[grandempire]

Good idea. Incarcerate violent homeless fighting in the parking lot. We can’t have school around that.

Note that the presence of vagrants and other violent criminals is orthogonal to schools or children having access to firearms.

Any reasonable person will agree that violence on school property after school hours without student involvement is different than violence between students.

The only reason you want to say they are the same is you want to borrow that public sentiment against the horror of school shootings like Columbine.

You and I both know that if the public was explained the details of each event classified as a “school shooting” they would not have the same reaction.

[relaxing]

I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or how many levels of irony you’re on here.

I don’t think you’re using “orthogonal” correctly. And the continual use of the ad populum fallacy doesn’t help your argument.

[Dylan16807]

It doesn't look sarcastic to me. They are arguing that two random people fighting in the parking lot should be arrested but not treated like a columbine. That makes a lot of sense to me. It doesn't make sense to you?

The phrasing only sounds weird because you were (baselessly) implying they didn't care about that violence, so they had to directly state that they care in a super obvious way.

[defrost]

Their actual comment used the phrase

  "is orthogonal to schools or children having access to firearms."

which drained the sense and reason from their position.

Homeless vargrants gunfighting in the school carpark after dark will factually increase the odds of the first children the next day finding a scattered firearm with live ammunition from ZERO chance to SOME chance.

This negates the assertion of orthogonality.

Regardless, my only other comment to this submission still stands; it doesn't matter whether non student shootings on school grounds are included or not in country by country comparisons .. the USofA still "wins" a very hollow victory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43155165

[Dylan16807]

I think their argument is that a child is far more likely to get a gun by other means. Let's say 90% orthogonal instead of 100%.

Does it make sense in that light?

> it doesn't matter whether non student shootings on school grounds are included or not in country by country comparisons

Sure. But I think we should strive toward accurate categorization in reporting.

[defrost]

Sure.

The US has a lot of gun play within school boundaries. Most of that (see pie chart) involves students. Some of it doesn't.

Other countries have near zero gun play on school grounds.

That appears accurate.