Sandy Hook Promise releases Back to School PSA

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Sandy Hook Promise

Survive the school year with these must-have back to school essentials.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5ykNZl9mTQ

[Yellowhammer]

This is the most demented ad I have seen in my life.

[Strudelcutie4427]

This is the most demented ad I have seen in my life.

[Badger]

This is the most demented ad I have seen in my life.

A fundamental lack of empathy would lead to that conclusion.

[DrScholl]

This is the most demented ad I have seen in my life.

You can't call anything demented after some of the the vile things you have posted on this board. It's not demented, it is a necessary representation of reality.

[dead0man]

it's fear mongering, nothing more.  The odds of a healthy American school age kid dying of ANYthing is crazy remote, and there are a whole mess of things more likely to kill them than a crazy person at school.

[Santander]

This is the most demented ad I have seen in my life.

What is demented is offering no solutions after a school shooting but "thoughts and prayers" and suggesting arming teachers.

[Pandaguineapig]

It would be funny if stupid people didn't take this propaganda seriously

[DrScholl]

It should also be stated that there are tips in the video on what to do in a shooting. When I worked at a department store we were shown an active shooter video. The more realistic the video, the more seriously people will understand the threat and remember how to get to safety or fight back if need to be.

[dead0man]

It would be funny if stupid people didn't take this propaganda seriously

even non-stupid people can be fooled by good fear mongering, and the press has been pushing this fear for years now

edit-it's the same sh**t with "sex traficking" (and a dozen or so other things)...American children are NOT being snatched away from their parents and being sold into sex cults.  Some children are being sold by their parents to gross people, but that's not the same thing, at all.  Fear sells.

[They not like us]

Yeah, school shootings are "fear mongering". Clearly an overblown thing that doesn't actually happen and shouldn't be taken seriously by political leaders.

[dead0man]

Yeah, school shootings are "fear mongering". Clearly an overblown thing that doesn't actually happen and shouldn't be taken seriously by political leaders.

it's rather obviously fear mongering, but it does happen.  And so does even worse things.  The odds of a child getting violently killed at school is TINY, I'm sorry if that fact doesn't fit with the fear mongering you've been buying into.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Yeah, school shootings are "fear mongering". Clearly an overblown thing that doesn't actually happen and shouldn't be taken seriously by political leaders.

it's rather obviously fear mongering, but it does happen.  And so does even worse things.  The odds of a child getting violently killed at school is TINY, I'm sorry if that fact doesn't fit with the fear mongering you've been buying into.

I seem to have missed your deep expressions of concern that our nation is over-reacting to threats on other issues, from "vaping" to terrorism. But on this one, you're understating the case. Yes, odds of death from a school shooting may be low, but that seems to be a deliberate dodge. If we can easily reduce school shootings (and other mass murders), shouldn't we do so? And shootings are a trauma inflicted on entire communities - the damage they do goes far beyond the dead children.

What are the chances of your child being in a school shooting?
Turns out it’s higher than we’ve been willing to admit

Spoiler alert, the answer is 1 in 63.

1 in 63 is slightly worse odds than getting a three of a kind in poker (1 in 46), though slightly better than winning $4 in the Powerball with a PB+1 (1 in 92). That is to say, these things are not only possible, but we sometimes take for granted that they eventually will happen.

An average of 17 people are killed every year in school shootings from the last 5 years. There are 50.76 million secondary to post-secondary school age children. That is about a 0.000033% chance, or 1 in 2.99 million of any given child being killed in any given year in a school shooting. Wow! You have better odds of getting PB+4 in the Powerball, but, uh, not the actual Powerball. So sorry.

Of course, this does not show the whole picture.

We’re not only interested in the overall chance of death, but the chance that you’re going to get that phone call from the district, informing you that there has been a shooting at your child’s school. What are the chances that your child is hurled into a war zone, where safety is not guaranteed, and that their friends — or their friends of friends — are senselessly butchered before their eyes in the most familiar environment to them aside from home?

