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This is not so alien to Europe as you seem to think. Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. A E

by uxp100 4y ago

This is not so alien to Europe as you seem to think. Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. A European nation was in a similar situation very recently. What is maybe unique about the US is that nothing will be done, where as Germany added additional gun control laws, and probably will not ever have as deadly a decade for schools as the 2000s again. I'm not attacking you, it's just a weird side effect of the US dominating discourse on the internet, but there is a certain habit of European HN posts exaggerating differences, one of favorites being something like: "I can't imagine living in the US, it only costs a few euros for my library card, in the US they charge per book, how dystopian" which is uh, just false, but also, Japan actually has a history of fee based lending libraries, and you would never see a similar comment about Japan, it would be celebrated as twee small business.

gunnarmorling 4y ago
> Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. Any stats to back that up? Seems completely counter-factual.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- uxp100 4y ago
  You can see the basic methodology in sibling comments, just some counting on wikipedia, really hinging on whether you include Universities (I did not). But a less controversial way of putting it is that other countries, including European ones, have had comparable incidents, and we can compare what they did with the US.
lawlorino 4y ago
> Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. This is absolutely not true and can be verified by a few minutes research on Wikipedia
andyjohnson0 4y ago
> Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. A European nation was in a similar situation very recently. Wikipedia lists 90 deaths in "mass shootings" in Germany for the almost 32 years since 1990 [1]. I'm quite surprised its that high tbh. Wikipedia also gives a total of 118 deaths in mass ahootings in the US for just the two years 2022 and 2021 [2]. There were no year totals and tbh I gave up counting at that point. But a crude extrapolation back to 1990 gives 1770 deaths. The population of Germany is 84 million, and the population of the USA is 331 million - ie 4 times larger. So for Germany to have the same number of deaths in mass shootings over that period would have required 442 deaths - almost 5 times the actual number. So I dont think this statement stands up to scrutiny. Caveats: These numbers are mass shootings that include school shootings as well as other siruations. The data comes from different sources. Extrapolation of us numbers from two years data. And I did some of the adding-up in my head. I could try to get better data but its friday night and I'm tired. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Germ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
- uxp100 4y ago
  My number for these murders in the US was 119, basically taking a similar wikipedia page as the one that you linked to and adding up mass shootings (I used 3 or more as criteria, chosen because of one definition used in one particular US law) at schools, which I defined as k-12, pretty arbitrarily, just what I thought of as "schools." That gives more in killings in Germany than the US, really due to their particularly brutal 2000s decade, and which does not seem likely to recur, and the US might benefit from looking at the actions Germany took. The page you linked to is mostly not school shootings, so I don't think it is a good way to examine my statement.
jamie_ca 4y ago
I'm willing to give this the benefit of the doubt if there's a lack of english-language reporting, and I don't want to trivialize as it's tragic wherever it occurs, but - Wikipedia[1] has six events dating back to 1983 plus one from 1913, with a total of 46 deaths. - CNN[2] only covers 2009-2018, with one German school shooting (to 288 American) - Infoplease[3] lists mass shootings (not just schools) worldwide from '96 to 2021, with four German shootings and 36 deaths. At 4x the population of Germany, the US (again, Wikipedia[4]) passed 180 deaths counting from Jan 2000 to June 2014 across 65 fatal shootings (there's many more with just injuries). Looking at just "mass" incidents (5+ deaths) to filter out all the 1-2 casualty isolated incidents in the US that get overreported, those two wikipedia sources list two German shootings with 17 and 16 deaths since 2000 compared to the US with thirteen: 10, 6, 33, 6, 7, 27, 6, 5, 10, 6, 17, 10, 22, which is a ratio over 1:5. The math for your claim does add up per capita for just the decade 2000-2009 (both German @ 33, first four US @ 55). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:School_shootings_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:School_shootings_in_G... [2] 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-... [3] https://www.infoplease.com/us/crime/timeline-of-worldwide-school-and-mass-shootings https://www.infoplease.com/us/crime/timeline-of-worldwide-sc... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...
- uxp100 4y ago
  I'm not suggesting under-reporting of German mass shootings in English (well, outside of the 1-2 casualty incidents which you also note), I just used a count from wikipedia. I suspect the difference in our numbers is whether you include shootings at University. I didn't, but that is a completely arbitrary call, maybe they should be included. I'm not trying to create a ranking or hierarchy, just emphasizing that not everywhere is say, the UK, which as far as I know has had 0 school shootings since 2000.
  - Ntrails 4y ago
    I actually think focussing on the mass casualty count aspect is misplaced. I don't spend my time at work worried about how wrong things went, I worry about how bad an incident of that sort could have been given a less favourable set of circumstances. ie. Yes someone got onto the network, but they were dumb and got blocked having done no damage. Is it serious because of the potential or not because of the lack of impact? I claim the former! As such, the only ratio I care about is frequency of people shooting other people at schools (per capita, sure). On that measure, I am expectant USA is a world leader?
otikik 4y ago
It is not “books are expensive”-dystopian. It’s “My cousin who is studying video editing through YouTube because college was too expensive is helping us make a video for my daughter’s Gofunme cancer treatment“-dystopian.

