[rjbwork]

Kids are like 80x or more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in a school shooting. It's not even close to the top of list of real issues affecting the country. It's just an easy one to get clicks and political favor that doesn't require us to do any real socio-cultural analysis - just ban guns!

I think active shooter training time would be better spent on counseling, therapy, PE, recess, or just literally letting kids fuck off and hang out with their friends for an hour.

[eriktrautman]

Firearm deaths just overtook auto deaths as the leading cause of death in children and adolescents in the US: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761

Unclear the portion that is suicides but homicides are the fastest growing segment beyond unintentional poisonings

[brigandish]

From the article:

> Although the new data are consistent with other evidence that firearm violence has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic,5 the reasons for the increase are unclear,

Seems like there is a pretty obvious candidate for that, lockdowns.

Still, only time will tell, as they go on to say with the rest of that quote:

> and it cannot be assumed that firearm-related mortality will later revert to prepandemic levels.

[sneak]

This bundles in firearm suicides with firearm homicides, obscuring the real issue.

When most people say "gun violence" they do not mean gun-as-tool-used-in-suicide, they mean nonconsensual use of a firearm against someone.

Suicides are way up. Gun murders are up too, but they're still pretty low in the scheme of things. They're "safe to completely ignore" low if you're not in one of a few specific counties in the US where gang violence causes 70-90% of the gun murders.

The movie plot/evening news gun violence stuff that you hear about is so rare as to be safely ignored in all parts of the US.

[AlexandrB]

Making guns harder to access probably reduces suicide rates as well because there are few faster, easier methods of suicide than a gun[1]. I think it's valid to lump gun suicides with other gun violence for this reason.

> The consensus among public health experts is that there is strong evidence that reducing firearm suicides in contexts where more-lethal means of attempting suicide are unavailable will result in reductions in the total suicide rate (see, for example, Office of the Surgeon General and National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, 2012; World Health Organization, 2014; for review, see Azrael and Miller, 2016).

[1] https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/suicide.ht...

[JamesBarney]

There's actually better evidence gun control will reduce suicides than homicides.

[refurb]

Yet the US suicide rate is lower than other developed countries that have no guns.

[cinntaile]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide...

Not really.

[refurb]

South Korea isn’t a developed nation?

[mikewhy]

Is this data like way off or something? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/suicide-deaths-firearms

[lern_too_spel]

Yes. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/suicide-deaths-firearms is the correct data. The US is worse than most other developed countries, but not that much worse.

[spaceman_2020]

Amazing that you can look at kids being shot in primary schools and then try to analyze it statistically.

This doesn't happen anywhere else on the planet outside of war-torn countries. Saying that "actually kids are more likely to kill themselves" is just about peak cope.

[rjbwork]

How else would you analyze the issue?

A binary analysis would lead us to conclude that gun regulations are completely bereft of any benefit whatsoever, given that gun violence, even mass shootings/spree killings, happen in countries with quite strict gun control - I mean, the former PM of Japan was killed via firearm just this month! But that is not the case. There is a clear gradient of occurrence and effectiveness of regulation. So, we need to move into the realm of statistics.

And the statistics are that over the course of the decade from 2010 to 2019 ~350 kids were killed in school shootings, and ~26000 took their own lives.

My assertion is that given these numbers, an inordinate amount of resources, political capital, and conversational bandwidth is being spent on what is actually a rather rare occurrence and that this is largely a waste compared to what we could be spending said resources, political capital, and conversational bandwidth on - namely, solving the problems that affect broad swathes of the populace and that I, and others, believe actually drive people to commit such violence in the first place.

Or, we can spend the next century fretting about a statistically vanishingly rare occurrence, keeping the blue and red tribes divided, making little to no progress on the existential problems that we as a country, culture, society, and species face, as the world becomes increasingly uninhabitable.

[spaceman_2020]

> given that gun violence, even mass shootings/spree killings, happen in countries with quite strict gun control

They absolutely do not, not even remotely close to the scale and frequency in the United States. At least not in countries with equivalent socio-economic metrics as the US (El Salvador does not count).

