But in other developed countries, kids still die from car crashes and swimming pools. It’s less of a “one is too many” argument for me and more a question of “if everyone else is able to get this right, how the hell are we getting it so wrong?” Looking around the world really drives the point home that these are avoidable fatalities.

How many of those countries have a democratic republic style of governance like the US? Perhaps it is more dangerous to live in a freedom-loving democratic republic, but the number of people clamoring to get into the US vs the lack of people trying to leave tells us there's value in the risk.

That's not to say we shouldn't strive to get those numbers down, but personally I think we should be focusing on mental health, of which social media has a huge impact. Banning the weapon - as is the common suggestion - is treating the symptom, not the cause.

But we also place too much emphasis on school shootings when, as demonstrated, other things are far more dangerous to kids.

I understand the motivation behind this argument, but I haven’t seen compelling evidence that mental health issues are the “cause” and weapon availability is the “symptom.” There are mentally ill people all over the world, many of whom attempt to commit mass murder but are not as successful as they are in the US. Try killing four people in a row with a knife and you’ll have a much more difficult time. Contrast that to my city, where a fourth person was accidentally killed because they were in proximity of a gunfight a few years ago (in a decent part of town too. Scary.) As large as it is, the same will never happen in Tokyo.

Strictly speaking on numbers though, the evidence I’ve seen weighs heavily on the side of weapon availability being the root cause, with countries and states with fewer weapon restrictions having more weapons-related deaths per capita. All this talk of “weapons aren’t the problem, people are” therefore strikes me as disingenuous.

I thoroughly believe in keeping rifles around because hunting is vital to my community. I remain unconvinced that handguns and automatic weapons are at all important to protecting US democracy (though I’m certainly willing to be disproven).

Statistics from places like Canada or Switzerland (which have and historically had lots of guns per capita) demonstrate that weapon availability itself does not cause such violence.

You compared Japan's rate of violence to America's, and conclude that America's policies must be the cause. This is wrong because you're comparing completely different groups of people. What you should be doing is to compare Japan's rate of violence to the rates among Japanese immigrants in America.

If you want to figure out which variable matters you need to isolate that variable. And if you do, you'll discover that results come from the people much more than the policy.

The difference between America and these places is that America harbors specific subcultures which glorify violence, gangs, drug trade, criminality and generally antisocial behaviour. If you're not involved in these subcultures, or in close proximity to them, you really have nothing to worry about. Hyper-rare stray bullet incidents "in a decent part of town" don't change this. (I recognize that some people can't escape these subcultures and suffer from them, but again, this is a subcultural problem).

That's a great argument for policymaking, but that's not what we're talking about -- we're talking about whether the children themselves should be worried sick, literally, about it. They clearly should not. Obesity and car wrecks will kill far more of them, and dealing with those issues is far more preventable. Smash the soda vending machines in their lunchrooms, and you'll save far more lives, plus avoid traumatizing the vast majority needlessly.

Ah, I see we’ve talked past each other. I was speaking to the policy-making angle. I don’t have any good ideas about how to get the policy issues fixed while avoiding scaring the kids. I doubt that’s even possible, tbh.

But yes, let’s smash the soda vending machines as well!

Once again, there is a significant qualitative difference between accidental or medically-related deaths, and someone actively attempting to end your life. Failing to acknowledge this is a significantly larger cognitive blind spot than the frequentist posters above are complaining about.

It's not like there is a complete lack of advocacy about auto safety or school diets. You might remember that during the Obama administration there was a campaign for more healthy school lunches, preferring vegetables and fruits over salty/sugary snacks, and extolling the value of exercise.

My original comment mentioned school shootings as an example of an issue that teens are understandably concerned about, because while the probability is low it's also a fundamentally horrific situation. I'm rather surprised by the rhetorical contortions so many people are putting themselves through to argue that having several massacres a year just in schools is nothing to worry about.

It's something that something should be done about, but not something that should be worried about. There is a fine distinction. Take whatever action is in your control to make the situation better, then, having done that, do not keep ruminating on it pointlessly when it's just not very likely to happen to you.

Stop lumping people who don't want to fret about it in with people who actually think the gun status quo is OK. Of course it's not OK, and should change. That doesn't mean we need to obsess over it. It just happens to be an issue that is very effective at driving media engagement.

By all means, vote and write to your lawmakers -- this actually drives change. But don't waste much time doomscrolling and ruminating -- this does not help, and only helps enhance media company shareholder bottom lines.

The point is that kids these days are exposed to constant encouragement to ruminate, ruminate, ruminate. This doesn't translate into actual action, it just translates into anxiety and depression, and increased dividends for media companies.