[holbrad]

>“we just have to accept that these systems will occasionally kill children”

I think this a generally a good mindset to have.

I just see the hyper obsessive "safety" culture corrupting things. We as a society are so so afraid of any risk that we're paralysing ourselves.

[insane_dreamer]

That sounds a lot like the people who gloss over school shootings because they want to be able to play with guns.

[rpdillon]

Unpopular, but backed by numbers: school shootings are predominantly media hype.

There are a total of 50,000 gun deaths in the United States each year. Half of those are suicide. The total number of fatalities from all school shootings in the US since 1990 is 536, with roughly 1100 injuries over the same period.

School shootings are very disturbing, but they are also flashy and attract media coverage, and so they are overblown, especially relative to other gun deaths. But I think human psychology leads people to see higher risk in situations where they feel like they have no control. The idea of sending your kid off to school and having them get killed evokes sort of the same helpless feeling as the feeling around a plane crashing when you're a passenger. But when it's inner city gang violence, or a depressed man killing himself in his garage, we don't seem to care as much.

This also plays into the narrative around police shootings. There are about 1100 people killed by cops every year in the United States, and that number has stayed pretty consistent over the last decade. But our narrative around it is out of proportion to the actual number of people killed because of the circumstances around the killing.

In any case, it's often easier to articulate the cost of freedom rather than its value.

[insane_dreamer]

> predominantly media hype

hmm, tell that to parents whose kids were killed, or who are genuinely freaked out that there is a chance that their kid could die when they send them to school

as a parent who moved to the US and encountered this fear for the first time -- a fear that's just not present in other countries because while anything can happen anywhere, the chances are much much lower. why? not because there aren't crazy people in other countries, but because they don't have easy access to guns

> so they are overblown, especially relative to other gun deaths

actually, it's the other way around; it's the "other gun deaths" that are _under-valued_ and often ignored in the gun debate -- we should be talking about those _more_ not talking about school shootings less

50K gun deaths a year in the US is absolutely bonkers compared to other developed countries, and on par with Central America per-capita; and even if half are suicides, many who commit suicide may not have done so if guns weren't so readily accessible (sure there are other ways to do, but it's not as easy)

> plays into the narrative around police shootings. There are about 1100 people killed by cops every year in the United States

the reason for the narrative, is that in no other other advanced democracy on earth is there such a high rate of police killing civilians (when calculated per capita) -- it's not even close

they get attention because police shouldn't be killing civilians in the first place; it's pretty simple

if the USA didn't have such an obsession with guns, we wouldn't even be having this conversation

[slg]

Roughly an hour after this comment was made, someone walked into the church at a Catholic school, killed an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old, shot 17 other people including 14 children, and then turned the gun on himself.[1] "Predominantly media hype" indeed.

[1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/live-updates-...

[rpdillon]

Yep, an excellent illustration of the point. Two dead, a dozen injured. What other gun violence happened this week that we'll never hear about?

[slg]

Has there been some other incident of gun violence this week that resulted in 3 deaths and 17 injuries that hasn't been reported?

According to Wikipedia[1] this is the largest mass shooting this year in terms of number of injuries. I guess that isn't worth reporting in the media.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

[rpdillon]

You're using media coverage to critique my point that media coverage is overblown. My only point here is that less than 1/10 of 1% of the shooting deaths in the United States over the last 30 years were related to school shootings.

This shooting is definitely newsworthy. I'm mostly concerned about the other ~800 shooting deaths, mostly suicides, that statistically happened this week that we don't discuss. Suicides in the US are on the rise, and murder rates are down.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-...

[Dilettante_]

Wow. Incredible framing, leaving absolutely no room for a rebuttal to have any legitimate, reasonable position.

[insane_dreamer]

anyone is welcome to state their legitimate, reasonable position against gun controls

[Dilettante_]

I believe the de-utility of risk of school shootings is less than the utility of having people have the freedom to own guns.