School homicides have become more common and more deadly, CDC data show

Between 1994 and 2018, there were 38 school rampages that resulted in multiple fatalities. Five of those occurred during the 2017-2018 academic year, which ended in June, and three others were in the 2016-2017 school year, according to a study in Friday’s edition of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

All told, 121 people died in school homicides with multiple fatalities over the 24-year period. But 29 of those deaths — accounting for nearly one-quarter of the total — were shootings that came in just three incidents during the most recently completed school year. Seventeen students and teachers were killed on Feb. 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., 10 were shot to death three months later at Santa Fe High School in Texas, and two students were killed at Aztec High School in Aztec, N.M., before the gunman took his own life.

During the 2017-2018 school year, an American student’s likelihood of dying in a school shooting was one in 2 million. That was the highest by far in the entire period studied, the CDC researchers found.

And there's the other side to this, beyond the statistics that the proponents of gun violence really don't like to talk about.  What is the actual impact of the most commonly suggested responses? More background checks and banning assault weapons wouldn't impact hunting. They wouldn't break the 2nd Amendment. They wouldn't prevent home defense or concealed carry. We've banned assault weapons before! It worked! While we may not be able to easily make our schools or our nation as safe as we would like, we can make a big difference for the better  by banning assault weapons (again) and putting into place better background checks and eliminating loopholes.

Gun industry propagandists want Americans, including kids, to keep dying so that they can make some more profit selling deadly toys. Because that's all assault weapons are - toys for people with money burning holes in their pockets, or instruments of mass murder. They don't have any other use outside the military.  If a children's toy was as dangerous as assault weapons, it would have been gone long ago. Why do assault weapon lovers and those who profit from them get a special exemption for their fetish?

[dead0man]

I seem to have missed your deep expressions of concern that our nation is over-reacting to threats on other issues, from "vaping" to terrorism.

sorry, but sure, we fear monger the hell out of those two things too.  Especially vaping recently.

But on this one, you're understating the case. Yes, odds of death from a school shooting may be low, but that seems to be a deliberate dodge.

dodge?  what am I dodging?

If we can easily reduce school shootings (and other mass murders), shouldn't we do so?

yep

And shootings are a trauma inflicted on entire communities - the damage they do goes far beyond the dead children.

of course

What are the chances of your child being in a school shooting?
Turns out it’s higher than we’ve been willing to admit

Spoiler alert, the answer is 1 in 63.

1 in 63 is slightly worse odds than getting a three of a kind in poker (1 in 46), though slightly better than winning $4 in the Powerball with a PB+1 (1 in 92). That is to say, these things are not only possible, but we sometimes take for granted that they eventually will happen.

An average of 17 people are killed every year in school shootings from the last 5 years. There are 50.76 million secondary to post-secondary school age children. That is about a 0.000033% chance, or 1 in 2.99 million of any given child being killed in any given year in a school shooting. Wow! You have better odds of getting PB+4 in the Powerball, but, uh, not the actual Powerball. So sorry.

Of course, this does not show the whole picture.

We’re not only interested in the overall chance of death, but the chance that you’re going to get that phone call from the district, informing you that there has been a shooting at your child’s school. What are the chances that your child is hurled into a war zone, where safety is not guaranteed, and that their friends — or their friends of friends — are senselessly butchered before their eyes in the most familiar environment to them aside from home?

and using the numbers they used to come up with that statistic also means the odds of having a shooting at a grade school is zero.  Does that seem right to you?*

And there's the other side to this, beyond the statistics that the proponents of gun violence really don't like to talk about.

what the funk?  That's the MAIN thing I want to talk about, it's your side that hates actually data.  It's your side that flatly refuses to use the right words.

What is the actual impact of the most commonly suggested responses? More background checks and banning assault weapons wouldn't impact hunting.

I don't give a sh**t about hunting

They wouldn't break the 2nd Amendment.

and many people disagree with you.

They wouldn't prevent home defense

again, many people disagree

or concealed carry. We've banned assault weapons before! It worked! While we may not be able to easily make our schools or our nation as safe as we would like, we can make a big difference for the better  by banning assault weapons (again) and putting into place better background checks and eliminating loopholes.