[rjbwork]

>They absolutely do not, not even remotely close to the scale and frequency in the United States.

I thought we weren't analyzing gun violence statistically?

[spaceman_2020]

We weren't analyzing school shootings statistically, since the statistical incidence of that happening should be as close to zero as possible.

But since you walked down the statistical path anyway, the least you can do is not be completely wrong about it.

[rjbwork]

I see that you have a hard time following an argument and the rhetorical techniques I used. I will break it down.

I compared the rate of school shooting deaths to suicide deaths for the purpose of pointing out the outsized amount of resources the issue takes up.

You claimed that it is wrong to analyze gun violence statistically.

I, for the purpose of demonstrating the absurdity of such an assertion, analyzed gun violence using a non-statistical and binary approach.

You then took exception to me conceding your point for the purpose of argument and using said non-statistical approach by then bringing statistics back into the mix and arguing that the frequency of gun violence is much higher in the US than other places.

So, which is it? Can we, or can we not use statistics to analyze gun violence? If we can, then we can compare the statistics across regulatory regimes and social, economic, and cultural contexts and show that gun violence can be affected in degree by those factors. If we cannot, then we cannot show that regulation is effective, since gun violence still happens in highly varied regulatory regimes and social, economic, and cultural contexts.

I would argue that statistics is an appropriate approach since, in my opinion, it allows us to come to a better reckoning of reality. Ultimately, your view is up to you. But you can't have your cake and eat it too here - you have to either admit that the use of statistics is appropriate, or that aforementioned factors are irrelevant to gun violence occurring. They are simply mutually incompatible views.

[shkkmo]

And since you agree that it is useful to compare school shooting statistics between countries, then you should also agree that it would be more effective to spend more time and resources combating suicides than school shootings. The relative difference in mass shooting rates based on gun control strictness is much smaller than the relative rates between mass shooting deaths and suicides.

This is not an argument against gun control, but against spending so much time and effort fighting for that gun control at the cost of letting slip the lower hanging fruit that could prevent more deaths.

[fleetwoodsnack]

It’s really quite simple, you didn’t have to spell out your confusion so elaborately:

Statistics deals in degrees; violence against children is something that is sufficiently cognized in absolutes.

[JamesBarney]

If we shutdown all schools we would have 0 mass shootings at schools.

This is the only moral choice when dealing with absolutes.

[fleetwoodsnack]

Not really, that’s just one (extreme) proposal. I understand the self-gratifying impulse to write something like that though: it absolves the responsibility and work of addressing the problem, and frustrates the conversation away from finding solutions toward justifying the need to find a solution at all. It even makes you feel clever for a half-second.

A cute rhetorical parlor trick.

[JamesBarney]

You said it was an absolute. Once we start weighing the costs against other things we care about like education it becomes a relative cost.

[odessacubbage]

this is unironically my solution

[chii]

policy decisions and budget allocation should an emotionless utility function that allocates what produces the best outcome with maximal efficiency.

To do otherwise is to be biased one way or another.

[avidphantasm]

> How else would you analyze the issue?

Um, I don’t know maybe morally? As in, it is morally abhorrent and unconscionable for children to be preyed upon in school, one of the places they should safe by definition.

[rjbwork]

Okay.

I agree that kids should not be preyed upon in schools.

Now what?

[avidphantasm]

Get rid of fucking assault rifles. Ban their sale. Mandatory buybacks. Jail time for violators. There are lots of other problems contributing to school shootings, e.g. alienated males due to retraction of empire, loss of manufacturing jobs due to financialization of the economy, erosion of mental health safety net due to privatization and disinvestment. All of these issues need to be addressed. But when the patient is bleeding out, you first STOP THE BLEEDING.

[rjbwork]

That won't be happening. The second amendment is a thing. Demographics and opinion polls show that we won't be getting rid of it any time soon. Assault Rifles are in common use, thus will not be banned any time soon. The current regime seems poised to expand, rather than restrict, the types of arms which we have the right to bear.

