Outside Opinion On America's Shooting?

[worldruler8]

There are 50,000,000 kids in elementary schools in the united states. 18 students dead is .00000036% of all those kids.
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372

First I'd like to congratulate you on your data. It's interesting how much of an outlier the US is. Anyhow, I'd like to correct your post. You said the population of kids in the US in elementary school is 50 million. In your own link, it says that the number in elementary school is something more like 35.9 million. Regardless, a public school is probably the safest place for a child to be.

OP:The travesty with this event is where it happened, and how it happened, was so much of an outlier that we could not have predicted this would have happened. This wasn't a gang crime that has become a fact of life, this was an event that occured in a state with strict laws with guns, and the guns were obtained illegally by the perpetrator. We could have done nothing to have prevented this, without some sort of magic wand to obliterate all guns. Which is what makes this event so frustrating, it was a perfect storm of every cog being in the right place. It should not have happened, but sadly these sorts of things cannot be prevented. They can only be deterred.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

There are 50,000,000 kids in elementary schools in the united states. 18 students dead is .00000036% of all those kids.
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372

First I'd like to congratulate you on your data. It's interesting how much of an outlier the US is. Anyhow, I'd like to correct your post. You said the population of kids in the US in elementary school is 50 million. In your own link, it says that the number in elementary school is something more like 35.9 million. Regardless, a public school is probably the safest place for a child to be.

Thanks, fixing it now. I was using the data for elementary and secondary schools combined.

 

[Gamer_Fries]

American here

I'd like to start out by saying this is awful and no matter how many happen it will always be awful when something like this happens. While gun better national gun laws could possible be a good thing it well never stop things like this from happening, if someone wants to kill a person badly enough they will try their hardest to do it. And while many countries have stricter gun laws and have not had as many "large sprees" you're countries have still had crazy attacks just with different weaponry. Murder will always be something that happens the most we can do is learn how to prevent it and learn how to cope and react with such events.

 

[Olas]

Who the hell made this?
You expect us to take a graph seriously when it crowds 75% of the countries onto the very very left side and then doesn't even label most of them?

Where on this graph are the developed nations? Where's Germany? Italy? Spain? The UK? Canada? My guess? Probably somewhere in that red circle I drew.
It's not exactly news that impoverished countries like Honduras and El Salvador have higher murder rates than the United States. To get an accurate understanding of the effect of guns we have to compare countries that are relatively similar in terms of economic and social prosperity, otherwise your results will be clouded with other variables unrelated to gun violence, such as wars and internal violence over resources.

[a href=http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/period-ending-march-2012/trends-in-crime--a-short-story.html#tab-How-do-trends-in-violent-crime-compare-with-other-countries-]Source[/a]

Of course this chart leaves out Mexico which has 3x the murder rate of the United States, but this is due to drug wars being waged in the country and not ordinary crime, therefore it's best we not include it. We all know the homicide rate in the United States is disproportionately high for a country of it's status. Of course other variables factor into it as well, but to say there isn't a correlation between guns and gun related homicide is just stupid.

Still, Americans literally have 10 times the amount of shooting fatalities as we do and thats based on an equal person to person ratio.

This is a false argument. You're comparing gun murders to gun murders, when you should be comparing total murder rates, which are not nearly as different as you would like them to be. Of course if they have access to guns then the rate of gun murders will be higher. Just like if you outlaw everything except screwdrivers, the rate of murders with screwdrivers would rise.

Evidence?
Somehow I don't see mass 22 person killing sprees being carried out with screwdrivers.

 

[Meight08]

Dutch here,
I find it very disturbing how some Americans defend their assault rifles like wild animals protecting their meat before the blood has even dried on the carpet.
But then again this is america we are talking about and I've ceased to be surprised about the crap coming from there.

 

[Ryotknife]

Of course this chart leaves out Mexico which has 3x the murder rate of the United States, but this is due to drug wars being waged in the country and not ordinary crime, therefore it's best we not include it. We all know the homicide rate in the United States is disproportionately high for a country of it's status. Of course other variables factor into it as well, but to say there isn't a correlation between guns and gun related homicide is just stupid.

Then can you explain why most of the dangerous cities in the US are in states with strict gun control laws?

http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/neighborhoods/crime-rates/top100dangerous/

 

[Athinira]

As an American, this is easily one of the most logical responses to an event like this from a European.

My security knowledge is based on readings from a variety of security experts, but one i read a lot (including his monthly newsletter) is american security expert Bruce Schneier

He wrote a very good article [http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/05/securitymatters_0517] back in 2007 on the Virginia Tech Shootings. The article isn't so much about how to deal with school shootings, but about how we overreact to it and how we - as humans - fail at risk assessment in the 21st century.

