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>It was a good discussion topic about why adults get so bothered by things that look like guns. I think that's because parent-child is the strongest bond known

>It was a good discussion topic about why adults get so bothered by things that look like guns. I think that's because parent-child is the strongest bond known to humanity, so anything symbolic of (or against) child safety evokes the strongest emotional responses we can ever have. Guns, when loaded, are one of the extremely few consumer objects capable of being held in a child's hand and, with a physical ease similar to changing TV channel with a remote, destroy or end a life. (and, of course, one of the first rules of guns is "always assume it's loaded") And so - especially in a country like the USA where guns are a prominent part of culture, and thus talked and thought about a lot - the conflation of the above means that for a significant cohort of parents, guns are one iconic symbol of their ultimate nightmare : losing their child somehow. The fact that the USA needs separate Wikipedia pages per decade in order to make the summary list of school shootings manageable is illustrative of why some have developed such phobias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_school_shootings_in_t...

somenameforme 3mo ago
School shootings are extremely rare and so I was curious how it could be that large. The nuance is that those pages are not just listing school shootings as commonly understood/feared, but any shooting involving a school in any way. So for instance from the 2010s [1] page you get teacher shooting principle, biology professor (female no less!) shooting other professors, guy killing himself in a university library after firing off a couple of rounds at nobody, 60+ guy shooting his 60+ year old wife in a parking lot then killing self, and so on. I think that's a bit dodgy, because there's something like 130k+ schools of all sorts in the US [2], so you have a massive multiplier there. To put that number in contrast, there are fewer than 17k Starbucks in the US. Do the same by basically any metric, positive or negative, and you're going to similarly see a huge number of incidents. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_(2010s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th... [2] - https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84
- watwut 3mo ago
  All the dodgy things listed in the second paragraph are solid school shootings?
  - amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
    They don't pattern match with what people visualize as school shootings: kids bringing guns to school to shoot other kids.
    - watwut 3mo ago
      It is a nitpick, but majority of what you mean was (large ones) were committed by adults. List by deaths is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...
- defrost 3mo ago
  to be fair, other countries also have listed as school shootings any event that involved shooting and a school; eg: Australia with a population ~ 15x smaller than the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_Au... has a total of six (6) incidents this century (since 2000) .. somewhat less than a factor of 15 less than the US for that same 26 year period. Note that three of the six incidents of the past 26 years involved guns being fired but no one being hit (no grazes, injuries, or deaths).
  - somenameforme 3mo ago
    I think the connotation of a school shooting is somebody going to a school and shooting numerous students in a mostly random fashion with the intention of creating terror. That's why guns are so scary in this context - it's trivial to kill a person with a gun, a knife, a car, or a brick, but it's much easier to kill 10 people with a gun than it is with the other instruments - well except perhaps a car. But when you aren't listing just these sort school shootings, but instead listing any homicide that occurred within the vicinity of a school, why is it reasonable to exclude the various incidents of non-gun homicides at Australian [1][2] (or American for that matter) schools? It just feels like a false narrative. Because what matters if we're just speaking of safety at schools is how often people are killed within the vicinity of schools, though obviously subdata including the share of each weapon in homicides would be useful/informative. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lilie_James https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lilie_James [2] - https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15912963/Father-dies-school-pickup-alleged-attack-melbourne.html https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15912963/Father-dies-...
win311fwg 3mo ago
Guns have always posed that risk to children. Despite that, the schools, at least around here, used to have shooting ranges and the kids would bring their guns to school to make use of them! Hard to believe now, and as you can image those ranges have been since decommissioned, but nobody batted an eye back in the day. Key point here is that adults haven't always been bothered by things that look like guns. That is something that has emerged recently. What changed?
- WillAdams 3mo ago
  Moreover, target shooting is the only school sport in the U.S. to have _never_ had an injury recorded as part of the sport itself --- that my local public school has a locker of rifles locked up and un-used in the basement and no longer has a marksmanship program/participates in competitions is _not_ justifiable on the basis of safety. Further, children who have attended the NRA gun safety course have a much better record of safety and safe interactions with firearms than those who don't --- learning the rules of gun safety and the appropriate thing to do when finding a firearm which is not in the possession of a responsible adult makes for much less tragedy. What has changed is that it used to be a part of the immigrant experience to purchase firearms and take up hunting, but the transition from rural farm life to urban city life means that an ever larger portion of the U.S. population has limited experience with/knowledge of firearms.
warumdarum 3mo ago
I find it fascinating. There are the stabbings in china and car amoks, but everywhere else on the planet such behavior is only found with disenfranchised veterans after a large war has ended.