This is ultimately my point - we have a lot of other avenues to address the problem rather than this, IMO, fruitless attempt to deal with the guns.

[Ancapistani]

> Get rid of fucking assault rifles. Ban their sale. Mandatory buybacks. Jail time for violators.

I understand your perspective, and I believe I understand how you arrived at it. I even largely share your concern - but I don’t think you fully realize just how repugnant it is to many people.

Have you considered how many lives your proposal would cost, or how likely it would be to succeed in any measurable way?

This is not a rhetorical question. I would definitely consider myself part of “American gun culture.” I would resist disarmament with lethal force if necessary. That statement may be somewhat shocking in this context it wouldn’t so much as raise an eyebrow amongst gun owners.

… and this is about banning one kind of weapon. One kind. An ill-defined class of firearms that are used in a tiny fraction of crimes. How many deaths would be worthwhile to make that happen?

> But when the patient is bleeding out, you first STOP THE BLEEDING.

Attempting to disarm the US may or may not “stop the bleeding” - but I’m extremely confident that it would create many times more patients.

[kcplate]

> Get rid of fucking assault rifles

There hasn’t been an “assault rifle” used in a school shooting for decades. “Assault rifles” are highly regulated— it’s nearly impossible to own one. There have been a fair number of sporting semi-auto rifles used in mass shootings.

Can we please stop describing these weapons as something they are not? The “AR” in AR-15 means “ArmaLite Rifle”. ArmaLite being the company that originally developed the weapon.

[raxxorraxor]

You jail a father, kid gets mocked in school because the father is in jail and he kills some mates with a knife.

I don't believe any of the points you make are drivers of violence at all. You perhaps failed to analyze the typical issues.

I do agree that a society might want to ban guns. Policing is much safer and there are a lot of other advantages. Fewer deaths too of course. But I heavily doubt the presence of guns is reason for an increase in violence among younger people. On the contrary, I think some people are well underway to create self-fulfilling prophecies. Security at schools is part of that.

There is a recent increase in crime but certainly to none of the factors you mentioned. I live happily in a country without access to assault rifles. But we probably disagree on what constitutes drivers of violence.

[hobo_in_library]

It always surprises me to see people proposing a blanket ban on these kinds of guns despite the fact that all school shooters were young men under 25 years old.

You could just limit sales of these guns to folks over 25 and make everyone much safer.

In fact, every single school shooter was white...

[lkois]

By binary analysis, it sounds like you mean to claim that 99% effective isn't close enough to 100%. For most people that would be enough. Because I don't know how else you could conclude that gun regulations are bereft of any benefit whatsoever, even hypothetically, without manufacturing such an unfair hurdle to obfuscate the obvious: gun violence requires access to guns.

It seems like you want to say that broader mental health problems are more important than gun violence, but that's only more reason to restrict access to guns. Most other places in the world are able to recognise that mental illness and guns are a bad mix, and act accordingly. The US has had nearly one third of the mass shootings in the world since the 60s yet people like you continue to defend access to guns as though it's not a contributing factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S...). That alone seems to point to one of those broad problems affecting the populace. It doesn't have to be the only cause, to merit a treatment.

The rest of the world doesn't view gun access as a given, or even a good. It's earned and revered, or prevented, but never normalised. It's why Abe's assassin had to make his own gun, because Japanese laws didn't make things easier for him. It's why here in Australia, even gangsters don't even have guns, for the most part https://youtu.be/BYsXCnxbnj0?t=461

But we don't judge the effectiveness of these restrictions by some bogus standard of absolute zero gun violence. We judge them by assessing our rare incidents of gun violence, and whether we think we think we could or should have done more to prevent them from obtaining and using a firearm.

And when we look at the numbers of mass shootings in the US, particularly in sensitive places like schools, we wonder how in the world you can think you're doing enough.

[tacitusarc]

This approach assumes a moral equivalence to all gun violence. I believe people tend to assign a significantly higher negative moral weight to the murder of children in general, and children at school in particular. You may disagree with that weighting, but it’s an entirely consistent and valid model.