by uxp100 4y ago

gunnarmorling 4y ago

> Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. Any stats to back that up? Seems completely counter-factual.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
uxp100 4y ago
You can see the basic methodology in sibling comments, just some counting on wikipedia, really hinging on whether you include Universities (I did not). But a less controversial way of putting it is that other countries, including European ones, have had comparable incidents, and we can compare what they did with the US.

lawlorino 4y ago

> Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. This is absolutely not true and can be verified by a few minutes research on Wikipedia

andyjohnson0 4y ago

> Over the past 20 years, more people per capita have died in school shootings in Germany than in the US. A European nation was in a similar situation very recently. Wikipedia lists 90 deaths in "mass shootings" in Germany for the almost 32 years since 1990 [1]. I'm quite surprised its that high tbh. Wikipedia also gives a total of 118 deaths in mass ahootings in the US for just the two years 2022 and 2021 [2]. There were no year totals and tbh I gave up counting at that point. But a crude extrapolation back to 1990 gives 1770 deaths. The population of Germany is 84 million, and the population of the USA is 331 million - ie 4 times larger. So for Germany to have the same number of deaths in mass shootings over that period would have required 442 deaths - almost 5 times the actual number. So I dont think this statement stands up to scrutiny. Caveats: These numbers are mass shootings that include school shootings as well as other siruations. The data comes from different sources. Extrapolation of us numbers from two years data. And I did some of the adding-up in my head. I could try to get better data but its friday night and I'm tired. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Germ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

uxp100 4y ago
My number for these murders in the US was 119, basically taking a similar wikipedia page as the one that you linked to and adding up mass shootings (I used 3 or more as criteria, chosen because of one definition used in one particular US law) at schools, which I defined as k-12, pretty arbitrarily, just what I thought of as "schools." That gives more in killings in Germany than the US, really due to their particularly brutal 2000s decade, and which does not seem likely to recur, and the US might benefit from looking at the actions Germany took. The page you linked to is mostly not school shootings, so I don't think it is a good way to examine my statement.

jamie_ca 4y ago

I'm willing to give this the benefit of the doubt if there's a lack of english-language reporting, and I don't want to trivialize as it's tragic wherever it occurs, but - Wikipedia[1] has six events dating back to 1983 plus one from 1913, with a total of 46 deaths. - CNN[2] only covers 2009-2018, with one German school shooting (to 288 American) - Infoplease[3] lists mass shootings (not just schools) worldwide from '96 to 2021, with four German shootings and 36 deaths. At 4x the population of Germany, the US (again, Wikipedia[4]) passed 180 deaths counting from Jan 2000 to June 2014 across 65 fatal shootings (there's many more with just injuries). Looking at just "mass" incidents (5+ deaths) to filter out all the 1-2 casualty isolated incidents in the US that get overreported, those two wikipedia sources list two German shootings with 17 and 16 deaths since 2000 compared to the US with thirteen: 10, 6, 33, 6, 7, 27, 6, 5, 10, 6, 17, 10, 22, which is a ratio over 1:5. The math for your claim does add up per capita for just the decade 2000-2009 (both German @ 33, first four US @ 55). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:School_shootings_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:School_shootings_in_G... [2] 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-... [3] https://www.infoplease.com/us/crime/timeline-of-worldwide-school-and-mass-shootings https://www.infoplease.com/us/crime/timeline-of-worldwide-sc... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...

uxp100 4y ago
I'm not suggesting under-reporting of German mass shootings in English (well, outside of the 1-2 casualty incidents which you also note), I just used a count from wikipedia. I suspect the difference in our numbers is whether you include shootings at University. I didn't, but that is a completely arbitrary call, maybe they should be included. I'm not trying to create a ranking or hierarchy, just emphasizing that not everywhere is say, the UK, which as far as I know has had 0 school shootings since 2000.
- Ntrails 4y ago
  I actually think focussing on the mass casualty count aspect is misplaced. I don't spend my time at work worried about how wrong things went, I worry about how bad an incident of that sort could have been given a less favourable set of circumstances. ie. Yes someone got onto the network, but they were dumb and got blocked having done no damage. Is it serious because of the potential or not because of the lack of impact? I claim the former! As such, the only ratio I care about is frequency of people shooting other people at schools (per capita, sure). On that measure, I am expectant USA is a world leader?

otikik 4y ago

It is not “books are expensive”-dystopian. It’s “My cousin who is studying video editing through YouTube because college was too expensive is helping us make a video for my daughter’s Gofunme cancer treatment“-dystopian.