somenameforme 3mo ago

School shootings are extremely rare and so I was curious how it could be that large. The nuance is that those pages are not just listing school shootings as commonly understood/feared, but any shooting involving a school in any way. So for instance from the 2010s [1] page you get teacher shooting principle, biology professor (female no less!) shooting other professors, guy killing himself in a university library after firing off a couple of rounds at nobody, 60+ guy shooting his 60+ year old wife in a parking lot then killing self, and so on. I think that's a bit dodgy, because there's something like 130k+ schools of all sorts in the US [2], so you have a massive multiplier there. To put that number in contrast, there are fewer than 17k Starbucks in the US. Do the same by basically any metric, positive or negative, and you're going to similarly see a huge number of incidents. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_(2010s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th... [2] - https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84

watwut 3mo ago
All the dodgy things listed in the second paragraph are solid school shootings?
- amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
  They don't pattern match with what people visualize as school shootings: kids bringing guns to school to shoot other kids.
  - watwut 3mo ago
    It is a nitpick, but majority of what you mean was (large ones) were committed by adults. List by deaths is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...
defrost 3mo ago
to be fair, other countries also have listed as school shootings any event that involved shooting and a school; eg: Australia with a population ~ 15x smaller than the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_Au... has a total of six (6) incidents this century (since 2000) .. somewhat less than a factor of 15 less than the US for that same 26 year period. Note that three of the six incidents of the past 26 years involved guns being fired but no one being hit (no grazes, injuries, or deaths).
- somenameforme 3mo ago
  I think the connotation of a school shooting is somebody going to a school and shooting numerous students in a mostly random fashion with the intention of creating terror. That's why guns are so scary in this context - it's trivial to kill a person with a gun, a knife, a car, or a brick, but it's much easier to kill 10 people with a gun than it is with the other instruments - well except perhaps a car. But when you aren't listing just these sort school shootings, but instead listing any homicide that occurred within the vicinity of a school, why is it reasonable to exclude the various incidents of non-gun homicides at Australian [1][2] (or American for that matter) schools? It just feels like a false narrative. Because what matters if we're just speaking of safety at schools is how often people are killed within the vicinity of schools, though obviously subdata including the share of each weapon in homicides would be useful/informative. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lilie_James https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lilie_James [2] - https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15912963/Father-dies-school-pickup-alleged-attack-melbourne.html https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15912963/Father-dies-...

win311fwg 3mo ago

Guns have always posed that risk to children. Despite that, the schools, at least around here, used to have shooting ranges and the kids would bring their guns to school to make use of them! Hard to believe now, and as you can image those ranges have been since decommissioned, but nobody batted an eye back in the day. Key point here is that adults haven't always been bothered by things that look like guns. That is something that has emerged recently. What changed?

WillAdams 3mo ago
Moreover, target shooting is the only school sport in the U.S. to have _never_ had an injury recorded as part of the sport itself --- that my local public school has a locker of rifles locked up and un-used in the basement and no longer has a marksmanship program/participates in competitions is _not_ justifiable on the basis of safety. Further, children who have attended the NRA gun safety course have a much better record of safety and safe interactions with firearms than those who don't --- learning the rules of gun safety and the appropriate thing to do when finding a firearm which is not in the possession of a responsible adult makes for much less tragedy. What has changed is that it used to be a part of the immigrant experience to purchase firearms and take up hunting, but the transition from rural farm life to urban city life means that an ever larger portion of the U.S. population has limited experience with/knowledge of firearms.

warumdarum 3mo ago

I find it fascinating. There are the stabbings in china and car amoks, but everywhere else on the planet such behavior is only found with disenfranchised veterans after a large war has ended.