[shkkmo]

I don't see the moral difference between taking a gun and shooting a kid and bullying and harassing a kid until they are driven to take a gun and shoot themselves.

Both are horrific, but the latter seems even more horrific because it includes not only death, but psychological torture before the death.

[res0nat0r]

Most folks outside the USA (where I live) that I've worked with / spoken to say that we're completely insane and it's embarrassing that we allow the incredible amount of gun violence that we do. All my coworkers overseas think it's unreal and really intolerable that we allow the level of gun violence that we do.

People need to quit embarrassing themselves trying to somehow reason away why the USA is an outlier via some kind of cope metric. It's the guns.

[readme]

you could start by using actual data

your 80:1 stat seems pretty dubious -- do you have a source for it?

[heavyset_go]

I like how it's an argument that mocks gun regulations with the fact that more kids kill themselves with guns than they do each other.

Firearm related injuries are the #2 killer of children after automotive accidents[1]. The rate of firearm related deaths for young people went up nearly 14% between 2019 and 2020 alone.

I do agree with the importance of socio-economic solutions, though, even before gun regulations.

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761

[imtringued]

Yes the fear isn't that your kid is being shot by a school shooters the fear is that your child must.kive in a society where school shooting and the long chain of developmental problems that caused these issues has been fully normalized.

We have enough food and housing for everyone right now, except in some popular places, why exactly have we become so desperate? Why can't we give up some economic growth and use the resources we have on general human well-being?

[raxxorraxor]

> Amazing that you can look at kids being shot in primary schools and then try to analyze it statistically.

You have to. For effective policy you need to distance yourself from the deed no matter how terrible they are. All other venues for grief are better than policies motivated by retribution, which will very likely not lead to constructive outcomes and resulting in repeats. Otherwise you end up invading random countries because someone attacked you.

[sudosysgen]

There is a psychological dimension to your kid having to confront the possibility of being shot in school being mere numbers of deaths.

[BobbyJo]

What else should you do when considering legislation? Should we legislate by blindly trying to stop anything bad? That doesn't seem like a good idea.

[anotherhue]

I agree with your sentiment but I wish your claims were true https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_massacres_by_...

[spaceman_2020]

Man, your own list is filled with a) third world countries, and b) actual terrorist attacks.

You're being disingenuous if you're trying to claim that, say, the Beslan School Siege is the same as the Columbine school shooting. One was committed by a terrorist organization with a political goal. The other was just a couple of fellow students.

[lucideer]

Man what is the relevance of this comment? The existence of Beslan on that page has nothing to do with US shootings - the gp was just referring you to US stats that contradict your comment. Nothing to do with Beslan.

[lkois]

>Kids are like 80x or more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in a school shooting. It's not even close to the top of list of real issues affecting the country.

But what's the comparison with the rest of the world here? Are you trying to counter the claim that gun violence is a uniquely American issue? Or are you saying that even higher rates of youth suicide are an even more American issue? Because suicide happens everywhere, but unless the US is doing remarkably well on this, that 80x figure is still far far lower than any other developed country. Where, you know, a non-non-zero chance of shootings means infinite more chance of suicide, most other places in the world.

You're dismissing an acute problem with common sense solutions behind issues that are common enough to almost be normal, in order to justify doing nothing. It's like someone's pointed at your bleeding foot and you've said it's fine, because you've also got high cholesterol.

[rjbwork]

I elaborated here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163407

But TL;DR: I think that the juice is not worth the squeeze and that it is just another issue for the two tribes to fight about while the ruling class continues to destroy the human habitat and loot our country's wealth.

[ineptech]

The number of school shooting victims in the US looks small compared to the number of suicide victims, and it also looks small compared to the number of cancer victims, or the number of car crash victims, or the distance to the moon in inches. But all of those seem like ways to distract people from comparing it to the number of school shooting victims in other countries.

[dr_dshiv]

It would also help to have mentally healthy streets and neighborhoods that kids and adults can safely play in. Ideally without worrying about violence of any kind.

