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What's wrong with America? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 40 points 1 day ago (3 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_attacks_in_Germany

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  • [–] 10 points 1 day ago* (2 children)

    I was 7 when the Winnenden shooting happened (it's relatively close by). It doesn't come close to how bad some of the shootings in the US are but I still remember it as a core memory.
    When your society isn't used to violence, a shooting sends an actual anti-violence message. In the states it seems to only instigate political drama and grifters and encourages more people to do the same.
    I wanna say guns are the problem but that would be very naive. The easy access means the barrier of entry is SO much lower, allowing other problems to be magnified and lead to the actual shooting. It's such an insidiously deep rooted problem that I couldn't even begin to try to suggest how to fix it.

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  • [–] 6 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

    guns are the problem but that would be very naive.

    Meth isn't the problem. The real problem is lack of dopamine that causes people to seek pleasure.

    A bad diet doesn't cause obesity. It's the person's mental state that causes them to seek out food as comfort.

    The only problem with this viewpoint is that people are inherently fucking crazy and you'll never ever fix that. So you need to restrict the things that allow them to hurt other people with their crazy. And when they're going to hurt themselves with their crazy, you do your best to help coach and guide and support them.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago

    I think Michael Moore hit it pretty much straight on the head.

    Having guns makes people feel empowered against others. A wimp can take down basically anyone if they create the right circumstances. So when people feel wronged, there's this huge itch to see that as a viable solution.

    There isn't a single solution, but taking away (easy) access to guns is certainly a hugely efficient step

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  • [–] 46 points 1 day ago* (1 child)

    That page lists attacks in general, and not just at schools but also universities. Out of the 25 attacks listed for Germany (so since 1990), only 11 are shootings, and 14 have no deaths at all. So, you're right, Germany does know what school schootings are.

    But compare this to a total of 67 (damn that number!) in the same timeframe in the UK ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_attacks_in_the_United_Kingdom ), despite the UK containg about 20 million less people than Germany. Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't have a comparable list for France.

    But both of those numbers just cannot compare with the US, where just the school shootings that Wikipedia lists (not all attacks, just shootings) add up to 882 over the same time frame. And its not due to higer population, the US only has about 4 times as many people as Germany.

    Sorry, I realise you're kinda just trying to say, school attacks do happen in Germay too, and you're right. But you sent me down a rabbit hole. And the number of school shootings in Germany is so low that as a parent you can reasonably assume it won't happen (and they are rarely big enough to land in the news), whereas in the US it seems to be something that everyone thinks about, that schols plan for, and that has a not inconsiderable chance of happening.

    Edit: spelling

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