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.

#gun #guns #GunReform #2A

@freemo

I'm a little bit confused here.
Are you saying that school (or other mass) shootings are as "natural" as lightning?

@pj i am not. I am saying it is half as common as lightening to get killed in a school shooting.

@freemo
I do not agree with this statement:

“We should probably put more effort into addressing the “lightening problem” than we should be about addressing school shootings.”

The question is: “What can we do about it as a society?”

You can see the storm coming and you can choose not to go outside or you may try to find shelter and protect yourself in some other way, but a child who has to be in school supposedly safe under adult supervision doesn’t have such a privilege.

How can we consider ourselves a civilized society if we don’t have the means to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of individuals that should not have them?

You need a license to drive a car and you can’t buy cigarettes and alcohol under a certain age but you can carry a gun or even an army-style assault rifle no questions asked.

@freemo

Interesting theory about why guns are so loved in the US:

White Southerners started cultivating the tradition of the home arsenal immediately after the Civil War because of insecurities and racial fears. During the rest of the 19th century, those anxieties metamorphosized into a fetishization of the firearm to the point that, in the present day, gun owners view their weapons as adding meaning and a sense of purpose to their lives.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-gun-became-integral-to-the-self-identity-of-millions-of-americans/

@pj @freemo My understanding is that this concern goes back to the founding of the USA and that the 2nd amendment “well regulated militia” refers to concerns of white Southerners about their ability to respond to slave rebellions. Like Harper’s Ferry.

@rrb @pj

The militia thing was hardly a slave rebellion idea. I mean thr northwas just as well armed and there were concerns about oppressive governemnts. Dont get me wrong slave rebellion was probably a factor too, but it was really a long list of concerns fueling the mentality

@freemo @pj Sources for my comment:

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment\

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-slavery-james-madison.html

I take that view from the publications of these historians.

The often stated view of individuals being armed against the government seems to me to be a bit shakier in view of how the fledgling US government responded to things like the Whiskey rebellion. If they sincerely wanted individuals to be able to shoot federal agents, they would not have responded so strongly to those attacks.

@rrb @pj

Fair. I suspect the desire to be armed against a slave rebellion is why today the south is a bit more gun happy… but still doesnt explain why the north was so progun as well.

@freemo @pj Slavery was definitely not the only factor in drafting the 2nd amendment.

Also, the colonies were more rural at that time than most of the USA is now and the country as a whole was in a more precarious state.

I feel that a lot of the division on gun rights in the USA is a rural/urban divide. Living at my uncle’s ranch in West Texas, you really need a gun for pest control, etc. In the college town where I live now, a gun really has zero utility. So residents of those two regions will have a legitimate difference of opinion.

Finding that guns provide a “sense of meaning to your life” as stated in the Scientific American article is not something I would be able to accept anyway. Neither do I get a sense of self from my car, house, etc.

@rrb @freemo

Many, especially younger, people get a sense of self from things such as guns, cars, and boats, but that’s not the point.

A “well-regulated militia” doesn’t mean everyone can simply buy an assault rifle at the nearby grocery store. You can’t do this in Switzerland or Israel where I believe everyone that is supposed to, have a gun, but, afaik, there are no mass shootings like in the US.

Something is wrong with a society where you can’t drive a car without a permit or even a medical exam if you are of a certain age, but you can own a gun without any restrictions.