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Comment by Thriptic | Hacker News Reader

Poor, emotion driven risk management as usual. School shootings kill very few people per year and are rare events (especially in places that can afford this tech) despite what the New York Times would have you believe. Why not focus efforts on things that actually do kill young people, namely:

* Car crashes (teach people to drive more defensively)

* Suicides (provide better mental health services)

* Violence that occurs outside of school (intervene to stop conflict before it becomes an issue, which would also help prevent these shootings)

* Opiods

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Comments like this look absolutely insane to anyone outside the US. Look at the numbers: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-ver...

> Comments like this look absolutely insane to anyone outside the US

No, it looks insane to the 6 countries mentioned in your article that have significantly less schools shootings.

The other 188 countries in the world are purposely not discussed, since many of them have extremely high violent crime rates despite restrictive gun control laws...

USA has 12.21 gun-related deaths per 100,000 population per year. It's 10th highest in the world, and all the countries higher up aren't considered developed.

19th highest in the world is Argentina and it has less than half the deaths US has.

In top 30 there are countries with less than 1/4th the deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...

The US homicide rate is the 94th globally [0]. Looking at "gun related deaths" is misleading because it includes suicides, which in the US is very high. The vast majority die from disease so if the goal is to prevent premature death a marginal improvement to US healthcare system would save far more people than whatever this high school surveillance state is trying to accomplish.

That's not a reason not to implement these policies but infringing on privacy, which should be considered a fundamental right, for an at best insignificant decrease in the homicide rate is.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intenti...

> it includes suicides, which in the US is very high

I wonder why :)

Have you considered the possibility that easy access to guns make suicides more common?

> 12.21 gun-related deaths

Which includes suicides & accidents.

It also ignores the overall homicide rate, which is much more important. Do dead people care whether they are murdered with a gun or a knife?

> suicides & accidents.

Which are more common when the access to guns is easier.

> Do dead people care whether they are murdered with a gun or a knife?

Deaths caused by guns are easily preventable. Why not prevent them?

> Which are more common when the access to guns is easier.

Again, you are ignoring all the countries that have strict gun control laws and still have high rates of suicides.

> Deaths caused by guns are easily preventable

They clearly aren't, since there is no correlation between gun control laws and homicides.

That's only because most countries lack the resources to actually enforce gun control laws, not because they're ineffective. It's more likely that economic wealth and effective gun control reduces violence, instead of intrusive mass surveillance.

I agree, let's look at the numbers. ~ 300 school shootings in ten years averages out to 30 a year. There are about 100,000 schools in the US. That's a risk rate of 0.03% per school per year risk. Considering that very few people within a given school die per attack, this means that your risk of being killed in a school shooting is basically negligible. Further, your article talks about ANY shooting on school grounds including gang shootings, domestic violence (adults), and accidental firearms discharges so A. almost certainly incidents will be clustered and a middle class school in some random place like what's in the article will have far less overall risk, and B. the actual number of real shootings of the kind that would make the news is far less than 300 over ten years.

The risk of being involved in every other incident class I listed is higher, so that is where we should be focusing our efforts because ultimately a death is a death regardless of what people are scared of. This is basically the terrorism problem: terrorism in the US is this big scary boogieman until you actually look at the data and realize that there's very little terrorism. The school shootings make the news precisely because they are very rare and surprising (and because some media outlets have readership that is in favor of strict gun control so it will play well).

If you want controls to stop school shootings anyway then why not just put in place general healthy population controls: stop bullying, keep a cop visibly on school grounds to deter criminality, engage with parents, and create a healthy environment for learning. All of that costs basically zero dollars and would likely do far more overall good than these silly, expensive, and invasive surveillance systems.

> risk rate of 0.03% per school per year risk. Considering that very few people within a given school die per attack, this means that your risk of being killed in a school shooting is basically negligible. Further, your article talks about ANY shooting on school grounds including gang shootings, domestic violence (adults), and accidental firearms discharges

Using the same criteria there were 0 gun-related deaths in schools in my country (10% of USA population) in last 50 years, probably more. And it's not hard - you simply have to be rational and control the guns where it's easy (at the point they enter the market, when they enter the market) instead of controlling them where it's hard (in every school every day).

It's the low-hanging fruit of death prevention. It would save you money and hassle (no need to check every kid every time it enters the school, no need for transparent backpacks and all that security theater).

> If you want controls to stop school shootings anyway then why not just put in place general healthy population controls: stop bullying, keep a cop visibly on school grounds to deter criminality, engage with parents, and create a healthy environment for learning. All of that costs basically zero dollars and would likely do far more overall good than these silly, expensive, and invasive surveillance systems.

You should do all these things anyway (except for keeping cop in every school - that's just absurd and shows how far into irrationality USA has gone).

> All of that costs basically zero

Hiring 100 000 cops full-time costs basically zero? I would disagree :)

>(and because some media outlets have readership that is in favor of strict gun control so it will play well)

Don't forget ownership. Bloomberg never discloses that their owner has spent hundreds of millions to circumvent 2A when they cover mass shootings or gun politics.

Yes, US has a lot of school shootings compared to other countries. But it is not like all those other countries use surveillance to prevent it, the problem is elsewhere.

Furthermore, you could probably provide a number of free lunches for the cost of the surveillance tech and laptops for every student.

There's always money for punitive controlling "solutions". There needs to be a politically active obnoxious block always bellowing about it as unnecessary and a waste of money relentlessly for something to happen because apparently that's the only way things happen

Why not focus efforts on things...

Automobiles are something of a sacred cow. Even outside your neighborhood school, prioritizing pedestrians & cyclists, traffic calming, and the like are an uphill battle because it is inconvenient to drivers.

I've seen schools with underground tunnel crossings as well as pedestrian overpasses. However, if you research why these piece of infrastructure were built, usually it's a sad story of a kid getting killed by a car which made everyone suddenly realize how absurdly dangerous crossings are for small children. Safety infrastructure is built with blood.

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