Malcolm Gladwell: Thresholds of Violence How school shootings catch on

[rkbabang]

EDIT:  If anyone here has children and are more worried about them being shot in school than you are about them sitting in the seat of a moving automobile you are insane, completely 100% insane.  I'm sorry if that sounds callous, but it is true.

 

Depends on where you live. For most places in USA and developed countries, you are right.

 

Well, yes, I was under the assumption most of the people here live in the developed world.

 

[innerscorecard]

The truth is that school shootings really are no big deal

 

I'm sorry that you had to go through that, but it is difficult to enumerate all the ways your comments are wrong. 

 

Do you have children? Your lack of pathos suggests that you do not.

You can use statistics to argue for a lot of things, but to suggest that school children being murdered in class is 'no big deal' because we need self driving cars is being almost laughably callous.

 

 

I do, 2 teenagers.  And I know that driving is far more dangerous for them than attending school.

 

EDIT:  If anyone here has children and are more worried about them being shot in school than you are about them sitting in the seat of a moving automobile you are insane, completely 100% insane.  I'm sorry if that sounds callous, but it is true.

 

Many think this way, but rather than being insane, I think they are simply "moist robots" responding to stimuli and memes in a predictable fashion, just as we all are.

[Jurgis]

One thing: yes, we should adopt the easy "no cost" methods:

 

1. Tell your kids to look both ways when crossing the street. Tell them to wear seat belts even in back seat.

2. If you are teacher/professor, it does not hurt to know how you can lock your classroom door (or where the closest fire extinguisher is).

 

Yeah, 1. is still probably 100 times more worthwhile than 2. But 2. does not cost much and so it does not hurt much either.

 

Take care.

 

[rmitz]

When an active shooter kills someone on campus it has an effect on 40,000 people. As evidence there were at least 10,000 people the evening of the shooting at that candle light vigil and the temperature was -10F.  People who never knew the victim had to have counseling.

 

That’s because a car crash is an accident, and a shooting is terrorism.

[Jurgis]

Many think this way, but rather than being insane, I think they are simply "moist robots" responding to stimuli and memes in a predictable fashion, just as we all are.

 

This is an important point. Even though rkbabang is aware of odds in this case and processing it "right", it is very likely that he - and actually every one of us - respond to some other cases as "moist robots": completely inadequately. :)

 

It's very hard to avoid such responses, especially since life situations are much more complex than a binary example we were talking about.

[adesigar]

The posts comparing 300 school MURDERS vs 30,000 car ACCIDENTS is typical dumb pro gun crap.

 

1st the morons are comparing MURDERS vs ACCIDENTS.

Are you too dumb to tell the difference between the two?

 

2nd You conveniently leaving out all the other gun related deaths.

Guns are linked to 33,000 deaths annually in the US(11,000 homicides, 21,000 suicides).

 

 

 

[rkbabang]

The posts comparing 300 school MURDERS vs 30,000 car ACCIDENTS is typical dumb pro gun crap.

 

Just to be clear that is 300 school MURDERS in the last 30 years vs 30,000 deaths from car "ACCIDENTS" in the last year.

 

1st the morons are comparing MURDERS vs ACCIDENTS.

Are you too dumb to tell the difference between the two?

 

I know the difference, one is a huge problem the other isn't nearly as large.  Also I'd like to take issue with your term "ACCIDENTS", because most traffic deaths aren't any such thing.  We might refer to them as such, but anyone that has ever driven in the US knows that the vast majority of accidents are the result of someone doing something they shouldn't have and that they know they shouldn't have done.  This negligent misuse of a 2 ton hunk of metal driven at high speeds causing a death should be called negligent homicide or manslaughter, but we (as a society) prefer to say that the guy who tailgates someone and causes a death has caused an "accident" and not charge him with a crime.  If you misuse a gun and someone dies, you can be sure that you will be charged with manslaughter and no one will call it an "accident".  The same should be true for car crashes as well.  The only time people are actually properly charged is when they are drunk, but aggressive drivers, speeders, tailgaters, people who don't pay attention, people who don't yield when they are supposed to, or do yield when they aren't supposed to,  or those who are prone to road rage all get away scott free when they kill someone.  The number of actually unavoidable accidents on our roads that lead to death is very tiny.  30,000 people die every year mostly from either their own or someone else's negligence.

