Doing some quick math, it seems like it's around 100 to 1000 times more likely that some kid dies to some accident than a mass shooting. But people don't seem to worry 1000 times more about these accidents than school shootings. And it would actually be much easier to reduce the accident number than the shooting number.
See for instance the CDC's visualizations on causes of death per age group [1]. In 2020, 476 children aged 10-14 died in traffic accidents involving motor vehicles. 218 children aged 10-14 were killed in homicides by firearms.
Those two numbers are very much in the same order of magnitude. This is also the case in prior, non-Covid years.
Curious as to whether criminals being unable to purchase firearms legally has done anything to stop them from getting ahold of firearms and committing shootings.
It's only about 50000% higher than in any other place of the world. Is this what you say to you children? That they don't get to get unlucky????????
School should be one of the safest places of the world. People are discussing what COVID will do to the future of their kids. I wonder what living in fear will do instead, which has a much much much bigger impact than 2 years of missed school.
Are you seriously trying to argue that school shootings don't happen often enough to try to stop them? Or that society can't do two things (reduce accidental deaths and reduce mass murder) at the same time?
The rationalization of an insane gun culture is incessant and foolish. Guns are a tool and the bullshit that somehow the civilian population would "defend" itself against military coups by the US military, or even more ridiculous, against invasion, is an excuse to allow the ongoing fetish of guns.
For 99.99% of the population, guns are dangerous to have, not because someone might attack you, but because guns are dangerous to have in the home. They are misused, mistakenly left unsecured, and accessed by people (children, those with mental illness) that shouldn't.
Hell, you can't even agree on background checks because of some stupidity regarding having a "register" in case the "government" comes after your weapons.
The US is an empire in decline, and your internal division around this "culture" is a large part of the dis/mis-information exercise that has infected the body politic.
The NRA is a lobby group for gun manufacturers that has bought numerous politicians, while lying to its members about its purpose. The fact that so many actually believe the bullshit is a prime example of dis/mis-information.
The NRA are incredibly divisive, and it looks like help was offered to keep them doing that.
> The rationalization of an insane gun culture is incessant and foolish. Guns are a tool and the bullshit that somehow the civilian population would "defend" itself against military coups by the US military, or even more ridiculous, against invasion, is an excuse to allow the ongoing fetish of guns.
This - the politics of guns and political violence in the US - is arguably a bigger factor than the guns themselves. The gun does not carry out a mass shooting by itself. And very few mass shooters decide purely on their own to do it; there's a radicalization pipeline. That is why the US has a higher mass shooting rate than other countries with lots of guns.
Could you look someone in the face who has used a gun to protect themselves or their family and tell them they will need to give up that gun for "public safety"?
Perhaps you need to look at why, in your society, there are so many "opportunities" for "defensive gun uses".
Of course you cannot rely on something you are not allowed to have in the first place. Those individuals are still vulnerable if they were presented with an imminent deadly force threat.
> Perhaps you need to look at why, in your society, there are so many "opportunities" for "defensive gun uses".
Of course! that's a very interesting subject in itself. The widespread ownership of guns is not itself the cause.
