4 ms·

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 occ

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?
  - uxp100 4y ago
    I suspect if not the world leader, the world leader among wealthy countries (Some South American countries have shockingly high murder rates overall, so those would be the others to check I think, though those murders might have a different sort of etiology). It would require a little more work to determine, since lower impact incidents in other countries are less reported on English wikipedia than those in the US, and even in the US I suspect they're not comprehensively cataloged.

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?
- uxp100 4y ago
  I suspect if not the world leader, the world leader among wealthy countries (Some South American countries have shockingly high murder rates overall, so those would be the others to check I think, though those murders might have a different sort of etiology). It would require a little more work to determine, since lower impact incidents in other countries are less reported on English wikipedia than those in the US, and even in the US I suspect they're not comprehensively cataloged.