 

2nd You conveniently leaving out all the other gun related deaths.

Guns are linked to 33,000 deaths annually in the US(11,000 homicides, 21,000 suicides).

 

Both internationally and between the states there is no positive correlation between suicide rates and either gun ownership nor gun laws.  Look at the suicide rates in Japan for an extreme example.  Yes in the US people choose to use a firearm when they kill themselves, whereas in Japan they use other methods, but suicide isn't a gun problem, it is a person who wants to end his own life problem.  And murder, depending on the study you look at either has no coorelation to gun ownership or a very slight negative correlation.    This is why gun-control advocates always say "gun-violence" not "violence" or "suicide by gun" rather than just talk about "suicides" in total.

 

If you wan't to save A LOT of lives, even more than solving the car-crash issue, convince doctors to properly wash their hands.

 

 

[bargainhunter]

 

 

Both internationally and between the states there is no positive correlation between suicide rates and either gun ownership nor gun laws.  Look at the suicide rates in Japan for an extreme example.  Yes in the US people choose to use a firearm when they kill themselves, whereas in Japan they use other methods, but suicide isn't a gun problem, it is a person who wants to end his own life problem. 

 

Sorry, but this is demonstrably untrue, and there are MANY studies illustrating this. The easy availability of guns tends to result in higher suicide rates. See here for example. I could cite countless other studies.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/02/daily-chart

 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

 

Just to be clear that is 300 school MURDERS in the last 30 years vs 30,000 deaths from car "ACCIDENTS" in the last year.

 

 

Why are we limiting the discussion to school shootings? Do mass shootings not occur at other places like malls, military bases, and movie theaters? If you look at the deaths from mass shootings, it's approached nearly 1000 in just the last 10 years. Obviously not anything compared to cars, but still significantly higher than you're "300 over the last 30 years" claim.

 

Also, I'm not going to argue more can't be done for car safety. We've done that and we're doing that. We've mandated speed limits, seat belts, air bags, anti-lock breaks, etc. etc. etc. We have law enforcement regularly watching for infractions and penalizing unsafe operators. And for all of that, we're getting diminishing returns. The single most effective safety measure in cars has been seat-belts. Every additional add on has been additive, but marginally so. Maybe self-driving cars will change that - it remains to be seen.

 

There is little comparable restriction/regulation in the gun world. They run a criminal background check, they make you wait a few days to purchase, and some states require a joke of a safety course. That's it. Nothing that requires/ensures compliance of safe storage and use, no regular audits of gun owners and their safety standards of storage and use, no regular understanding of who else within the household may have access to those weapons and whether or not that is to be a cause of concern, no regular law enforcement who are able to view/enforce safety standards and improper use, etc. etc.etc. Nobody is arguing that guns are dangerous than cars. To say that we shouldn't even consider some options to make them safer because they're not the #1 killer is stupid. If that's the argument, we shouldn't focus on any safety measures at all except in how to prevent heart disease...

 

If we believe the data of the article, looking at the past number of deaths/shootings isn't going to give you a good understanding of the problem because the problem will supposedly amplify with more shootings occurring each year. I haven't looked at the data, but if more shootings occur with each shooting that occurs, you have a problem that will grow at an exponential rate and not linearly. 1000 deaths over the last 10 years could easily turn into 200-300 deaths per year real quick. I'd rather we deal with it when it's only a few hundred a year than wait til it gets to 30,000 a year to declare that it's become an issue.

 

 

 

 

[ERICOPOLY]

 

 

Both internationally and between the states there is no positive correlation between suicide rates and either gun ownership nor gun laws.  Look at the suicide rates in Japan for an extreme example.  Yes in the US people choose to use a firearm when they kill themselves, whereas in Japan they use other methods, but suicide isn't a gun problem, it is a person who wants to end his own life problem. 

 

Sorry, but this is demonstrably untrue, and there are MANY studies illustrating this. The easy availability of guns tends to result in higher suicide rates. See here for example. I could cite countless other studies.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/02/daily-chart

 

Which is so strange.  It seems a lot more appealing to put a garden hose in the tailpipe of a car (or just run the car with the garage door closed if you have a garage).  Why do people use guns?

