Schools are safer than they were in the 90s(news.northeastern.edu) |
Schools are safer than they were in the 90s(news.northeastern.edu) |
In cases like these I like to take the Freakonomics formula for risk, that outrage factors more into observed risk than actual danger.
We're more worried about Terrorism than Heart Disease, even as we have far more control over the latter.
I can accept getting heart disease—maybe it was my fault?—much more readily that being actively, senselessly, killed by someone else. Terrorists know this too, which is why definitionally terrorism is meant to induce fear by way of its unpredictability.
You wrote "security theater" to imply that we shouldn't attempt to address terrorism and school shootings because they don't kill enough people. I think that we ought to fund research into good, effective, ways to reduce gun violence _because_ it's something that we don't control ourselves.
"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will."
-Epictetus
If you think people are being overly emotional over these issues try to imagine a plausible reason why.
And that was because of the misguided emotional response (i.e. invading countries which had nothing to do with it), not because of the event itself.
I welcome more research on effective ways to reduce gun violence, but unfortunately ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment_(1996) ) researchers have been prevented from doing so.
The clear, most effective way to reduce gun violence is to reduce the number of guns. (cf. every other developed nation.) However, the current interpretation of the 2nd amendment seems to make that difficult.
“The thing to remember is that these are extremely rare events, and no matter what you can come up with to prevent it, the shooter will have a workaround,” Fox said, adding that over the past 35 years, there have been only five cases in which someone ages 18 to 20 used an assault rifle in a mass shooting.
this seems weak. if shootings are rare events stopping one would make a considerable difference. just because assault rifles were rarely used in past 35 years in what way does that influence a future projection? What if we had a Vegas type event around a school? I don't really understand the thesis here
17.
Literally happening just as this was posted: https://www.wxyz.com/news/police-responding-to-reports-of-sh...
Edit: Actually this may or may not meet the definition since their definition requires 4 or more casualties. Still.
That's so far into small numbers territory that any comparisons are guaranteed to be overwhelmed by noise.
Edit: In a comment below, this article was linked https://qz.com/37015/how-school-killings-in-the-us-stack-up-.... Indeed, on this scale we see a very different picture!
That number seems suspicious; you'd get a very different answer if your criterion was "any gunshot wound at a school", for example. But that definition might be a better match for what people think of as a school shooting.
(e.g. Northern Ireland had a very large number of terrorist attacks where a warning was given allowing evacuation - would they not count as terrorist incidents even if nobody was killed? I suspect not)
From what I understand, the decision of what kinds of shootings are included has a large influence on the conclusion - e.g., the "there have been 18 shootings in 2018 so far" articles from a while ago used a comparatively low threshold for inclusion.
The threshold for this study seems to be "4 or more victims", which I think is similar to the threshold official publications used at the beginning of the Obama administration. I believe there were complaints that the threshold is unreasonably high which caused it to be adjusted - however, I don't have any sources for that ready, so if anyone knows more, please correct me.
In any case, it's important to look at the criteria if one wants to compare those studies.
James Alan Fox and Emma E. Fridel, "The Three R's of School Shootings: Risk, Readiness, and Response," in H. Shapiro, ed., The Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education: Forms, Factors, and Preventions
But from Wiley's listing of papers in this volume (https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Wiley+Handbook+on+Violence+i...) the only article written by Fox and Fridel is called "The Menace of School Shootings in America: Panic and Overresponse".
Maybe it was renamed since?
This data seems to be missing what a lot of people would call "school shootings".
Reasonable additions to this might be adding a line for type of weapon used.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mwNeZ_KHL_nLd85eOeI-...
https://qz.com/37015/how-school-killings-in-the-us-stack-up-...
And most relevantly, the difference now is access to information anywhere/everywhere and in more detail/angle/opinion without a lot of latency.
A drop in the number of deaths might just demonstrate an improvement in emergency medical procedures.
1996: 16 children and their teacher shot dead
1997-2018: 0 shot deadI have a suspicion that the handgun ban and the lack of subsequent school shootings might not be completely causal.
BTW that's not to suggest that the ban was wrong. I was entirely supportive and still am. I think the UK's approach to guns is laudable and should be encouraged elsewhere.
2001: 2,996 people killed in plane attacks
2002-2018: 0 people killed in plane attacks
There is a clear upward-trend since the 60’s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_...
For example, Rancho Tehama Reserve, California is listed as six deaths, but that was a shooter who killed five adults at other locations, then fired at a locked down school, injuring one student, before killing himself. So zero students killed. There are quite a few like that in the list.
A Wikipedia list does not answer any of those questions.
Yes, it sounds cold, but human life has a certain value, and just like any rational decision, we have to consider in some objective manner whether conceivable preventative measures are worthwhile.
>just because assault rifles were rarely used in past 35 years in what way does that influence a future projection
Do you not normally make decisions regarding the future based on observed past data?
Likewise the argument can be made that there might be psychological results from drills like the ones used to allegedly prepare kids.
To put it simply: how's do you know if whatever you did has an effect instead of the numbers being a result of a random downswing?
(You can know if you can know by employing Bayesian statistics - with these low rates you really cannot.)
US: I'm on fire
CANADA: jump in the water
US: water won't work, i need more fire
UK: we used water when we caught fire
US: it won't work for us we like fire too much
US: I'm burning
AUSTRALIA: here is a video of water putting out fire
US: *stuffs fire in pockets*The US media glorifies violence and yet censors the reality of it.
How many of those other countries with stricter gun control laws have been involved in as many violent conflicts across the globe as the US?
Well, the short answer is that deaths from incidents like this are actually more common, considerably more common, in some other parts of the developed world[0]. The majority of U.S. mass shootings result in no deaths, the overwhelming majority result in one or fewer. Only about 70 of the 474 or so mass shootings in 2017 were also classifiable as "mass murders" (single incidents resulting in four or more unjustified killings).