(again) more Americans are killed by fists than ALL RIFLES COMBINED

Gun industry propagandists want Americans, including kids, to keep dying so that they can make some more profit selling deadly toys. Because that's all assault weapons are - toys for people with money burning holes in their pockets, or instruments of mass murder. They don't have any other use outside the military.  If a children's toy was as dangerous as assault weapons, it would have been gone long ago. Why do assault weapon lovers and those who profit from them get a special exemption for their fetish?

"assault weapons" are not used by the military.  Remember, that's why your side had to make up those words.  The military uses "assault rifles".  They are selective fire, meaning they can fire fully auto, burst or semiauto.  Those are highly restricted in the US (but are technically available for a lot of money to people that live in select counties/states, with squeaky clean records.





*from this bit

There have been 23 school shootings in 2018 as of May 20. The definition of a school shooting is somewhat contentious in certain circles, and I’m sure it will be even more contentious that I’m using CNN’s definition:
At least one person is shot, not including the shooter.
Occurs on school grounds.
School being defined as any K-12 or post-secondary institution.
Includes gang violence, fights, and domestic violence.
Includes accidental discharge of a firearm, provided criteria 1 and 2 are met.
16 secondary schools (middle or high school level) were attacked this year, while 7 were post-secondary institutions (colleges or universities). There are 37,100 secondary schools in America, both public and private, and 6,551 post-secondary schools. Although there are half as many school shootings at post-secondary schools, there are five times as many secondary schools, meaning it’s actually more likely that a school shooting would take place at a college or university.

feel free to check my math, but I think 16+7=23 which leaves 0 for grade schools...yes?

[GP270watch]

These people had their children gun downed in school because we live in a country that allows people to acquire an entire arsenal of military style weaponry just because.

 I would say they have the right to present the problem however they feel like it.

[emailking]

It's a small chance any one child will be killed in a mass shooting. But mass shootings in the numbers we've seen can be prevented by only allowing firearms suitable for personal self-defense and for hunting. Those are the only reasons for having a gun that make any sort of sense to me, and you don't need extended magazines for defense or hunting

[Badger]

It would be funny if stupid people didn't take this propaganda seriously

Again with the stupid, dumb, Etc. Would you kindly quit mining the Irony Ore mine to the Center of the Earth and grow up?

I have no idea why it took me this long to put you on ignore, but better to do it now than ever.

Good day sir!

[Grassroots]

Holding children as political props! Isn't that wonderful.

[Landslide Lyndon]

This is the most demented ad I have seen in my life.

Say the guys who find Trump's ads brilliant.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I seem to have missed your deep expressions of concern that our nation is over-reacting to threats on other issues, from "vaping" to terrorism.

sorry, but sure, we fear monger the hell out of those two things too.  Especially vaping recently.

But on this one, you're understating the case. Yes, odds of death from a school shooting may be low, but that seems to be a deliberate dodge.

dodge?  what am I dodging?

If we can easily reduce school shootings (and other mass murders), shouldn't we do so?

yep

And shootings are a trauma inflicted on entire communities - the damage they do goes far beyond the dead children.

of course

What are the chances of your child being in a school shooting?
Turns out it’s higher than we’ve been willing to admit

Spoiler alert, the answer is 1 in 63.

1 in 63 is slightly worse odds than getting a three of a kind in poker (1 in 46), though slightly better than winning $4 in the Powerball with a PB+1 (1 in 92). That is to say, these things are not only possible, but we sometimes take for granted that they eventually will happen.

An average of 17 people are killed every year in school shootings from the last 5 years. There are 50.76 million secondary to post-secondary school age children. That is about a 0.000033% chance, or 1 in 2.99 million of any given child being killed in any given year in a school shooting. Wow! You have better odds of getting PB+4 in the Powerball, but, uh, not the actual Powerball. So sorry.

Of course, this does not show the whole picture.

We’re not only interested in the overall chance of death, but the chance that you’re going to get that phone call from the district, informing you that there has been a shooting at your child’s school. What are the chances that your child is hurled into a war zone, where safety is not guaranteed, and that their friends — or their friends of friends — are senselessly butchered before their eyes in the most familiar environment to them aside from home?

and using the numbers they used to come up with that statistic also means the odds of having a shooting at a grade school is zero.  Does that seem right to you?*

And there's the other side to this, beyond the statistics that the proponents of gun violence really don't like to talk about.

what the funk?  That's the MAIN thing I want to talk about, it's your side that hates actually data.  It's your side that flatly refuses to use the right words.

