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by PathOfEclipse 1251 days ago
> How can you be shocked that in a world where a shooting might not make the news

Recent increases in gun deaths are primarily driven by poor city neighborhoods that already had a long history of gun violence, so, if you don't live there, why would you be so afraid of gun violence as to avoid having children now compared to 10 or 20 years ago? https://www.brookings.edu/2022/04/21/mapping-gun-violence-a-...

Note that Brookings institute is a solid left think-tank. I completely disagree with most of their conclusions and much of their analyses, but they tend to do a good job in collecting data and are at least more honest than most politically-biased organizations.

> Our politicians don't hide their corruption

They don't need to, because most people just keep voting for them anyways. If they are willing to do that, why would corruption stop them from having kids?

> and you know, the climate crisis that we've seen coming and still choose to do nothing.

People have been claiming climate crises nigh on a century, and they've been wrong. Every. Single. Time. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/50-years-of-failed-doomsday-e...

We have a climate problem, not a climate crisis. I suggest you read or watch some Bjorn Lomberg.

What's the point of all this? A bad doctor, seeing symptoms, diagnoses the wrong illness, prescribes the wrong treatment, and makes the patient sicker than before. Birth rates are on the decline, but it's not because of gun violence or existential climate threats, although it could be in part due to the false perceptions people have on these issues from listening to dishonest media corporations, school teachers, university professors, and celebrities.

1 comments

> if you don't live [in poor neighbourhoods], why would you be so afraid of gun violence

Probably because of school shootings having become commonplace even in "regular" neighbourhoods. Wikipedia lists 102 "incidents" in two years.

51 shootings a year in a country with 100,000 public schools, not even counting private and charter schools, is not "commonplace." Your child is statistically 19 times more likely to die in a car accident than from a school shooting based on last year's numbers of 608 versus 32:

https://www.toddwburrislaw.com/how-many-children-die-in-car-...

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year...

If you're not having kids because of school shootings then you might have a serious problem and should seek help. And I am not trying to be callous in saying that. I feel sadness for someone who is unnecessarily gripped in fear about the future in that way. You deserve better!

"school shootings" is also misleading, because it includes negligent discharge of a police officer's gun into the wall on school property, gang/crime related shootings (even non-fatal) on the school parking lot after hours, and so on.

What we think of as "school shootings" - an active shooters targeting individuals in a school systematically - is still exceedingly rare and you know them all by name. 1-2 per year, if memory serves. Pretty bad, yea, but not nearly what it's made out to be. Pretty much chance of being struck by lightning.