• AVincentInSpace@pawb.socialEnglish
    1·
    2 hours ago

    There are two kinds of Fediverse users: Americans, and people who never miss an opportunity to tell you how much better they are because they were born somewhere else

    • jordanpwnsyou@lemmy.zip
      573·
      5 days ago

      lol yeah, right? Being able to say “every year,” would be nothing short of a miraculous improvement for us…

      • huppakee@lemmy.world
        191·
        5 days ago

        Imagine living in a country where having one school shooting every year would be a miraculous improvement. I really feel for the US.

        • Test_Tickles@lemmy.world
          2·
          3 days ago

          Sure it sounds bad when you point out that it happens almost every day. But, that is just an average over the span of a year.

          When you really look at it and realize that most schools in the US are closed for at least a month’s worth of holidays, 3 months for summer vacation, and of course 2 days out of every week. Well, then you will see that it’s really much much worse than you originally thought.

    • zener_diode@feddit.org
      472·
      5 days ago

      That page lists attacks in general, and not just at schools but also universities. Out of the 25 attacks listed for Germany (so since 1990), only 11 are shootings, and 14 have no deaths at all. So, you’re right, Germany does know what school schootings are.

      But compare this to a total of 67 (damn that number!) in the same timeframe in the UK ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_attacks_in_the_United_Kingdom ), despite the UK containg about 20 million less people than Germany. Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn’t have a comparable list for France.

      But both of those numbers just cannot compare with the US, where just the school shootings that Wikipedia lists (not all attacks, just shootings) add up to 882 over the same time frame. And its not due to higer population, the US only has about 4 times as many people as Germany.

      Sorry, I realise you’re kinda just trying to say, school attacks do happen in Germay too, and you’re right. But you sent me down a rabbit hole. And the number of school shootings in Germany is so low that as a parent you can reasonably assume it won’t happen (and they are rarely big enough to land in the news), whereas in the US it seems to be something that everyone thinks about, that schols plan for, and that has a not inconsiderable chance of happening.

      Edit: spelling

    • Sv443@sh.itjust.works
      10·
      4 days ago

      I was 7 when the Winnenden shooting happened (it’s relatively close by). It doesn’t come close to how bad some of the shootings in the US are but I still remember it as a core memory.
      When your society isn’t used to violence, a shooting sends an actual anti-violence message. In the states it seems to only instigate political drama and grifters and encourages more people to do the same.
      I wanna say guns are the problem but that would be very naive. The easy access means the barrier of entry is SO much lower, allowing other problems to be magnified and lead to the actual shooting. It’s such an insidiously deep rooted problem that I couldn’t even begin to try to suggest how to fix it.

      • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
        6·
        4 days ago

        guns are the problem but that would be very naive.

        Meth isn’t the problem. The real problem is lack of dopamine that causes people to seek pleasure.

        A bad diet doesn’t cause obesity. It’s the person’s mental state that causes them to seek out food as comfort.

        The only problem with this viewpoint is that people are inherently fucking crazy and you’ll never ever fix that. So you need to restrict the things that allow them to hurt other people with their crazy. And when they’re going to hurt themselves with their crazy, you do your best to help coach and guide and support them.

        • Sv443@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          4 days ago

          yeah I might not have said it in the best way but that’s pretty much what I meant. Taking away access now will be close to impossible, with how polarized everyone is.

      • couldhavebeenyou@lemmy.zip
        3·
        4 days ago

        I think Michael Moore hit it pretty much straight on the head.

        Having guns makes people feel empowered against others. A wimp can take down basically anyone if they create the right circumstances. So when people feel wronged, there’s this huge itch to see that as a viable solution.

        There isn’t a single solution, but taking away (easy) access to guns is certainly a hugely efficient step

  • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
    72·
    5 days ago

    I mean most of the world has no idea what a school shooting is. They’re an almost uniquely American phenomenon.

  • Mister Neon@lemmy.world
    73·
    5 days ago

    We’re a for-profit country. It’s like everything we have set up is to make a few people very rich. The everyday tragedies are acceptable byproducts for those who run everything.

  • doingthestuff@lemy.lolEnglish
    414·
    3 days ago

    Meanwhile Europeans kill far more of their health compromised people because they’re too good to use AC. Yes, full whataboutism.

  • Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
    510·
    4 days ago

    England is more into knife attacks. Easy access to guns is the major factor in the US. With parents starting to receive prison sentences for their kids actions, we will have to see if the number starts to drop. Best solution, of course, is to get guns out of the hands of the disturbed and get them help.

    • OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml
      241·
      4 days ago

      The UK has fewer knife attacks per person than the US.

      It’s just that there’s so much gun violence, no one talks about it.

      • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        4 days ago

        Tbf, this paints the picture that the issue isn’t “the guns.” If we also have more knife attacks, “guns” can’t be “the reason” Americans are more violent than their oft compared counterparts. I’d wager it’s something in the absolutely well known cocktail of economic disparity, general hopelessness, social isolation, instability abound, the pollution from chemical plants that led to our past serial killer problem (no really), and all the other factors that we know can contribute to more violence in a region.

        It’s also more helpful to compare a country to itself, it’s possible factors other than “guns” can be the real reason. For instance, Japan may be less violent because they don’t have guns, or they may be less violent because they’re quietly an authoritarian police state that has police in your district inspect your house once a year “just in case” and they can hold you indefinitely if you’re simply suspected and can force confessions leading to a suspiciously high conviction rate (spoiler: false convictions). Without being able to force people to confess to crimes they didn’t do (legally, it does happen but it isn’t allowed), who knows how that’d work here.

        So with that in mind, comparing America now to America then, violent crime in the US has dropped steadily since 1993; and gun ownership has only gone up in that same time, in 2004 our “assault weapons ban” expired and violent crime is still falling, despite public perceptions fueled by 24/7 news media and their “if it bleeds it leads” scaremongering for ad revenue, of course.