What is the actual impact of the most commonly suggested responses? More background checks and banning assault weapons wouldn't impact hunting.

I don't give a sh**t about hunting

They wouldn't break the 2nd Amendment.

and many people disagree with you.

They wouldn't prevent home defense

again, many people disagree

or concealed carry. We've banned assault weapons before! It worked! While we may not be able to easily make our schools or our nation as safe as we would like, we can make a big difference for the better  by banning assault weapons (again) and putting into place better background checks and eliminating loopholes.

(again) more Americans are killed by fists than ALL RIFLES COMBINED

Gun industry propagandists want Americans, including kids, to keep dying so that they can make some more profit selling deadly toys. Because that's all assault weapons are - toys for people with money burning holes in their pockets, or instruments of mass murder. They don't have any other use outside the military.  If a children's toy was as dangerous as assault weapons, it would have been gone long ago. Why do assault weapon lovers and those who profit from them get a special exemption for their fetish?

"assault weapons" are not used by the military.  Remember, that's why your side had to make up those words.  The military uses "assault rifles".  They are selective fire, meaning they can fire fully auto, burst or semiauto.  Those are highly restricted in the US (but are technically available for a lot of money to people that live in select counties/states, with squeaky clean records.

I seem to have missed your deep expressions of concern that our nation is over-reacting to threats on other issues, from "vaping" to terrorism.

sorry, but sure, we fear monger the hell out of those two things too.  Especially vaping recently.

But on this one, you're understating the case. Yes, odds of death from a school shooting may be low, but that seems to be a deliberate dodge.

dodge?  what am I dodging?

If we can easily reduce school shootings (and other mass murders), shouldn't we do so?

yep

And shootings are a trauma inflicted on entire communities - the damage they do goes far beyond the dead children.

of course

What are the chances of your child being in a school shooting?
Turns out it’s higher than we’ve been willing to admit

Spoiler alert, the answer is 1 in 63.

1 in 63 is slightly worse odds than getting a three of a kind in poker (1 in 46), though slightly better than winning $4 in the Powerball with a PB+1 (1 in 92). That is to say, these things are not only possible, but we sometimes take for granted that they eventually will happen.

An average of 17 people are killed every year in school shootings from the last 5 years. There are 50.76 million secondary to post-secondary school age children. That is about a 0.000033% chance, or 1 in 2.99 million of any given child being killed in any given year in a school shooting. Wow! You have better odds of getting PB+4 in the Powerball, but, uh, not the actual Powerball. So sorry.

Of course, this does not show the whole picture.

We’re not only interested in the overall chance of death, but the chance that you’re going to get that phone call from the district, informing you that there has been a shooting at your child’s school. What are the chances that your child is hurled into a war zone, where safety is not guaranteed, and that their friends — or their friends of friends — are senselessly butchered before their eyes in the most familiar environment to them aside from home?

and using the numbers they used to come up with that statistic also means the odds of having a shooting at a grade school is zero.  Does that seem right to you?*

And there's the other side to this, beyond the statistics that the proponents of gun violence really don't like to talk about.

what the funk?  That's the MAIN thing I want to talk about, it's your side that hates actually data.  It's your side that flatly refuses to use the right words.

What is the actual impact of the most commonly suggested responses? More background checks and banning assault weapons wouldn't impact hunting.

I don't give a sh**t about hunting

They wouldn't break the 2nd Amendment.

and many people disagree with you.

They wouldn't prevent home defense

again, many people disagree

or concealed carry. We've banned assault weapons before! It worked! While we may not be able to easily make our schools or our nation as safe as we would like, we can make a big difference for the better  by banning assault weapons (again) and putting into place better background checks and eliminating loopholes.

(again) more Americans are killed by fists than ALL RIFLES COMBINED

Gun industry propagandists want Americans, including kids, to keep dying so that they can make some more profit selling deadly toys. Because that's all assault weapons are - toys for people with money burning holes in their pockets, or instruments of mass murder. They don't have any other use outside the military.  If a children's toy was as dangerous as assault weapons, it would have been gone long ago. Why do assault weapon lovers and those who profit from them get a special exemption for their fetish?

