Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Schools are safer than they were in the 90s

news.northeastern.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 93 posts

Re: Schools are safer than they were in the 90s

#71

Post by krapp »

pjc50 wrote: post #57
jcims wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to collect the guns for it to be effective. There are over 300 million generally unregistered firearms in private possession today, that might get a little tricky.

Any sensible implementation would be a phasing-out rather than a single sharp transition. It's not going to be like Sweden changing which side of the road they drove on overnight.

>Any sensible implementation would be a phasing-out rather than a single sharp transition

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.

Re: Schools are safer than they were in the 90s

#72

Post by always_good »

CompanionCuuube wrote: post #70
craftyguy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue heart disease being the leading cause of death in many 'developed' countries strongly indicates that we, as a society, do not have control over it.

We don't, or we can't? As a country, we can do things to force people to avoid the risk factors and take mitigating actions.

I think the fact that you can bloat up to any weight you want just like how you can have as many kids as you want represent how primitive our civilization really is.

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.

Re: Schools are safer than they were in the 90s

#73

Post by patch_collector »

Based on a variety of comments here, I was curious about how many mass shootings there have been over the years. Mother Jones had a list that looked pretty good (well cited). I put it into a graph, which I think makes it a lot easier to understand.

Reasonable additions to this might be adding a line for type of weapon used.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mwNeZ_KHL_nLd85eOeI-...

Re: Schools are safer than they were in the 90s

#74

Post by Torgo »

cimmanom wrote: post #46
0003 wrote: post #11

>Since 1996, there have been 16 multiple victim shootings in schools, or incidents involving 4 or more victims and at least 2 deaths by firearms, excluding the assailant. 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.

IIRC there was a wave of school shootings in 1992-96, almost a dozen total; Columbine was the worst of them in terms of casualties, but in some ways just the culmination of a pattern. I don't know why you would start counting _after_ 1996.

New York was putting metal detectors into schools in the 1980's. They were for gangs, but I guess a school shooting is a school shooting.

Re: Schools are safer than they were in the 90s

#75

Post by lucozade »

Tech-Noir wrote: post #47

Analysis of two decades in the UK, where in 1997 they banned video games and mental illness: 1996: 16 children and their teacher shot dead 1997-2018: 0 shot dead

I take your point but, prior to Dunblane, I believe there was one death and 4 injuries in school shootings. All with shotguns.

I 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.

Re: Schools are safer than they were in the 90s

#76

Post by verylittlemeat »

craftyguy wrote: post #50
allthenews wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thesis is that, because these events are so rare, the cost of prevention outweighs the benefit. 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 n…

So the point you are trying to make is that it's worth giving up a few human lives every year to maintain the status quo?

As a society we make decisions like this all the time. How about cars?

Re: Schools are safer than they were in the 90s

#77

Post by d0lph »

Tech-Noir wrote: post #66
d0lph wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm pretty sure the UK still has video games?

Sorry, it was a reference to some people claiming the causes of gun sprees are video games or mental illness. In fact in 1997 the UK simply banned handguns.

Gotcha, my bad, did not realize the post was sarcasm.

Re: Schools are safer than they were in the 90s

#78

Post by ng-user »

Tech-Noir wrote: post #66
d0lph wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm pretty sure the UK still has video games?

Sorry, it was a reference to some people claiming the causes of gun sprees are video games or mental illness. In fact in 1997 the UK simply banned handguns.

Thanks for the clarification, I also did not realize the sarcasm.

Re: Schools are safer than they were in the 90s

#79

Post by xg15 »

cliff_hanger wrote: post #67
xg15 wrote: post #25

I have seen those studies pop up from time to time on HN with conclusions altering between "it's reachin worrying proportions", "there is an increase", "there is no increase", "they are so rare as to not worth considering". 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…

It's not clear to me why this study would set those thresholds for the underlying data (4+ Victims & 2+ deaths), this seems to downplay the number of incidents. At the very least there should be some explanation of why this limit is in place, as it has a significant impact on the findings. Closest thing I can find to an accurate data-set is here: https://www.kaggle.com/ecodan/us-school-shootings-dataset/no... . Data…

Absolutely. Even if there is some research question by which this criterion would be useful, it doesn't lead the underlying conclusions that school shootings in general are a rare event, declining in frequency.

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...

Re: Schools are safer than they were in the 90s

#80

Post by uurrnn »

verylittlemeat wrote: post #76
craftyguy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the point you are trying to make is that it's worth giving up a few human lives every year to maintain the status quo?

As a society we make decisions like this all the time. How about cars?

Cars provide a much more useful function to society.
Post reply on HN