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Comment by zepto | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. Force schools to quantify this risk against others. More kids die cycling to school than by guns.

High-school kids playing football are more likely to die directly or indirectly from playing than they are from being shot.

More people die of hypothermia every year than get killed from mass shootings.

Hmmmm, we should also ban bicycles and sidewalks! /s

Schools aren't responsible for kids who die cycling to school.

No, but they are responsible for not subjecting them to unreasonable policies.

Do clear backpacks increase the risk of dying from cycling?

No. But clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer. And everyone with half a brain knows this. It conditions the entire population to accept security theater and government surveillance as part of everyday life.

This sets the entire society up to be unable to resist government overreach in the future.

Clear backpacks increase the risk of death from tyranny.

>But clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer

I must be missing most of my brain then because, to me, this sounds unfounded.

Someone looking to sneak a gun in would be hiding it in their pant's waistband or some other part of their clothes; inversely if they are looking to commit a public atrocity they'll skip the sneaking part altogether. Mandating clear backpacks is just as much security theater as is banning 4 oz liquid containers at the airport

I don't think that's a fair assertion. Even going in through the front doors with guns in their coats, the perpetrators of Columbine massacre used bags full of bombs.

>if they are looking to commit a public atrocity they'll...

Which gives everyone else a sooner notice to run away. This won't work for e.g. gang violence.

>Mandating clear backpacks is just as much security theater as is banning 4 oz liquid containers at the airport

Yes, they started that after someone actually tried to blow up a plane with bottles of explosive disguised as soft drinks.

The bags full of bombs were to kill people after the shooters were dead. They weren't to get in the door. They got in the door by outgunning the security guard (one handgun vs two rifles in a gun battle, so the guard retreated).

How were they stopped if bottles were allowed?

Someone who wants to pack heat to school isn't gonna be stopped by a clear backpack. They'll cut out a texbook or hide it on their person. Look to the TSA's track record to see why making the formerly hidden visible doesn't actually help that much.

Look at how that same argument fails to apply to suicide statistics being reduced by removing access to guns or falls from bridges. You're trying to apply a logical train of thought to an inherently illogical act of homicide.

But even if you can apply that, it doesn't work. The gun and ammo you can fit in a textbook is smaller than what can fit in a backpack. Backpacks are good at carrying things, that's why we - and school shooters - use them. So if someone wants to pack heat, they'll be less effective.

Maybe the effect from this is insignificant. But how sure do you have to be for the risk of dead children to be less bad than someone not being allowed a cute backpack?

There are an unlimited number of things that risk dead children. Chewing gum, shoelaces, bicycles, model rocketry, shop class, video game marathons, crosswalks...

How sure do we have to be to ban them all?

There is in my opinion a very clear danger associated with setting up draconian surveillance states borne out by history. How sure do we have to be before we ban those?

We do ban lots of things. They're children.

>There is in my opinion a very clear danger associated with setting up draconian surveillance states borne out by history.

In my experience, if everything that was compared to 1984 was actually like 1984, we'd be at war with Eastasia.

We don’t ban everything that carries as little risk as a backpack.

Suicide usually involves sevee depression and such a lack of motivation that opening every blister packs to overdose is a deterrant. It is very different from a desire to spree kill.

Besides if we deal with this low probability extremes shouldn't we factor in early blooming girls who kill themselves after being bullied and shamed over carrying their feminine products without any privacy?

> Suicide usually involves sevee depression

A minor correction: it's untrue to say that suicide usually involves severe depression.

For many people it's something more usefully described as "rapid onset despair".

What sounds unfounded?

I think the quoted part about "clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer" is what the commenter found unfounded.

No, but if we're forcing the kids to have clear backpacks because of an infinitesimal risk, we should ban them from biking to school, being driven to school and playing in the school football team.

Which is ridiculous.

Some schools actually have banned things such as biking to school, along with playing tag, balls, and even running during recess over the same safety boogieman. It's frustrating how the whole freedom vs security balance thing falls off a cliff when children's rights are discussed.

Sources edit:

https://www.bicycling.com/news/a20026414/why-biking-to-schoo...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/03/parents-outrage-...

https://www.thehealthjournals.com/youre-not-it/amp/

That sounds like prison.

As a child, it is exactly prison, it's not 'like' prison. You are controlled in location, action, and speech. You are told when to use the restroom, when to eat. Feeling sleepy today or maybe not getting along with an obnoxious inmate? Too bad for you, you're powerless.

I personally believe most school violence is induced by the prison-like nature of schools. They are inmate riots of 1.

That's a poor comparison though. Both of the others provide other benefits: a method of commuting to school or exercise. Potentially even scholarships.

Fashionable backpacks do nothing.

Imagine you're a teenage girl and you need to carry sanitary products with you. I imagine that for some of them this is essentially a nightmare scenario. That's a direct harm to kids.

This is a good point and I hope they can work around it (such as by allowing small opaque bags inside the bag).

At which point the clear outer bag is defeated.

Freedom from arbitrary restrictions does something.

Welcome to mandatory education

Seems like you agree with me that this has nothing to do with guns and everything to do with the dysfunction of the school system.

Yeah you are right. Following your logic and your risk assessment, I assume you are getting your children firearms rather than bicycles for Christmas, Happy Holidays...

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