I just want to say two important things..
First the recent school shooting is a tragedy and we should all be sad about the death of any children, especially as a victim of muder.
Second, we have to realize, for the sake ofperspective, how unfathomably rare it is for a child to die in a school shooting in america. It seems common because america is huge and the news makes this stuff public. But the numbers are more telling.
To put some numbers to it the chance of a child dyingin a school shooting in a public shool on any given day is 1 in 614 million. For comparison the chance of a person getting struck by lightening on any given day is **less** than 1 in 370 million.
In other words a child is more than **twice** as likely in the USA to get struck by lightening as they are to die in a school shooting.
Should we still mourne and be outraged by it... sure.. does that mean it is a problem that is common enough to be a huge concern... not really. We should probably put more effort into addressing the "lightening problem" than we should be about addressing school shootings.
@freemo
Counting only children that got killed does not consider the total impact. All children and adults in the school are impacted, but also those not inside or in the vicinity. They might just happen to identify for other reasons, like also being children or teachers and be affected.
Second, it is not rare when compared to many other countries.
Third, I think there are many other social problems that if addressed would positively affect people's lives and would also impact the school shootingś frequency.
@PiedraFiera Absolutely true, I was not trying to calculate the total global impact on everyone from these events.
@freemo
Sure I get it, just mentioning that the impact is large and very significant. Surviving such events as a child, or just having them happen within your development, may have profound consequences, like life long propensity to PTSD, depression, anxiety, suicide.. I think it does warrant huge concern.
I also believe addressing it, should go beyond access to guns, because the US has deep issues that should also warrant huge concern. Like all the wars they get involved in, directly or by proxy.
@freemo
USA Adults that were taught as children what to do in case of a nuclear attack, describe the negative life long impact it had on them, growing up believing they might have to face that. Entire generations were impacted. Sure some individuals suffered more than others but the consequences were generalized.
Children that nowadays have to participate in school shooter drills are also impacted. Entire generations are being impacted.
Not to mention, indirect consequences, like teachers quitting or money being diverted for that instead of other stuff.
I fear for the rest of the world, because these generations of US children will manifest their trauma not only within the US, this will affect foreign policy and geopolitics.
@freemo
If children's well being was really a priority, there would be free school lunches, free healthcare for everybody, free housing, inexpensive quality food and education, salaries that actually allowed people to own their house and have control of their lives, one month vacations per year, no involving yourselves in wars which should not concern you...
Politicians and intellectuals love invoking the wellbeing of the children to advance their interests, but do not push agendas that actually promote children's well being. Maybe they fear destroying the perfect cause they invoke to promote their interests.
@PiedraFiera
Even if we reduced gun shootings to one every 10 years we woukd still be teaching kids these lessons becauae preparing them saves lives, even jf jts rare we want to save lives....
Are we really going to claim now that measures which safe childrends lives in shootings are part of the problem?
Teaching kids how tonsurvive a tornado is fairly similar and dangerous.. yea its stressful but kids are more than strong enough to do drills, and thry are and always shoukd be good practice.