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Undertoad · 01-11-2013, 12:01 PM

I examined the question of whether this is specific to the US, and in the process found some interesting things.

• If you expand out from "school shootings" to "whatever's called a massacre", it turns out that wacko groups and governments around the world are much more effective at killing than loners. This doesn't change the problem, except to maybe put it in some interesting perspective.

• If you only look at the US, in modern times, in the list of "whatever's called a massacre", the US government is the winner at 76 deaths (Waco) and killed more than Columbine (15), VA Tech (33), and Sandy Hook (25) combined. (However, it failed to commit suicide during the process.)

• If you look at the list of notable school shootings in the US you find that the great majority of events involves only 1 or 2 deaths, and one of them is usually the suicide of the shooter. Only 5 events go into the double digits, and the largest of these was in 1927, a suicide bombing killing 45. Three events happened since 1990, suggesting that this is a modern problem.

• Also, the number of listed events is greater in modern times, but one wonders how much news reporting comes into this; a death of 1 or even 2 was not major national news during times when wars were taking out tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

01-11-2013, 12:01 PM	#2
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	I examined the question of whether this is specific to the US, and in the process found some interesting things. • If you expand out from "school shootings" to "whatever's called a massacre", it turns out that wacko groups and governments around the world are much more effective at killing than loners. This doesn't change the problem, except to maybe put it in some interesting perspective. • If you only look at the US, in modern times, in the list of "whatever's called a massacre", the US government is the winner at 76 deaths (Waco) and killed more than Columbine (15), VA Tech (33), and Sandy Hook (25) combined. (However, it failed to commit suicide during the process.) • If you look at the list of notable school shootings in the US you find that the great majority of events involves only 1 or 2 deaths, and one of them is usually the suicide of the shooter. Only 5 events go into the double digits, and the largest of these was in 1927, a suicide bombing killing 45. Three events happened since 1990, suggesting that this is a modern problem. • Also, the number of listed events is greater in modern times, but one wonders how much news reporting comes into this; a death of 1 or even 2 was not major national news during times when wars were taking out tens or hundreds of thousands of people.