Guns and Schools - What Changed?

variant said:

Being aware of the relevant demographics helps.

Religiosity and Gun rights:

https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/77930.png?w=991

https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/81023.jpg?h=652&w=1200

Gun ownership per capita:

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6Ub..._Survey_civilian_gun_ownership_by_country.png

And gun homicides per capita:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...icide_suicide_rates_high-income_countries.png

The US is on the more religious side of developed countries though (an outlier in this respect):

https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-c...6/04/FT_16.04.14_religiousSalience-update.png

The US is also an outlier in the developed world in terms of school shootings.

http://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/13998.jpeg

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180522094603-t1-us-intl-shooting-list-super-tease.jpg

So, no, I don't think it is a lack of religiosity that is driving school shootings (or gun homicides in general).

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Interesting but not conclusive.

DerSchweik said:

Ok, so now we're getting somewhere - breakdown of the family. I think that's a valid theory, certainly, cuz, it's definitely been happening.

And as your theory admits (and I don't really take issue with it), guns are now in the hands of troubled youth.

Ok - so assuming your theory is valid - what do you think is the solution? Addressing the breakdown in the family that is resulting in troubled youth, or eliminating the right to bear arms?

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I'm Australian, I support gun laws like we have here. Firearms-Control Legislation and Policy: Australia I can't imagine the US government buying back firearms like they did here. The statistics show we had a great decrease in gun related deaths and injuries after stricter laws were introduced. I don't know how well that would go down in the US though, because we never had the same gun culture to begin with. American's tend to feel they not only have a right to be armed but should be, correct? Do you have laws in place for automatic and semi-automatic rifles? Start there.

The family break down is a huge complicated issue. I think many of your current systems would need to be addressed, like health, wages, education and housing. Your health care system is one of the worst in the developed world for affordability. Great hospitals and doctors make no difference to people that can't afford to use them.

Fantine said:

What are you doing to stop this? Must we strike terror into preschoolers because of gun rights activists who are willing to give 3 year olds nightmares because they have no sense of boundaries, no desire to keep guns out of the hands of sociopaths and dangerous people, no desire to.ban the most dangerous weapons? That this is necessary is pathetic!

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Blaming it on people who want to keep the right to defend themselves is silly. When my kid first went to a few classes at a public school she was shocked that most kids did not have two parents at home. Most, not some. These kids are passed back and forth like they are a responsibility no one really wants. You need to solve the problem of the kid's self-worth if you want to address why we have kids killing each other. "Less guns" is a very simplistic answer and doesn't solve the root problems.

DerSchweik said:

A "popular pastime?" So you think school shootings are a joke?

FWIW:
Total deaths 1840 to 2000: 239 (and every one admittedly a tragedy) Average: 1.5 deaths / year
Total injuries 1840 to 2000: 442 (and every one admittedly not good) Average: 2.8 injuries / year
...not exactly what I'd call - as you so caringly put it - that "popular" a "pastime."

Ok - 'nuff of that. Do you have any comment on the OP?

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Interesting.

Now do one deaths/100,000 school children. That would be more indicative.

DerSchweik said:

2013 Article in the National Review

[from the article] "Once upon a time, it was common for an American child to be packed off to school with a rifle on his back and for him to come home smiling and safe in the evening."

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My kids were never packed off to school with a rifle on his/her back" and they came home smiling and safe. As did I and my siblings. As did every other student I've ever known.

Perhaps those children "packed off to school with a rifle on his back" needed them to protect themselves from the wolves?

DerSchweik said:

With all due respect, might not your attitude here be somewhat colored by the fact that you're British? (just sayin)

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You mean coloured.

renniks said:

You need to solve the problem of the kid's self-worth if you want to address why we have kids killing each other.

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The kids must have learned it somewhere.

What's the solution for the problem of American adults killing each other?

Do other countries have problems with people shooting each other because of a road rage incident? Or is that just something United States Americans do? Note: I did not say Americans because Canadians and Mexicans are Americans but I don't know enough about their gun violence and it's causes.

It seems as if your view of the educational system is half conspiracy theory, half misconception, filled with visions of imaginary culprits like "Marxists."

And the solution, i suppose, is corporal punishment and Christian prayer?

Nithavela said:

Where does this veneration come from? I think it comes from the many wars the USA has fought in the last century. From their heroic actions in the second world war to the not so heroic actions that followed, the us military has been campaigning.

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It comes from the fact that the US was colonized and settled during the same period that guns as personal weaponry became practical...and were quite necessary. Guns were part of the national natal history and were woven into the national mythology. The American west was still kind of "wild" (guns actually filled a practical need for farmers and ranchers) well into the 1900s, and arguably still today for those people.

In Europe, it was medieval (or earlier) weaponry. In the US, it was guns.

coffee4u said:

Well its your whole gun culture. This mindset that thinks its okay for all and sundry to carry or own weapons. I'm not sure I even understand it frankly.
But what changed is the family. The family was a strong unit way back when but now its all absent fathers, parents on drugs, just generally more family break down. So now the guns are still their hands but in the hands of troubled and hurting youth.

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That's part of the greater picture of the problem.

Americans today, particularly young Americans, are far more desperate than in the past, far more desperate than even in my own past. There had always, for most of ever American generation, been a shared feeling that things are getting better, and things will get better. That had even been true for black people in America: The hope was there even if belied by the reality of their actual circumstances.

