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School killings. Behavior doesn’t get worse than that, and it’s off the charts in America.

by moistly 4y ago

Hamuko 4y ago
But does that mean that American are the worst behaved in the world, or the most armed?
- rayiner 4y ago
  The US has been “the most armed” pretty much for its whole history. The fraction of households that own guns has been going down for decades, to the point where today it’s similar to where France was in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet school shootings are pretty much a phenomenon that began in the 1990s with the kids of boomers entering high school.
  - kieselguhr_kid 4y ago
    It absolutely did not start in the 90s, and only ratcheted up significantly after 2008. People often underestimate the damage that the economic crisis did to American social cohesion. There are other variables that are obviously at play here: the continuing rise in childhood poverty, the influence of social media, increasingly long and arbitrary hours worked by parents and caregivers, access to powerful firearms, etc. Chalking it up to "now the boomers are having kids" is weak social analysis. Not only is the rise in school violence probably a confluence of all those factors, the moral fiber of their parents or whatever specious argument you're making here is likely a small or even negligible factor.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      Whether you peg it at 1995 or 2008, you’re talking about a phenomenon that’s just a couple of decades old. That dramatically limits what the explanation could be. Blaming the 2008 recession is odd, because other indicators of crime continued to decrease during that time. Homicides also decreased from 1929-1939 as the Great Depression wore on, so there is no basis for the theory that recessions cause violence. It’s also probably not guns. Since 1975, the share of households with a gun has fallen from half to about a third. Childhood poverty has fallen dramatically over that time as well when you account for social safety net transfers. America was a less violent place in the 1950s, before the social safety net and when many more households had a gun. People really don’t want to believe that culture matters. But blaming poverty instead is just inconsistent with the facts. Many poor countries don’t have the social dysfunction America has. And it’s not the combination of guns and poverty either. Countries like Pakistan and Yemen have many guns and homicide rates lower than the US, despite being very poor.
      - kieselguhr_kid 4y ago
        > Whether you peg it at 1995 or 2008, you’re talking about a phenomenon that’s just a couple of decades old. That dramatically limits what the explanation could be. School shootings started in earnest in the 70s and really got going the 80s. Look it up. > Blaming the 2008 recession is odd, because other indicators of crime continued to decrease during that time. I didn't blame it, I named it as a factor. There are other factors at play. I also didn't just blame poverty - there's clearly something happening in the United States that isn't occurring in other societies and its likely a confluence of many factors. But to just say "oh, it's a cultural thing" is extraordinarily reductionist and shallow.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
      I would trace the fashion for school shootings to Columbine in 1999.
      - kieselguhr_kid 4y ago
        And you would be wrong. This massacre was seminal in the US consciousness, but the majority of school shootings, before and since, remain targeted attacks.
        FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
        That's good news, because it means that if you just don't piss anyone off then you probably won't get shot.
- krapp 4y ago
  Other countries with cultures of gun ownership don't have the same problems that the US does with gun violence. That is either because those countries have greater restrictions on guns, or because Americans are simply more violent and incapable of living within the norms of civil society, with or without guns, since if the guns weren't a factor (and thus gun control wasn't a factor) one would expect mass violence to me more or less equivalent in all societies.
  - Hamuko 4y ago
    There's no other country that comes close to the American culture of gun ownership though. Wikipedia's stats say that there's an estimated 120.5 firearms per 100 persons in the US, when the second place in the list, Falkland Islands, comes at 62.1 firearms/100 persons. Even Canada, which is culturally very close to the US, has like 30% the gun ownership of the US. The stats on Wikipedia are from 2017, so they might be a bit out of date. AFAIK, Americans rush out to buy more guns whenever there's a big mass shooting and since 2017, there's been Stoneman Douglas, Santa Fe, Pittsburgh synagogue, Thousand Oaks, Virginia Beach, El Paso, Boulder, Buffalo and Uvalde.
    - moistly 4y ago
      In most cases, one can not use more than two guns at one time, and usually only one, so after reaching a 100fa/100ppl average further gun purchases are moot. It’s not the number of guns, it’s the number of emotionally-stunted crazy people. Number of households with guns is a more sensible measure. A household with 100 guns is probably not 100x the risk.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      > There's no other country that comes close to the American culture of gun ownership though. Yes and no. In the 1960s, over 60% of American households owned a gun. Today, less than a third of households own a gun. Back when America was more rural, it was much more common for kids to have access to a gun because they were more widely owned. But mass shootings were rare to non-existent back when more households had a gun. The trend of decreasing gun ownership is international. Our percentage of households with a gun today in the US is similar to what it was in Canada, France, or Norway in the mid to late 20th century. But homicide rates in the U.S. are still vastly higher than what they were in those countries decades ago. In fact, homicide rates in the U.S. have always been vastly higher than those in Western Europe, since long before the advent of modern gun laws.