Spoiler: Good ending quote from the article here

our brains need to find someone or something to blame. (Jon Stewart has an excellent bit on the Virginia Tech scapegoat search, and media coverage in general.) But sometimes there is no scapegoat to be found; sometimes we did everything right, but just got unlucky. We simply can't prevent a lone nutcase from shooting people at random; there's no security measure that would work.
As circular as it sounds, rare events are rare primarily because they don't occur very often, and not because of any preventive security measures. And implementing security measures to make these rare events even rarer is like the joke about the guy who stomps around his house to keep the elephants away.

"Elephants? There are no elephants in this neighborhood," says a neighbor.

"See how well it works!"

If you want to do something that makes security sense, figure out what's common among a bunch of rare events, and concentrate your countermeasures there. Focus on the general risk of terrorism, and not the specific threat of airplane bombings using liquid explosives. Focus on the general risk of troubled young adults, and not the specific threat of a lone gunman wandering around a college campus. Ignore the movie-plot threats, and concentrate on the real risks.

 

[solemnwar]

Of course this chart leaves out Mexico which has 3x the murder rate of the United States, but this is due to drug wars being waged in the country and not ordinary crime, therefore it's best we not include it. We all know the homicide rate in the United States is disproportionately high for a country of it's status. Of course other variables factor into it as well, but to say there isn't a correlation between guns and gun related homicide is just stupid.

Then can you explain why most of the dangerous cities in the US are in states with strict gun control laws?

http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/neighborhoods/crime-rates/top100dangerous/

The strict gun control laws are probably a symptom. The cities are dangerous, therefore strict gun control laws. Sort of "Oh jesus christ everyone's dying maybe if we tighten up gun laws they'll die less."

It has more to do with the communities living in an area. For example, where I live, Canada. Strict gun control laws. My city often charts as the murder capital of canada. This is not because of the strict gun control laws. It's because we have a very large, impoverished native population. Most places in Canada with high crime rates are (it's a problem that we're really not addressing properly).

I don't know, I'm not well learned in these things, just food for thought maybe?


OT: I think that America needs longer waiting periods and stricter requirements, on how you store your weapons, make them harder to just grab at. Also, better social services.

 

[dexxyoto]

How is this news? THis happens all the time in the states. It is das but even Oboma has made it easyer to get guns, use guns and kill inicent things.

 

[Joccaren]

Australia.
People know about it, I don't know how 'cause I don't watch the news or read newspapers, I found out about it online.
Beyond being recognised as a sad event, I'm not too sure anyone over here cares. For me at least its not really news. The US had another shooting? Am I meant to be surprised?
Don't get me wrong, its tragic and all and there's little you can really do at this point to fix that sort of thing, but this sort of thing IS going to happen with the loose gun laws over there.

 

[daniel the immortal]

australia

the hell is the matter with you people. I dont care about the 2nd amendment normal people should not be allowed to have guns

 

[Olas]

Of course this chart leaves out Mexico which has 3x the murder rate of the United States, but this is due to drug wars being waged in the country and not ordinary crime, therefore it's best we not include it. We all know the homicide rate in the United States is disproportionately high for a country of it's status. Of course other variables factor into it as well, but to say there isn't a correlation between guns and gun related homicide is just stupid.

Then can you explain why most of the dangerous cities in the US are in states with strict gun control laws?

http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/neighborhoods/crime-rates/top100dangerous/

Yes I can. For starters guns are frequently trafficked over state lines, which is one of the problems with making gun control a state issue rather than a federal issue.
Here you can see exactly which states export the most 'crime guns'. You can clearly see from it that the states with the fewest gun control laws also export the most weapons, and vice versa states with tighter gun control tend to import the most guns.

http://www.tracetheguns.org/#

But back to your point.
It seems rational to assume a states gun control laws are made in reaction to how much violence already occurs there, so the fact that states with more homicides have stricter gun laws makes sense. However, since there are many other factors that can affect a cities violence, attempting to compare states/cites like this is almost futile.
To get a more meaningful statistic we'd need to increase or decrease the gun control of a state and see if that affects the frequency of crimes that occur within it.

 

[Dakkagor]

In the UK here. Amongst my friends any real anger is directed at the NRA and various lobby groups that seem determined to keep guns in circulation in the US. The cultural problem seems simple from here: you regard yourself as a nation of go-getting individualists so when someone falls of the rails as this poor boy obviously did before the massacre, no one is willing to help pick up the pieces of his life. Who knows if decent care in the community might have prevented the massacres at Aurora and here?

Either way, it wasn't really a major piece of news, if it hadn't been a slow news day I would be surprised if it had made the front pages. Everyone just kind of expects this from the US now, sad to say.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, child soldiers are shot to death while other children are starving to death. I'm not sure why I should be upset because people got killed in America.