[0]: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/...
The thesis is that you ought not make expensive, likely unconstitutional policy goals based on a fantasy about stopping a type of crime which happens less than once every seven years (in a country that is several times larger than the next most populous developed country), based on an unlimited attack on all risk.
The projected effect of this policy is so low, in fact, that it could just as easily cause more deaths, youth deaths even, than we expect it to limit; and there's a good chance that the policy will do essentially nothing at all, even for the limited cases it applies to.
added: If all risks are worthy of unlimited policy resources, I hereby declare that all children should be driven to school in Caterpillar 797s, to avoid the problems of pedestrian collisions and deadly vehicular collisions.
Closest thing I can find to an accurate data-set is here: https://www.kaggle.com/ecodan/us-school-shootings-dataset/no.... Data seems to be a blend of a northwestern study and the wikipedia list of shootings.
Interestingly, according to [1], the criterion used by the FBI to assess mass shooting used to be "at least 4 persons killed or wounded" - until it got changed to "at least 3 persons" in 2013. So the criterion the study uses is stricter than both the old and the new way of counting the FBI uses.
Note also that, according to [2], even though the rate of mass shooting at schools seems to be decreasing, the rate of mass shootings in general is increasing.
See also [3] for more information about the different definitions and ways of counting.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting
[2] https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-study-200...
[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/02/anothe...
"The difference in his study amounts to a reduction of several hundred injuries per convention per year"
(also, perhaps surprisingly to Americans, school trained me on guns at 14: http://atc.wikia.com/wiki/L98A2_Cadet_GP_Rifle )
In fact in 1997 the UK simply banned handguns.
I can control my own actions, so my worry about heart disease can inform my dietary choices.
We can control gun violence by influencing culture or changing laws, so gun control is an appropriate subject of worry.
We cannot control the sun going supernova. We shouldn't worry about that.
(i.e. Things I can't control as an individual, we as a society might still be able to control or influence.)
Just like we forced people to stop drinking during prohibition, and we force petty criminals all the time to stop doing bad stuff once caught?
We'd like to think it's the former ("we can, but we don't"), but the reality is we can't.
We are incredibly ineffective at doling out scarce resources or pricing in externalities.
I just don't expect humanity to get a handle on it for another 100 years at least. I'd say that, right now, we can't.
Let's put it this way: how many incidents of violence did you NOT hear about because simply brandishing a gun was enough to diffuse a situation or deter a would be criminal?
Please do not presume that this is some black and white issue where simply banning guns would solve all problems with gun violence. The implication that 2A supporters are all psychotic "gun nuts" who choose guns over innocent lives is a slanderous , oversimplified strawman, which only serves to further entrench divisiveness.
Why is it that we require tens of hours of training in order to operate a car, and just a few more to drive bus loads of people, but require absolutely nothing to purchase a tool capable of inflicting just as much, if not more, damage? That's fucked up.
Canada has a comparably high-rate of gun ownership and yet a substantially lower murder rate. I've seen plenty of pissing and moaning on firearm forums about their restrictions, more severe than the US', but one could reasonably carry out a massacre up there just as much as one can in the states.
It's not the guns. It's us.
http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/would-canadian-gun-laws-...
> The shooter, army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, had been investigated by federal authorities for links to terrorism. This would likely be enough for the RCMP to restrict his ability
When a PAL is denied, does one have the right to appeal or is that the final word on the matter? In the US the NICS background check has something similar, the Delay. If, in the course of your FFL background check, the Feds think you're up to something they issue a Delay which can be followed up with a Deny or the go-ahead to sell the firearm. One can appeal a Deny, however there is no way of handling a Delay which is particularly annoying since something as benign as having a similar name to a known criminal can result in one.
There has not been a single "mass shooting" in Australia since the gun ban. In the US, mass shootings decreased after the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, and then increased after it expired 2004.
I am okay with that because it spreads the violence but each instance of violence is less deadly. So for the sake of no school schootings, I will accept increase in general violence. Let's repeal the 2A.
"Tthere are notes about anomalous events included in each year's numbers. Since the numbers are so low these can throw the graph off. In particular two large events which happened in previous years were reported for 2003 and 2017 respectively which accounts for their anomalous spikes.
2003 includes 172 victims of Dr Harold Shipman, one of the most prolific serial killers in history. While these killings happened over 25 years, they're recorded for 2003.
2017 includes 96 victims of Hillsborough which happened in 1989.
2001 includes 58 Chinese nationals who suffocated in a lorry en route into the UK.
2004 includes 20 cockle pickers who drowned in Morecambe Bay.
2006 includes 52 victims of the 7 July London bombings.
2011 includes 12 victims of Derrick Bird."
Second, the ECHR mainly concerns itself with the "duty of states" to protect life, not the people's right to life itself.
Here is Article 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_2_of_the_European_Conv...
It is relatively recent that courts have even rules on this, primarily with McCaan v UK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCann_and_Others_v_United_Kin...
In the US, the right to life and liberty supersedes the right to safety. Based on the founding documents, Americans, because they are HUMANS, are born with the right to protect their lives and to pursue happiness. There is no right to safety (as there is no "RIGHT TO HAPPINESS") as safety would be something that OTHERS would have to provide YOU. Nothing that others must provide you can be a right.
Many Americans already believe that gun control legislation is part of a program to phase out gun ownership and undermine the Second Amendment - and that's why they're stockpiling guns in expectation of an inevitable civil war. It's never going to not be tricky in the US.
Anything approaching what the rest of the world considers "sensible" gun control in the US would first need a massive cultural shift to take place, or an acceptance of protracted guerilla warfare as a consequence.