[writser]

Because it is a quick and easy way? If you have a sudden panic attack or something horrible happened and you own a gun you can probably kill yourself within 10 seconds. If you want to suffocate yourself in your car you have to do preparations and have quite some time to reconsider things and/or to be interrupted. You approach choosing a preferred method of suicide as if it is a rational decision making process - that's probably not the right way to go.

[rkbabang]

Sorry, but this is demonstrably untrue, and there are MANY studies illustrating this. The easy availability of guns tends to result in higher suicide rates. See here for example. I could cite countless other studies.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/02/daily-chart

 

Which is so strange.  It seems a lot more appealing to put a garden hose in the tailpipe of a car (or just run the car with the garage door closed if you have a garage).  Why do people use guns?

 

Be careful about correlation and causation errors in that chart in the story.  Studies of limited data-sets or of short time frames may show strange things ( you could make the case that it would be a safer country if the Miss America pageant was limited to women under 20 years of age).  Also sometimes things are related but both caused by a third variable not studied. Many of the high suicide states are also the most economically depressed states and I would love to see a chart with number of veterans living in a state vs suicide rates or active military families living in a state vs suicide rates.  There are many causes of suicide and many ways to do it.  Besides, if you do not want to kill yourself (as I do not) then no law in the world will make you any more or less safe from suicide.

 

Many people probably use guns for suicide, because it is quick and effective.  But a look at the numbers shows that at least half do not use guns, so some people are obviously turned off by the messyness.  Also the problem with the garage method is that a family member will probably be the one to find you.  I know someone who found his father in the garage in this way as a teenager, it would have been much better on his son if he had driven somewhere else and used a gun. Finding a stranger doesn't have the same emotional impact as finding a family member.  There are problems with all the other methods as well, hanging can be long and painful if you don't do it right and you can survive with brain damage or other disabilities,  drugs can take a long time and someone can find you and revive you, jumping from a high place is something a lot of people just can't do (and what if by some "miracle" you survive? You'll be a mess). Really if it is logical to use the best tool for any job, it really it is surprising that more people don't use guns if they are available to them.  Guns may have some small effect on the success rate and on the marginal cases, but guns don't cause suicide any more than bridges, rope, or tall buildings.  And besides you can always use a gun to kill yourself even if civilian gun ownership is outlawed.  Go to Home Depot, buy a machete (an 8-inch chefs knife will also work, maybe even a baseball bat in a pinch), hold it high above your head, open your eyes as wide as they can go, and run towards the first cop you see screaming the word "die" over and over. Make sure you start from some distance away to give him plenty of time to react.

 

Suicide rates are also very culturally dependant.  It is more culturally acceptable to kill oneself in some cultures rather than others, and this can change over time within a culture.  If you look at suicide rates by country the US has lower rates than some other countries with far fewer civilian guns, such as Japan, France, Finland, Belgium, Poland, South Korea, etc.  If guns caused suicide you'd expect the US to top the list with Japan way at the bottom.  There are cultural differences between the different regions of the US as well.  If you look at the chart on the story above you can see many of the states grouped together are also in the same regions of the country and may have similar cultures.

 

 

EDIT:  Here's a good one.  Stop the science, stop the slaughter!

 

http://www.tylervigen.com/correlation_project/correlation_images/us-spending-on-science-space-and-technology_suicides-by-hanging-strangulation-and-suffocation.png

 

[ERICOPOLY]

Also the problem with the garage method is that a family member will probably be the one to find you.  I know someone who found his father in the garage in this way as a teenager, it would have been much better on his son if he had driven somewhere else and used a gun. Finding a stranger doesn't have the same emotional impact as finding a family member. 

 

 

Just rent a U-Haul truck, park in a remote location, and cook hamburgers over charcoal in a Weber in the back with the rear door closed.

 

Search on Google for indoor BBQ carbon monoxide poisoning -- it's surprising how many people accidentally kill themselves and others this way.  So it's very effective.