[chii]

Taking away guns does not solve the reason for which they become used by some people.

The cost, such as politically and time & energy to lobby, would be better spent making the social net better, or add more mental health services that target more people, and to prevent people from getting to a state of destitution (and fall into crime).

[dr_dshiv]

I generally agree. However, I’d say “both/and” is reasonable. Yes, let’s avoid a society filled with destitution—the market actually works better when you take care of people. Also, let’s stop the proliferation of murder machines. A conservative court should recognize that there is not an individual right to bear arms except by the convention of the court. The second amendment supports well-regulated militias. The current court is not conservative so much as cynical.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”

[lawgimenez]

I don’t understand your reasoning. US is the only country in the whole universe that has an active shooter problem in schools. Why in the world shoot kids in the first place?

[rjbwork]

>Why in the world shoot kids in the first place?

I don't know. I certainly don't think anyone should be shooting kids.

>US is the only country in the whole universe that has an active shooter problem in schools.

Because we have guns that are relatively available and a handful of wingnuts that want to hurt kids.

That said, it is not the only place that has a violence against children problem. Not even the only place with a violence against children in schools problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China

[tcmart14]

Agree and disagree. I dont think it is as simple as an issue that just gets clicks. It is a real issue because it is insane. Where I agree is, no one wants to do any real analysis to figure out how we got here because, its not a simple a problem. It is a problem with a lot of sources, and being able to tackle this, will probably help in other areas (like suicide rates).

Good way to word it. Suicides alone are an NP hard problem. Homelessness is an NP Hard problem, etc. Mass shooting could be a sort of NP Complete problem. If you can come up with solutions that prevent mass shootings, those same solutions will probably greatly reduce the others.

Just to name, a probably short, list of sources.

- We have a poor gun culture. Guns used to be viewed as tools, now they are some cool gadget that is apart of someone's identity.

- We often ignore and stigmatized mental health issues. If you want mental health, you are seen as weak or pathetic. When in reality, we probably all could use some sort of neutral third party counseling at the very least to talk about issues we individually face out loud.

- Insurance coverage is pretty shitty for mental health. My last employer had good benefits, good medical benefits, but it only covered 3 or 4 mental health appointments. Other than that, it was a decent plan.

- We probably should honestly evaluate the process of purchasing a firearm. You can be placed on a no-fly list for suspected involvement in terrorist activities, but can still purchase a gun? Doesn't seem to make sense to me at all.

[Bhilai]

As a parent of kids in public schools in a state that has open carry laws, school shootings are definitely top of the list of things I hate about America. And yes, I do think banning guns is on the table for me as a solution to this problem. I would wholeheartedly vote for representative who support banning guns. Spare me your lecture on 2A, if you think your rights to carry assault weapons reigns over the life of kids, then there is not much to debate about. Its astounding that gun proponents refuse to accept that Kids exists in all other countries across the world and kids are kids with their video games, all of their insecurities and mental health problems but America is the only country where school shootings are rampant.

[jamie_ca]

They can both be problems?

US Teen suicide looks like around 8-11 per 100k, age 15-19, depending on year (source: https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/health-of-wom...), with 9 states over 20.

Compare to Germany, 184 between age 15-20 (https://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/archive/article/213427) from a population of 5.41 million (https://www.statista.com/statistics/454349/population-by-age...), or 3.4 per 100k.

[watwut]

> It's not even close to the top of list of real issues affecting the country.

They do have active shooter drills as routine part of education. And schools have cops in them routinely and Americans talk about it as normal. You cant those wish away, those are very really affecting the country.

[ZetaZero]

> Kids are like 80x or more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in a school shooting.

Sure, if you limit the numbers to just school shootings. Why not count all kid deaths by firearms? A kid is twice as likely to die by bullet than by suicide.

School shootings are just the currently most visible form of kid death by bullet.

[electrondood]

Their point wasn't the risk relative to other causes of death for children. Their point was that the US is the only country in the world where this happens, frequently.