"assault weapons" are not used by the military.  Remember, that's why your side had to make up those words.  The military uses "assault rifles".  They are selective fire, meaning they can fire fully auto, burst or semiauto.  Those are highly restricted in the US (but are technically available for a lot of money to people that live in select counties/states, with squeaky clean records.

Assault weapons are military rifles that are not capable of full automatic or burst fire in order to be legally sold in the civilian market. Anyone with even a passing interest in firearms knows this full well. The terminology is not in any sort of contention, except when people want to justify dead kids  (which is far too often).

The legalese can get complex, but that's not because of any sort of general misunderstanding, it's because the jackwagons who sell and buy "civilian" military rifles, and their enablers, will seize any loophole to get their beloved murder machines into the hands of the public.



Everyone with an interest knows exactly what an AR-15 is (and no, the AR doesn't stand for "assault rifle" another popular misconception pushed by firearms industry propagandists to muddy the waters), and what an AR-15 type weapon, or assault weapon is. Again, this is not something that there is any legitimate debate about, other than that created by the gun industry and its apologists. (Sadly, journalists are far too often ignorant about the details and fail to communicate clearly, even when they're not being tied into knots by gun industry propagandists.)

There is no legitimate civilian use for these weapons, nor for the large-capacity magazines that go with them (and which are banned alongside them in virtually all past or proposed legislation). Outside the military, they exist as solely fetish objects, purchased and shown off for ego.


Assault weapons (and large capacity magazines have) been banned nationally before. The Supreme Court has upheld assault weapon bans. The ban helped. This is the reality that neither the gun industry nor its apologists want to acknowledge. There is zero reason for assault weapons to be sold.

Red herrings like "fists killed more people than rifles" are just attempts to distract from that. It's also a deeply flawed claim: Fact Check: Are Four Times More People Stabbed to Death Than Killed with Rifles?

On 16 October 2017, Breitbart.com posted a story reporting that according to 2016 crime statistics published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, more people are murdered with knives or by beaten to death than with rifles

(The article failed to mention that in thousands of cases, the type of firearm used was not specified or reported to the FBI.)

According to FBI data for 2016, 11,004 of the 15,070 murders in the United States were committed with firearms. Handguns were the most common type of firearm used in 7,105 cases. In 3,263 cases, the type of gun was not reported to the FBI or was listed as “other” while in 903 instances, the weapon was not identified or was listed as “other.”

I quoted the Snopes fact-check both because it debunks the "more fists than rifles" (which again, is a red herring when it comes to the good an assault weapons ban would do), and touches on another related thing that often comes up when gun-industry apologists attempt to justify assault weapons and school shootings. One is that the majority of murders with firearm are committed using handguns - which is absolutely technically true, just as handguns are the most common weapon used in mass shootings. A mass shooting is where 3 or 4 people are murdered randomly with a firearm. (The threshold dropped in 2013.) But whats important to understand is how mass shootings get much worse when there are assault weapons and large-capacity magazines involved.

Assault Weapons and High-Capacity Magazines

A study of mass shooting incidents between 1981 and 2017 found that assault rifles accounted for 86 percent of the 501 fatalities reported in 44 mass shooting incidents.DiMaggio C, Avraham J, Berry C, et al. Changes in US mass shooting deaths associated with the 1994-2004 Federal Assault Weapons Ban: analysis of open-source data. Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. 2019 Jan; 86(1):11-19. Study defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are killed with a firearm. An Everytown original analysis of mass shootings from 2009 to 2017 revealed that, of the incidents with known magazine capacity data, 58 percent involved firearms with high-capacity magazines.Everytown for Gun Safety. Mass Shootings in the United States: 2009-2017. https://every. tw/1XVAmcc. December 2018. This report defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are killed with a firearm. These shootings resulted in twice as many fatalities and 14 times as many injuries per incident on average compared to those that did not include the use of high-capacity magazines.Ibid. The 35 incidents with confirmed use of high-capacity magazines resulted in 10.1 deaths and 19 injuries per incident on average, compared to the 4.6 deaths and 1.3 injuries on average that resulted from the 25 incidents confirmed to have not included the use of high-capacity magazines.