 

[rkbabang]

Also the problem with the garage method is that a family member will probably be the one to find you.  I know someone who found his father in the garage in this way as a teenager, it would have been much better on his son if he had driven somewhere else and used a gun. Finding a stranger doesn't have the same emotional impact as finding a family member. 

 

 

Just rent a U-Haul truck, park in a remote location, and cook hamburgers over charcoal in a Weber in the back with the rear door closed.

 

Search on Google for indoor BBQ carbon monoxide poisoning -- it's surprising how many people accidentally kill themselves and others this way.  So it's very effective.

 

 

And if it doesn't work, at least you have burgers.

 

BTW: In 2005 even Canada had a higher suicide rate than the US.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html

 

[adesigar]

Also the problem with the garage method is that a family member will probably be the one to find you.  I know someone who found his father in the garage in this way as a teenager, it would have been much better on his son if he had driven somewhere else and used a gun. Finding a stranger doesn't have the same emotional impact as finding a family member. 

 

 

Just rent a U-Haul truck, park in a remote location, and cook hamburgers over charcoal in a Weber in the back with the rear door closed.

 

Search on Google for indoor BBQ carbon monoxide poisoning -- it's surprising how many people accidentally kill themselves and others this way.  So it's very effective.

 

 

And if it doesn't work, at least you have burgers.

 

BTW: In 2005 even Canada had a higher suicide rate than the US.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html

 

I intentionally separated out homicides vs suicides expecting you to have the brains to use the homicide number. Guess you are too dumb to do that. The car accidents include everything from distracted driving to drunk/reckless driving, rain/ice/potholes, design defects/tire blowouts and a few dozen other not all of which can be avoided by autonomous cars. Would you like to adjust the 30,000 number down to deaths that can be avoided by autonomous cars and compare that to homicides? You also have no idea if autonomous cars cause their own set of problems. Since you've got no answer to 11,000 homicides vs 30,000 accidents feel free to focus on the suicide and ignore the homicides.

[rkbabang]

Also the problem with the garage method is that a family member will probably be the one to find you.  I know someone who found his father in the garage in this way as a teenager, it would have been much better on his son if he had driven somewhere else and used a gun. Finding a stranger doesn't have the same emotional impact as finding a family member. 

 

 

Just rent a U-Haul truck, park in a remote location, and cook hamburgers over charcoal in a Weber in the back with the rear door closed.

 

Search on Google for indoor BBQ carbon monoxide poisoning -- it's surprising how many people accidentally kill themselves and others this way.  So it's very effective.

 

 

And if it doesn't work, at least you have burgers.

 

BTW: In 2005 even Canada had a higher suicide rate than the US.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html

 

I intentionally separated out homicides vs suicides expecting you to have the brains to use the homicide number. Guess you are too dumb to do that. The car accidents include everything from distracted driving to drunk/reckless driving, rain/ice/potholes, design defects/tire blowouts and a few dozen other not all of which can be avoided by autonomous cars. Would you like to adjust the 30,000 number down to deaths that can be avoided by autonomous cars and compare that to homicides? You also have no idea if autonomous cars cause their own set of problems. Since you've got no answer to 11,000 homicides vs 30,000 accidents feel free to focus on the suicide and ignore the homicides.

 

The issue with homicides is about the same as suicides.  It is cultural.  How do you stop people from wanting to kill themselves or others?  Taking away their guns isn't solving the problem.

 

100 years ago when neither country had any guns laws to speak of, London was a much, much safer place than NYC.  Now that isn't as much the case.  What changed?  If anything there are much fewer guns in London than there were.  You are trying to make these issues black and white when they aren't.

 

[Ross812]

I don't understand the reasoning of saying preventing automobile accidents is more important than gun control. They are both important and something should be done about both of them.

 

I see a couple of solutions for gun control:

 

Let the private insurance market decide the risk of gun ownership. Gun owners should be required to carry a liability policy on their firearms. If you are irresponsible and let someone steal your weapons you are personally liable. Want to amass a collection of firearms that could outfit a small army? Great, but the insurance on that is going to cost you. Insurance will vary on gun model as well. Ex. a muzzle loader will be much cheaper to insure than an AR-15.   

 

The other option is to flat out ban assault weapons and magazines holding more than 6 rounds.

