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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

I teach my kids their biggest risk is a driver distracted by their phone in a vehicle with a hood height at or above the kids’ head height.

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Accurate. Oddly enough on this side of the pond most people who would not want to raise their kids in the US would mention school shootings. The real, ubiquitous, daily danger is massive cars and lazy drivers.

Just because you have even bigger problems in the US, that does not mean that is isn’t cause for concern to be the school shooting capital of the world by an enormous margin.

The US have more school shootings than the rest of the world combined. It is not unfounded or irrational to be concerned.

I live in Britain. If you read back you'll see I am talking about the opinions of Britons and Europeans of raising children in the US.

My point is it still a very rare thing even in the most common place in the world. The weight of school shootings in people's minds is more emotional than statistical. Careless drivers kill way more people in the US and they do it every day.

Gun related deaths and homicide are big enough risk factors to be worth worrying about and mitigating as a parent, but school shootings in particular are so rare they are not a major safety concern for parents- gun accidents and homicide outside of school are much much bigger risks.

> It is not unfounded or irrational to be concerned.

I ran the numbers upon having kids. It is irrational.

As an aside, firearms are the leading cause of deaths for kids in the US:

https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2025/12/guns-are-the-leadi...

https://www.cnn.com/health/guns-death-us-children-teens-dg

I don't think it's particularly useful to focus on school shootings in particular vs other shootings

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