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Part of the problem is not just the actual risk, but the perception of risk. People deserve to not feel like they are going to be shot when they show up to an e

Part of the problem is not just the actual risk, but the perception of risk. People deserve to not feel like they are going to be shot when they show up to an educational institution, and that feeling has been withering away lately

homonculus1 7y ago
That's the vast majority of the problem, to be specific, as that perception is far out of proportion to the actual risk. So address the fearmongering and contextualize how rare these incidents are, insteading of blaming gun owners and further eroding civil liberties.
- foldr 7y ago
  School shootings are unacceptably frequent in the US, regardless of how infrequent they are in an absolute sense. Many countries go decades without a single school shooting.
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    The framing of this comparison is fraught due to unequal bucketing. Most other countries are the size of US states or even cities, so they can boast individually low numbers while in the US everything gets bundled together. The US should instead be compared to something like all of Europe or all of Western Europe.
    - crazypyro 7y ago
      Perhaps, a comparison versus the rest of the G7? https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-world-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-...
      - homonculus1 7y ago
        I suppose I'm conflating school shootings with mass shootings which is what most people worry about, a la Columbine or Parkland. The figures in your link are mostly gang violence, which is a completely separate although valid issue. We do absolutely have higher rates of targeted gang violence than other countries, which after controlling for factors like density and poverty is highly correlated to young urban male demographics that aren't as prevalent in other developed nations. There is no single policy that can solve the numerous social and systemic failures that generate this problem, but due to the nature of these vendettas they would assuredly be carried out with knives and shanks in the absence of guns.
        foldr 7y ago
        The figures in the article are literally school shootings, i.e. shootings on school grounds.
        CompanionCuuube 7y ago
        Maybe you should reread the comment you are responding to in order to understand why your objection is meaningless in the context of the discussion. All mass shootings in schools are school shootings, but not all school shootings are mass shootings.
        foldr 7y ago
        Why is the distinction important? We don't want school shootings, regardless of whether one or more people die in them.
    - foldr 7y ago
      Sure, but what difference does that make? The US still comes out way ahead in school shootings if you compare it to all of Europe. And e.g. the UK has about 1/5th of the population of the US but vastly less than 1/5th as many school shootings. I don't think you can really have thought this through if you think that "bucketing" is the issue.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    I don’t understand your comment. It seems to boil down to “they are obviously too frequent, regardless of how frequent they are”. Is that a fair summary? Anyway, in principle any death for any reason is unacceptable. In reality, however, we need to decide how to allocate limited resources to making various classes of death less likely. Given that dying in a mass school shooting is much less likely than dying from a lightning strike, and is about as difficult to prevent[0], it doesn’t make any sense to focus on. [0]: No, we can’t just “make guns illegal”. The political structure of the US makes this impossible.
    - foldr 7y ago
      I mean that they are vastly more frequent in the US than in any vaguely comparable country. It would be as if, e.g., 100x more Americans died of electric shocks than Europeans. This would suggest that something fixable was wrong.
      - umvi 7y ago
        You have to prioritize your problems and solve the ones that give you the most bang for your buck. I'm sure there are magnitudes more shark attacks in USA than in EU, but that doesn't instantly mean we should prioritize reducing shark attacks - the cost-to-value ratio of solving that problem is terrible. America has a lot of problems. I would say school shootings are not terribly high on the list. Same with mass shootings. Gun violence is a very touchy subject in America, as outright bans violate the 2A of the constitution which many believe was inspired to protect against formation of tyranny. Personally, I see the value in citizens being able to own rifles; not so much with handguns (which seem to only be used for murder and suicide). But imagine if Hong Kong had 2A rights. Protests would be much more violent, yes, but the violence would be up-front instead of postponed until the next revolution (an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure...). Beijing would be forced to either back off or straight up invade. Instead, I predict HK's rights will be slowly eroded in a war of attrition until they are all trapped under the tyranny of the CCP for generations to come (which is arguably worse than up-front violence).
        7y ago
whatshisface 7y ago
If the problem really is the perception and not the reality, then the perception can be changed without a constitutional amendment. It would be a lot easier to raise awareness of how safe guns are for society than it would be to get rid of them just to satisfy those who are afraid of them because they aren't aware of the facts.
raxxorrax 7y ago
And we should reinforce this perception by strip searching kids?
asdff 7y ago
You are far more likely to die crossing the street to school than having some homegrown terrorist appear one day. A 4 year old girl was killed crossing the street to school in my neighborhood just over a month ago, horrible tragedy: https://laist.com/2019/10/22/pedestrian_deaths_vision_zero_protest.php https://laist.com/2019/10/22/pedestrian_deaths_vision_zero_p... This article shows it's not only LA that is failing at vision zero. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/11/vision-zero-data-traffic-deaths-pedestrians-cyclist-safety/601831/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/11/vision-zero-d...