Are we really going to pull this "overrated tragedy" bullcrap everytime something bad happens that's not in a third world country?

 

[Denamic]

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, child soldiers are shot to death while other children are starving to death. I'm not sure why I should be upset because people got killed in America.

Are we really going to pull this "overrated tragedy" bullcrap everytime something bad happens that's not in a third world country?

I don't have enough time to be depressed about tragedies on the other side of the planet. As a rule of thumb: If no one I care about is involved, it's unlikely I'll care about it. And why does it matter if it's in a third world country or not? Why should I care more about what happens in America than what happens in Africa?

 

[Casual Shinji]

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, child soldiers are shot to death while other children are starving to death. I'm not sure why I should be upset because people got killed in America.

Are we really going to pull this "overrated tragedy" bullcrap everytime something bad happens that's not in a third world country?

I don't have enough time to be depressed about tragedies on the other side of the planet. As a rule of thumb: If no one I care about is involved, it's unlikely I'll care about it. And why does it matter if it's in a third world country or not? Why should I care more about what happens in America than what happens in Africa?

You shouldn't care more.

But whenever something bad happens in America or Europe, there's always this attempt by people to hang third world misery over it in order to invalidate the current tragedy.

 

[Denamic]

You shouldn't care more.

But whenever something bad happens in America or Europe, there's always this attempt by people to hang third world misery over it in order to invalidate the current tragedy.

Invalidate?
That's not what I'm doing. It is a tragedy to be sure; I just don't really care about it. In fact, I doubt most people who has no connection to it actually does. People will comment about how sad they are about tragedies like this, then promptly laugh at a bad joke, or switch subject to more pressing concerns like the recent weather. That's not caring.

Hundreds and thousands of people die daily. In fact, over 6000 people die daily only in America. Does this news cause overwhelming depression in you? Probably not. They're just numbers, because you have no personal connection to these numbers. Some people dying in a shooting barely even registers.

It would be different if it happened in my proximity, or if it involved or affected people that I care about.

 

[Casual Shinji]

You shouldn't care more.

But whenever something bad happens in America or Europe, there's always this attempt by people to hang third world misery over it in order to invalidate the current tragedy.

Invalidate?
That's not what I'm doing. It is a tragedy to be sure; I just don't really care about it. In fact, I doubt most people who has no connection to it actually does. People will comment about how sad they are about tragedies like this, then promptly laugh at a bad joke, or switch subject to more pressing concerns like the recent weather. That's not caring.

Hundreds and thousands of people die daily. In fact, over 6000 people die daily only in America. Does this news cause overwhelming depression in you? Probably not. They're just numbers, because you have no personal connection to these numbers. Some people dying in a shooting barely even registers.

It would be different if it happened in my proximity, or if it involved or affected people that I care about.

There's the issue of context though.

I know thousands of people die everyday, but there's a difference between people dying of a heart attack and people dying in a plane crash because maintenace cut corners.

 

[M920CAIN]

As many of you may or may not know we had a shooting in the US in Connecticut. For those outside of United States, what did you hear, what did you think, and what did the media show you?

What I'm going to say will sound rude, but I have the Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw cynical approach to things... I enjoy the show and be glad that I'm not the only one having a rough time in life... of course shootings and senseless deaths are awful... but think about it? it's business as usual. Just because it happened in America it's special. What about all the other bad shit in the world? Irak, Afghanistan, Africa, China, etc... lots of people dying all around. Who's president is mourning for them?

 

[Starik20X6]

Australian.

A lot of stuff in the newspaper and on TV. And all I can do is sit here and shake my head in disbelief. I wonder if this will be the long overdue wakeup call that maybe, just maybe, having so many guns around isn't the greatest idea. Because I'm growing tired of the constant cycle of stupidity. "Oh no! Some asshole shot a lot of people! If only something could have been done to prevent this tragedy!" Funny thing is though, something could very easily be done, but nobody seems willing to do anything about it.

Story time! In 1996, a man went berserk in Tasmania and committed one of the most brutal mass shootings the world has ever seen [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia)]. Our government realised "we need to do something about this" and do you know what? They fucking did something about it. And as a result? There's been, let me check, one [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting] "mass shooting" (if you can even call it that, the gunman's kill count was a whopping 2) since. After tightening gun laws, we had one mass shooting, in almost 17 years. Seems like the U.S. is lucky to go 17 weeks without one.

Moral of the story? You can fix this, but you won't. And it saddens and scares me that none of the tragedies that have occurred have been enough to cause any kind of real action to be taken to prevent it from happening again. What's it going to take?