[rkbabang]

I don't understand the reasoning of saying preventing automobile accidents is more important than gun control. They are both important and something should be done about both of them.

 

I see a couple of solutions for gun control:

 

Let the private insurance market decide the risk of gun ownership. Gun owners should be required to carry a liability policy on their firearms. If you are irresponsible and let someone steal your weapons you are personally liable. Want to amass a collection of firearms that could outfit a small army? Great, but the insurance on that is going to cost you. Insurance will vary on gun model as well. Ex. a muzzle loader will be much cheaper to insure than an AR-15.   

 

The other option is to flat out ban assault weapons and magazines holding more than 6 rounds.

 

Magazine capacity bans only effect defensive uses and not offencive uses of firearms.  It takes less than 2 seconds to change a magazine.  If you are planning an offencive use of your firearm you can carry as many magazines as you think you will use.  If you are carrying a firearm for defensive purposes on a daily basis you are not likely to carry any extras.  Also if you grab your gun in the middle of the night in an emergency, you might not even be wearing anything which has pockets to put a spare magazine, where the attacker(s) may carry many extras.  You limit a person's ability to defend themselves and others, without effecting a criminal planning an attack in any way.  The point of all of this was that school shootings are a small problem of which there isn't much we can do anything about and there are much larger problems for which there are solutions (car deaths, hospital infections, etc) which no one thinks about, cares about, or worries about.  It has obviously gone off the rails to focus entirely on gun control, so I'll stop here.

 

[adesigar]

Also the problem with the garage method is that a family member will probably be the one to find you.  I know someone who found his father in the garage in this way as a teenager, it would have been much better on his son if he had driven somewhere else and used a gun. Finding a stranger doesn't have the same emotional impact as finding a family member. 

 

 

Just rent a U-Haul truck, park in a remote location, and cook hamburgers over charcoal in a Weber in the back with the rear door closed.

 

Search on Google for indoor BBQ carbon monoxide poisoning -- it's surprising how many people accidentally kill themselves and others this way.  So it's very effective.

 

 

And if it doesn't work, at least you have burgers.

 

BTW: In 2005 even Canada had a higher suicide rate than the US.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html

 

I intentionally separated out homicides vs suicides expecting you to have the brains to use the homicide number. Guess you are too dumb to do that. The car accidents include everything from distracted driving to drunk/reckless driving, rain/ice/potholes, design defects/tire blowouts and a few dozen other not all of which can be avoided by autonomous cars. Would you like to adjust the 30,000 number down to deaths that can be avoided by autonomous cars and compare that to homicides? You also have no idea if autonomous cars cause their own set of problems. Since you've got no answer to 11,000 homicides vs 30,000 accidents feel free to focus on the suicide and ignore the homicides.

 

The issue with homicides is about the same as suicides.  It is cultural.  How do you stop people from wanting to kill themselves or others?  Taking away their guns isn't solving the problem.

 

100 years ago when neither country had any guns laws to speak of, London was a much, much safer place than NYC.  Now that isn't as much the case.  What changed?  If anything there are much fewer guns in London than there were.  You are trying to make these issues black and white when they aren't.

 

Did you actually READ THE ARTICLE you linked ? It specifies that things that are considered violent crimes in UK are not considered violent in other countries.

eg:- UK violent crimes - 1,158,957 of which UK homicides 921

    - SA violent crimes -    732,121 of which SA homicides 20,000+

 

now UK Population - 64  Million - 921 Homicides - 14.39 per million

      US Population - 320 Million - 11,000 Homicides 34.37 - more than twice the rate of UK.

      SA Population - 53  Million - 20,000 Homicides 377.35 - more than 25x the rate of UK.

 

I understand the personal protection reason and I get why in 1791 the 2nd amendment was necessary. Is it the same world as it was 200+ years ago? The military at that time was mostly privately owned. Wasn't it mostly militias? Weren't they trying the keep the people as an armed militia against England/France/Spain.  Does that reason exist with the current status of the US military (strongest in the world)?  Do you really believe the people who passed that amendment imagined the weapons available now to the general population.

 

Edit:

I forgot to mention NYC and London have the same population and the homicide rate in London is less than half of NYC. London had around 85 homicides and NYC had around 200.

[rkbabang]

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