School killings. Behavior doesn’t get worse than that, and it’s off the charts in America.

Hamuko 4y ago

But does that mean that American are the worst behaved in the world, or the most armed?

rayiner 4y ago
The US has been “the most armed” pretty much for its whole history. The fraction of households that own guns has been going down for decades, to the point where today it’s similar to where France was in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet school shootings are pretty much a phenomenon that began in the 1990s with the kids of boomers entering high school.
- kieselguhr_kid 4y ago
  It absolutely did not start in the 90s, and only ratcheted up significantly after 2008. People often underestimate the damage that the economic crisis did to American social cohesion. There are other variables that are obviously at play here: the continuing rise in childhood poverty, the influence of social media, increasingly long and arbitrary hours worked by parents and caregivers, access to powerful firearms, etc. Chalking it up to "now the boomers are having kids" is weak social analysis. Not only is the rise in school violence probably a confluence of all those factors, the moral fiber of their parents or whatever specious argument you're making here is likely a small or even negligible factor.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Whether you peg it at 1995 or 2008, you’re talking about a phenomenon that’s just a couple of decades old. That dramatically limits what the explanation could be. Blaming the 2008 recession is odd, because other indicators of crime continued to decrease during that time. Homicides also decreased from 1929-1939 as the Great Depression wore on, so there is no basis for the theory that recessions cause violence. It’s also probably not guns. Since 1975, the share of households with a gun has fallen from half to about a third. Childhood poverty has fallen dramatically over that time as well when you account for social safety net transfers. America was a less violent place in the 1950s, before the social safety net and when many more households had a gun. People really don’t want to believe that culture matters. But blaming poverty instead is just inconsistent with the facts. Many poor countries don’t have the social dysfunction America has. And it’s not the combination of guns and poverty either. Countries like Pakistan and Yemen have many guns and homicide rates lower than the US, despite being very poor.
    - kieselguhr_kid 4y ago
      > Whether you peg it at 1995 or 2008, you’re talking about a phenomenon that’s just a couple of decades old. That dramatically limits what the explanation could be. School shootings started in earnest in the 70s and really got going the 80s. Look it up. > Blaming the 2008 recession is odd, because other indicators of crime continued to decrease during that time. I didn't blame it, I named it as a factor. There are other factors at play. I also didn't just blame poverty - there's clearly something happening in the United States that isn't occurring in other societies and its likely a confluence of many factors. But to just say "oh, it's a cultural thing" is extraordinarily reductionist and shallow.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
    I would trace the fashion for school shootings to Columbine in 1999.
    - kieselguhr_kid 4y ago
      And you would be wrong. This massacre was seminal in the US consciousness, but the majority of school shootings, before and since, remain targeted attacks.
      - FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
        That's good news, because it means that if you just don't piss anyone off then you probably won't get shot.
krapp 4y ago
Other countries with cultures of gun ownership don't have the same problems that the US does with gun violence. That is either because those countries have greater restrictions on guns, or because Americans are simply more violent and incapable of living within the norms of civil society, with or without guns, since if the guns weren't a factor (and thus gun control wasn't a factor) one would expect mass violence to me more or less equivalent in all societies.
- Hamuko 4y ago
  There's no other country that comes close to the American culture of gun ownership though. Wikipedia's stats say that there's an estimated 120.5 firearms per 100 persons in the US, when the second place in the list, Falkland Islands, comes at 62.1 firearms/100 persons. Even Canada, which is culturally very close to the US, has like 30% the gun ownership of the US. The stats on Wikipedia are from 2017, so they might be a bit out of date. AFAIK, Americans rush out to buy more guns whenever there's a big mass shooting and since 2017, there's been Stoneman Douglas, Santa Fe, Pittsburgh synagogue, Thousand Oaks, Virginia Beach, El Paso, Boulder, Buffalo and Uvalde.
  - moistly 4y ago
    In most cases, one can not use more than two guns at one time, and usually only one, so after reaching a 100fa/100ppl average further gun purchases are moot. It’s not the number of guns, it’s the number of emotionally-stunted crazy people. Number of households with guns is a more sensible measure. A household with 100 guns is probably not 100x the risk.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    > There's no other country that comes close to the American culture of gun ownership though. Yes and no. In the 1960s, over 60% of American households owned a gun. Today, less than a third of households own a gun. Back when America was more rural, it was much more common for kids to have access to a gun because they were more widely owned. But mass shootings were rare to non-existent back when more households had a gun. The trend of decreasing gun ownership is international. Our percentage of households with a gun today in the US is similar to what it was in Canada, France, or Norway in the mid to late 20th century. But homicide rates in the U.S. are still vastly higher than what they were in those countries decades ago. In fact, homicide rates in the U.S. have always been vastly higher than those in Western Europe, since long before the advent of modern gun laws.