homonculus1 7y ago

That's the vast majority of the problem, to be specific, as that perception is far out of proportion to the actual risk. So address the fearmongering and contextualize how rare these incidents are, insteading of blaming gun owners and further eroding civil liberties.

foldr 7y ago
School shootings are unacceptably frequent in the US, regardless of how infrequent they are in an absolute sense. Many countries go decades without a single school shooting.
- homonculus1 7y ago
  The framing of this comparison is fraught due to unequal bucketing. Most other countries are the size of US states or even cities, so they can boast individually low numbers while in the US everything gets bundled together. The US should instead be compared to something like all of Europe or all of Western Europe.
  - crazypyro 7y ago
    Perhaps, a comparison versus the rest of the G7? https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-world-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-...
    - homonculus1 7y ago
      I suppose I'm conflating school shootings with mass shootings which is what most people worry about, a la Columbine or Parkland. The figures in your link are mostly gang violence, which is a completely separate although valid issue. We do absolutely have higher rates of targeted gang violence than other countries, which after controlling for factors like density and poverty is highly correlated to young urban male demographics that aren't as prevalent in other developed nations. There is no single policy that can solve the numerous social and systemic failures that generate this problem, but due to the nature of these vendettas they would assuredly be carried out with knives and shanks in the absence of guns.
      - foldr 7y ago
        The figures in the article are literally school shootings, i.e. shootings on school grounds.
        CompanionCuuube 7y ago
        Maybe you should reread the comment you are responding to in order to understand why your objection is meaningless in the context of the discussion. All mass shootings in schools are school shootings, but not all school shootings are mass shootings.
        foldr 7y ago
        Why is the distinction important? We don't want school shootings, regardless of whether one or more people die in them.
  - foldr 7y ago
    Sure, but what difference does that make? The US still comes out way ahead in school shootings if you compare it to all of Europe. And e.g. the UK has about 1/5th of the population of the US but vastly less than 1/5th as many school shootings. I don't think you can really have thought this through if you think that "bucketing" is the issue.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  I don’t understand your comment. It seems to boil down to “they are obviously too frequent, regardless of how frequent they are”. Is that a fair summary? Anyway, in principle any death for any reason is unacceptable. In reality, however, we need to decide how to allocate limited resources to making various classes of death less likely. Given that dying in a mass school shooting is much less likely than dying from a lightning strike, and is about as difficult to prevent[0], it doesn’t make any sense to focus on. [0]: No, we can’t just “make guns illegal”. The political structure of the US makes this impossible.
  - foldr 7y ago
    I mean that they are vastly more frequent in the US than in any vaguely comparable country. It would be as if, e.g., 100x more Americans died of electric shocks than Europeans. This would suggest that something fixable was wrong.
    - umvi 7y ago
      You have to prioritize your problems and solve the ones that give you the most bang for your buck. I'm sure there are magnitudes more shark attacks in USA than in EU, but that doesn't instantly mean we should prioritize reducing shark attacks - the cost-to-value ratio of solving that problem is terrible. America has a lot of problems. I would say school shootings are not terribly high on the list. Same with mass shootings. Gun violence is a very touchy subject in America, as outright bans violate the 2A of the constitution which many believe was inspired to protect against formation of tyranny. Personally, I see the value in citizens being able to own rifles; not so much with handguns (which seem to only be used for murder and suicide). But imagine if Hong Kong had 2A rights. Protests would be much more violent, yes, but the violence would be up-front instead of postponed until the next revolution (an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure...). Beijing would be forced to either back off or straight up invade. Instead, I predict HK's rights will be slowly eroded in a war of attrition until they are all trapped under the tyranny of the CCP for generations to come (which is arguably worse than up-front violence).
      - 7y ago

whatshisface 7y ago

If the problem really is the perception and not the reality, then the perception can be changed without a constitutional amendment. It would be a lot easier to raise awareness of how safe guns are for society than it would be to get rid of them just to satisfy those who are afraid of them because they aren't aware of the facts.

raxxorrax 7y ago

And we should reinforce this perception by strip searching kids?

asdff 7y ago

You are far more likely to die crossing the street to school than having some homegrown terrorist appear one day. A 4 year old girl was killed crossing the street to school in my neighborhood just over a month ago, horrible tragedy: https://laist.com/2019/10/22/pedestrian_deaths_vision_zero_protest.php https://laist.com/2019/10/22/pedestrian_deaths_vision_zero_p... This article shows it's not only LA that is failing at vision zero. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/11/vision-zero-data-traffic-deaths-pedestrians-cyclist-safety/601831/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/11/vision-zero-d...