It's not going to be easy to completely address the negative impacts of America's gun culture.  We probably won't get there in any of our lifetimes. But that is not reason to keep from doing what we can, especially when it has been demonstrated that it has worked. No matter how much  gish-gallop there is, no matter how many red-herrings there are, no matter how much people quibble over semantics, buying your man-card with dead schoolkids isn't okay. It needs to end. There is no reason to allow one particular gun fetish (no matter how profitable) to keep killing children (and adults).

[DrScholl]

If gun advocates and the NRA had their way mass shootings would not even be reported and covered up. The guns are the victims to them, not the people.

[dead0man]

(we are not making this easy on each other as far as editing our posts goes)

Assault weapons are military rifles that are not capable of full automatic or burst fire in order to be legally sold in the civilian market. Anyone with even a passing interest in firearms knows this full well.

indeed, which means about half the people on my side get it and maybe 5% of the people on your side

The terminology is not in any sort of contention, except when people want to justify dead kids  (which is far too often).

except for all the people arguing for more gun control that don't understand.

Red herrings like "fists killed more people than rifles" are just attempts to distract from that. It's also a deeply flawed claim: Fact Check: Are Four Times More People Stabbed to Death Than Killed with Rifles?

On 16 October 2017, Breitbart.com posted a story reporting that according to 2016 crime statistics published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, more people are murdered with knives or by beaten to death than with rifles

(The article failed to mention that in thousands of cases, the type of firearm used was not specified or reported to the FBI.)

According to FBI data for 2016, 11,004 of the 15,070 murders in the United States were committed with firearms. Handguns were the most common type of firearm used in 7,105 cases. In 3,263 cases, the type of gun was not reported to the FBI or was listed as “other” while in 903 instances, the weapon was not identified or was listed as “other.”

I quoted the Snopes fact-check both because it debunks the "more fists than rifles" (which again, is a red herring when it comes to the good an assault weapons ban would do), and touches on another related thing that often comes up when gun-industry apologists attempt to justify assault weapons and school shootings. One is that the majority of murders with firearm are committed using handguns - which is absolutely technically true, just as handguns are the most common weapon used in mass shootings. A mass shooting is where 3 or 4 people are murdered randomly with a firearm. (The threshold dropped in 2013.) But whats important to understand is how mass shootings get much worse when there are assault weapons and large-capacity magazines involved.

from your link

According to FBI: UCR Table 12, there were approximately 374 people shot and killed with rifles of any kind. There were 1,604 people killed with “knives or cutting instruments.”

Table 12 also shows that more people were killed via the use of “hands, fists, feet, etc.,” than were killed by rifles of any kind. In fact, the tally shows that the death numbers were not even close. While approximately 374 people were shot and killed with rifles, roughly 656 people were beaten to death with “hands, fists, feet, etc.”

do you really think ~280 of those "unidentified" guns were a rifle of any kind when so few of the identified guns were rifles?  That's not really how numbers work.  Are you suggesting conspiracy?  You don't seem to have addressed my issue with the numbers in the previous post either.  Do you really think there is a zero percent chance of a grade school getting shot up?

[Pandaguineapig]

It would be funny if stupid people didn't take this propaganda seriously

Again with the stupid, dumb, Etc. Would you kindly quit mining the Irony Ore mine to the Center of the Earth and grow up?

I have no idea why it took me this long to put you on ignore, but better to do it now than ever.

Good day sir!

Please.Stop. Don't go.

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

I seem to have missed your deep expressions of concern that our nation is over-reacting to threats on other issues, from "vaping" to terrorism.

sorry, but sure, we fear monger the hell out of those two things too.  Especially vaping recently.

But on this one, you're understating the case. Yes, odds of death from a school shooting may be low, but that seems to be a deliberate dodge.

dodge?  what am I dodging?

If we can easily reduce school shootings (and other mass murders), shouldn't we do so?

yep

And shootings are a trauma inflicted on entire communities - the damage they do goes far beyond the dead children.

of course

What are the chances of your child being in a school shooting?
Turns out it’s higher than we’ve been willing to admit

Spoiler alert, the answer is 1 in 63.

