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So about 12 people were curious but not too surprised when our American friend told us her experience of a school shooting at her university. She was in a diffe

So about 12 people were curious but not too surprised when our American friend told us her experience of a school shooting at her university. She was in a different building to the shooter. The room was shocked into silence when she said "oh, and there was the time at my elementary school..." and had another experience of guns at a school. We had been surprised by this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/08/one-in-15-americans-has-witnessed-a-mass-shooting-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/08/one-in-15-amer...

ElliotM 2y ago
These numbers don't remotely pass a smell test. The same study claims 2% of Americans have been injured in a mass shooting, and cites 500 mass shootings a year. 2% of 340mm = 6.8mm injured in a mass shooting Conservatively assuming that's equally spread across all ages, and assuming a lifetime of 80 years, implies 6.8mm/80 = 85,000 people injured a year 85,000/500 mass shootings a year = 170 people injured per shooting This is absurdly high - the Pulse nightclub shooting for instance injured 60 people. It's obviously harder to analyze the number of people that 'witness' a shooting, but it also seems implausible that an average of ~595 people are witnessing each of these 500 shootings. The problem here is that self-reported studies like this are incredibly unreliable. Interestingly, the same effect appeared in a pro-gun study, which cited an insane 2+ million defensive gun uses a year.