less depending on the school you pick. Is that enough for you to keep your kid out of school? That's for you to decide. But bringing it back to my point - evaluating the risk isn't as simple as giving a body count, making "dangerous" a subjective term. [0]: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84 [1]: https://www.vox.com/2018/12/10/18134232/gun-violence-schools-mass-shootings https://www.vox.com/2018/12/10/18134232/gun-violence-schools...

weberc2 8y ago
Further, what is the variance across schools? If you don’t send your child to a school in a dodgy neighborhood, can you expect a significant drop in risk? If so, how much?
- dagw 8y ago
  While living i a "nicer" neighborhood does greatly reduce the chance of your child being the victim of violent crime in general, especially outside of school, the majority of deadly school shootings didn't happen in particularly "dodgy neighborhoods".
  - weberc2 8y ago
    Do you have a citation? I could believe the most high-profile school shootings don't happen in dodgy neighborhoods, but the notion that school shootings generally are rarer in more violent neighborhoods seems counter-intuitive.
    - dagw 8y ago
      Let me revise my statement. I still suspect I'm right if we're talking deadly school shootings (most school shootings aren't deadly) but I'll have to run the numbers. A statement that is correct is that the majority of school shooting deaths the past 20 years happened in not dodgy neighborhoods.
- magduf 8y ago
  Columbine High School was not in a "dodgy neighborhood". Nor was the shooting at that school in Florida a year or two ago. Nor was Virginia Tech in 2008. In fact, I don't think any of the mass shootings in American schools have been in poor schools at all. Of course, they have their own problems with violence stemming from gang activity and poverty, but the mass shootings are in schools with pretty well-off students.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    My question was posted in the context of its thread. Specifically, the figures we were discussing were about "gun related incidents", not mass shootings; the OP took the time to explain that these included things like brandishing a firearm or bullets striking school property whether or not there was a shooter on the property or someone got hurt. I would expect these sorts of incidents to happen more often in more violent communities; mass school shootings seem like they follow a different pattern than other kinds of gun violence.
magduf 8y ago
~1% sounds pretty high to me. Compare this to other countries like Germany or Japan. What are the chances that your schoolkid is going to experience any kind of violence on that level in schools there? Virtually zero. Take a look at the murder rate for the US and compare to Japan's. For the US, it was 17,250 murders in 2016, a rate of 5.35 (per 100k people). In Germany, they had 963 murders in 2016, a rate of 1.18. In Japan, they had 362 murders in 2016, a rate of 0.28. The US had 4.5 times Germany's murder rate, and over 19 times Japan's! I'd say it's outright lunacy to think that the US isn't a very dangerous country to live in. Just check out the rankings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... The US is ranking alongside such nations as Sudan, Ecuador, Argentina, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Kenya. Even North Korea has a lower murder rate; Turkey, India, Rwanda, Egypt, and Iran have significantly lower murder rates than the US. China is downright safe with a murder rate of only 0.62! (Of course, the pollution will probably kill you early there...) I think the statistics clearly show the US is not a very safe place to live: murder rate, mass shooting rates, gun violence rates, etc. are all extremely high in the US compared to developed nations. And it's likely to get worse, as our elections have shown.
- Brendinooo 8y ago
  This is good stuff. You're proving my point: "dangerous" is a value judgment! Do you live in the US? I do, and I've never felt unsafe in any of the places I've lived in. Maybe I'm 4-5x more likely to be murdered here compared to Germany, but a 0.00535% chance of getting murdered this year doesn't really move the needle for me. I also know that there are wide variances in that rate based on the community I live in, the people I associate with, and the activities in which I partake. If you think you'd feel safer in North Korea because the murder rate is lower, feel free to live there instead! I'll take my chances here.

weberc2 8y ago

Further, what is the variance across schools? If you don’t send your child to a school in a dodgy neighborhood, can you expect a significant drop in risk? If so, how much?

dagw 8y ago
While living i a "nicer" neighborhood does greatly reduce the chance of your child being the victim of violent crime in general, especially outside of school, the majority of deadly school shootings didn't happen in particularly "dodgy neighborhoods".
- weberc2 8y ago
  Do you have a citation? I could believe the most high-profile school shootings don't happen in dodgy neighborhoods, but the notion that school shootings generally are rarer in more violent neighborhoods seems counter-intuitive.
  - dagw 8y ago
    Let me revise my statement. I still suspect I'm right if we're talking deadly school shootings (most school shootings aren't deadly) but I'll have to run the numbers. A statement that is correct is that the majority of school shooting deaths the past 20 years happened in not dodgy neighborhoods.
magduf 8y ago
Columbine High School was not in a "dodgy neighborhood". Nor was the shooting at that school in Florida a year or two ago. Nor was Virginia Tech in 2008. In fact, I don't think any of the mass shootings in American schools have been in poor schools at all. Of course, they have their own problems with violence stemming from gang activity and poverty, but the mass shootings are in schools with pretty well-off students.
- weberc2 8y ago
  My question was posted in the context of its thread. Specifically, the figures we were discussing were about "gun related incidents", not mass shootings; the OP took the time to explain that these included things like brandishing a firearm or bullets striking school property whether or not there was a shooter on the property or someone got hurt. I would expect these sorts of incidents to happen more often in more violent communities; mass school shootings seem like they follow a different pattern than other kinds of gun violence.

magduf 8y ago

~1% sounds pretty high to me. Compare this to other countries like Germany or Japan. What are the chances that your schoolkid is going to experience any kind of violence on that level in schools there? Virtually zero. Take a look at the murder rate for the US and compare to Japan's. For the US, it was 17,250 murders in 2016, a rate of 5.35 (per 100k people). In Germany, they had 963 murders in 2016, a rate of 1.18. In Japan, they had 362 murders in 2016, a rate of 0.28. The US had 4.5 times Germany's murder rate, and over 19 times Japan's! I'd say it's outright lunacy to think that the US isn't a very dangerous country to live in. Just check out the rankings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... The US is ranking alongside such nations as Sudan, Ecuador, Argentina, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Kenya. Even North Korea has a lower murder rate; Turkey, India, Rwanda, Egypt, and Iran have significantly lower murder rates than the US. China is downright safe with a murder rate of only 0.62! (Of course, the pollution will probably kill you early there...) I think the statistics clearly show the US is not a very safe place to live: murder rate, mass shooting rates, gun violence rates, etc. are all extremely high in the US compared to developed nations. And it's likely to get worse, as our elections have shown.

Brendinooo 8y ago
This is good stuff. You're proving my point: "dangerous" is a value judgment! Do you live in the US? I do, and I've never felt unsafe in any of the places I've lived in. Maybe I'm 4-5x more likely to be murdered here compared to Germany, but a 0.00535% chance of getting murdered this year doesn't really move the needle for me. I also know that there are wide variances in that rate based on the community I live in, the people I associate with, and the activities in which I partake. If you think you'd feel safer in North Korea because the murder rate is lower, feel free to live there instead! I'll take my chances here.