1 in 63 is slightly worse odds than getting a three of a kind in poker (1 in 46), though slightly better than winning $4 in the Powerball with a PB+1 (1 in 92). That is to say, these things are not only possible, but we sometimes take for granted that they eventually will happen.

An average of 17 people are killed every year in school shootings from the last 5 years. There are 50.76 million secondary to post-secondary school age children. That is about a 0.000033% chance, or 1 in 2.99 million of any given child being killed in any given year in a school shooting. Wow! You have better odds of getting PB+4 in the Powerball, but, uh, not the actual Powerball. So sorry.

Of course, this does not show the whole picture.

We’re not only interested in the overall chance of death, but the chance that you’re going to get that phone call from the district, informing you that there has been a shooting at your child’s school. What are the chances that your child is hurled into a war zone, where safety is not guaranteed, and that their friends — or their friends of friends — are senselessly butchered before their eyes in the most familiar environment to them aside from home?

and using the numbers they used to come up with that statistic also means the odds of having a shooting at a grade school is zero.  Does that seem right to you?*

And there's the other side to this, beyond the statistics that the proponents of gun violence really don't like to talk about.

what the funk?  That's the MAIN thing I want to talk about, it's your side that hates actually data.  It's your side that flatly refuses to use the right words.

What is the actual impact of the most commonly suggested responses? More background checks and banning assault weapons wouldn't impact hunting.

I don't give a sh**t about hunting

They wouldn't break the 2nd Amendment.

and many people disagree with you.

They wouldn't prevent home defense

again, many people disagree

or concealed carry. We've banned assault weapons before! It worked! While we may not be able to easily make our schools or our nation as safe as we would like, we can make a big difference for the better  by banning assault weapons (again) and putting into place better background checks and eliminating loopholes.

(again) more Americans are killed by fists than ALL RIFLES COMBINED

Gun industry propagandists want Americans, including kids, to keep dying so that they can make some more profit selling deadly toys. Because that's all assault weapons are - toys for people with money burning holes in their pockets, or instruments of mass murder. They don't have any other use outside the military.  If a children's toy was as dangerous as assault weapons, it would have been gone long ago. Why do assault weapon lovers and those who profit from them get a special exemption for their fetish?

"assault weapons" are not used by the military.  Remember, that's why your side had to make up those words.  The military uses "assault rifles".  They are selective fire, meaning they can fire fully auto, burst or semiauto.  Those are highly restricted in the US (but are technically available for a lot of money to people that live in select counties/states, with squeaky clean records.





*from this bit

There have been 23 school shootings in 2018 as of May 20. The definition of a school shooting is somewhat contentious in certain circles, and I’m sure it will be even more contentious that I’m using CNN’s definition:
At least one person is shot, not including the shooter.
Occurs on school grounds.
School being defined as any K-12 or post-secondary institution.
Includes gang violence, fights, and domestic violence.
Includes accidental discharge of a firearm, provided criteria 1 and 2 are met.
16 secondary schools (middle or high school level) were attacked this year, while 7 were post-secondary institutions (colleges or universities). There are 37,100 secondary schools in America, both public and private, and 6,551 post-secondary schools. Although there are half as many school shootings at post-secondary schools, there are five times as many secondary schools, meaning it’s actually more likely that a school shooting would take place at a college or university.

feel free to check my math, but I think 16+7=23 which leaves 0 for grade schools...yes?

I think I speak for a lot of good people when I say who gives a f%ck about your semantics game? It's just a side distraction tactic by gun nuts to muddle up the main conversation. Call them flying ponies or recessive peaches maybe even dainty asters, whatever floats your boat. But main point is we have got to crack down on them hard as an American society.

[dead0man]

I think I speak for a lot of good people when I say who gives a f%ck about your semantics game? It's just a side distraction tactic by gun nuts to muddle up the main conversation. Call them flying ponies or recessive peaches maybe even dainty asters, whatever floats your boat. But main point is we have got to crack down on them hard as an American society.

You walked passed 3 posts of mine to get to this one just to make a strawman?  Ok, but Ghost started that talk and has talked way more about semantics than I have.  My main point is that this doesn't happen very often, which has zero to do with semantics.