That hope has diminished severely and desperation has increased exponentially since the 1980s. Desperation is so high in the current generation in high school and college that even Millennials are calling them the "Doomer Generation."

That desperation is not irrational, because the US as a nation is proving itself to be unable to handle any kind of national issue, from a pandemic to ordinary health care all the way down to cold weather and pot holes. The US today can not build another Hoover Dam or another Eisenhower Interstate Defense Highway system. The US can't even keep them repaired.

Desperation creates a continual undercurrent of fear and rage.

DerSchweik said:

That wasn't the point (go back, read the string, if needed) and neither is it the point of the OP.

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Well, it seemed that the point of your post (and the article) was that school children were safer when they were taking guns to school. The "data" you presented supported that point:

Children carrying guns - only 1.5 children dying by gun violence per year.

Evil liberals preventing kids from carrying guns - awful 2.8 children dying by gun violence per year.

Of course, this is a disengenuous way of presenting the data since:

Children carrying guns - only 1.5 children dying by gun violence per year ... out of 6 school children = 25% fatality rate per year.

Evil liberals preventing kids from carrying guns - awful 2.8 children dying by gun violence ... out of 280,000 children = 0.001% fatality rate per year.

It's simple math and is a better indicator of whether something may be, per capita, good or not.

coffee4u said:

I'm Australian, I support gun laws like we have here. Firearms-Control Legislation and Policy: Australia I can't imagine the US government buying back firearms like they did here. The statistics show we had a great decrease in gun related deaths and injuries after stricter laws were introduced. I don't know how well that would go down in the US though, because we never had the same gun culture to begin with. American's tend to feel they not only have a right to be armed but should be, correct? Do you have laws in place for automatic and semi-automatic rifles?

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America is an immigrant nation. My ancestors arrived from Ireland and Scotland in the late 19th and early 20th century, stayed in NYC. This "gun culture" you imagine was not part of the lives of European immigrants who settled in NY, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago. The population of the U.S. was 76 million in 1900 and is now 330 million.

On the west coast, immigrants came from China and Japan, and later, from Mexico. The Asian immigrants also stayed in cities.

None of the immigrant countries I mentioned had "gun cultures." Most of these later immigrants who stayed on the coasts never even knew about this "gun culture."

Although we apparently have 120 guns for every person, they are only owned by 30% of Americans. Probably most of the 70% who don't own guns are people who, like me, had absolutely no desire to ever own a gun or live in a home that had guns. Do they feel that Americans have the right to bear arms or should be? I have no idea. I always thought the second amendment was some sort of archaic throwback to the eighteenth century, completely irrelevant and unnecessary.

And so there you have it. After the industrial revolution, the huge numbers of immigrants who came to the United States arrived and settled in cities where they were never exposed to "gun culture," and whose lives were never diminished by not having been exposed to it. And even now, 70% of Americans don't own guns. In NY, my home state, it is under 15%. Where I live now (sigh) it is over 50%, but among my friends here, it is 0%.

In 1980, the NRA changed from an organization of mostly peaceable hunters. They launched an aggressive and well-funded campaign to vastly increase a "gun culture" that didn't exist in much of America. They funded chairs in law schools, like the Federalist Society does, to train lawyers who would promote gun rights at every turn and eventually become judges. They also funded politicians, and still do.

And there have been gun buybacks. When I lived in St. Louis County in the 1990's, St. Louis City, which had a high crime rate, had regular gun buybacks. "Gun culture" doesn't work well in cities.

DerSchweik said:

"Coloured?" Where did that come from? No, the stats below your avatar say "UK-Labor" so, I made an assumption. And given you spelled 'coloured' the way Brits do, I assume I was correct?

Apologies, and my bad if not.

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Ah, no; my apologies. I was poking fun at the -or vs -our difference. Wry British humour does not always travel well.

I did not mean anything else by it.

DerSchweik said:

Just couldn't bring yourself to stay away, could you? Well, we'll see how far this goes...

Education system - yes, I think it's a huge part of the problem with the breakdown in our culture. No, I wouldn't use "deficient" to describe it. That'd be a travesty of an understatement.

I get that teachers are dealing with a lot - I have family members who are teachers, so I'm not in that "bubble of ignorance" you seem to like to assume either.

That said, given all the problems that exist in the current school system, why in the Wide Wide World of Sports would I agree to another of a loooooooong list of Democrat plans that attempt to patch a system whose ills are a FUNCTION of Democrat plans?

A good first step, imho, would be to get the marxists and marxist wannabes OUT of the school system and turn it back over to sane, rational people whose agenda is not indoctrination, but education - but that would be the "Impossible Dream," wouldn't it?

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Interesting.

To what do you attribute the fact that countires like Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, etc. do so much better in educating their children?

U.S. academic achievement lags that of many other countries

And don't seem to have as much of problem with children shooting each other?

MIDutch said:

The kids must have learned it somewhere.

What's the solution for the problem of American adults killing each other?

Do other countries have problems with people shooting each other because of a road rage incident? Or is that just something United States Americans do? Note: I did not say Americans because Canadians and Mexicans are Americans but I don't know enough about their gun violence and it's causes.

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Here's the thing, the same kids that want to kill each other end up killing themselves. We have a suicide epidemic in this country. Why do people in general now have so little self worth? Why do so many lack basic morality? What else has changed? The church, for one thing. I will say it, evolution being taught is also teaching us we are just animals. There's not just one issue. Gun deaths are a symptom. Look at all the rioting last year. Young people are angry. What are they taught that's making them this way?