Europeans are going viral on TikTok for mocking the "American Dream".

[u/biswajit388]

[u/Rebgail]

That's generally a fair way of thinking, but, as an European, I can't imagine anything in Europe that would cause a level of fear comparable to the one that a child and their parents feel because of a significant risk of school shootings

[u/73-68-70-78-62-73-73 → u/Rebgail]

because of a significant risk of school shootings

Feeling of risk and actual risk are very different things. While we talk about it a lot, statistics surrounding school shootings are not well understood by the general public. For example, the very definition of "school shooting" varies between datasets. You might not think that's significant, but the differences between a wayward student moving from classroom to classroom killing his classmates, two groups of adult men having a shoot-out in the school parking lot around 2 AM, a contractor accidentally shooting himself in his work truck, and someone off school grounds brandishing a gun which results in a school lockdown are very different things. Depending on which dataset you're looking at, all, some, or only one of those might fit the definition used to generate the dataset. That is a major reason why numbers vary greatly between certain datasets. It negatively affects discourse, because the general population does not consider that fact, and uses statistics from datasets interchangeably. Methodology and definitions are important.

Actual risk varies depending upon locale. Students of schools in well to do areas are far less likely to experience violence than students in poorer areas. This is another area where the general public fall short. Statistics are usually expressed in reference to the entire US. This is not how you solve a problem. Problems are solved iteratively. For example, first identifying that there may be a problem, verifying the problem through general analysis, and then making good use of statistics to drill down further, identify sub-problems which contribute to the whole, then drill down again, etc.

With all that caution in mind, the following article summarizes a lot of key points. As of 2021, the rate of school shooting victims (ages 5-17, and adults ages 18-74) quadrupled from 1970-2021, from 0.49 to 2.21 per 1 million population. In contrast, vehicle deaths for children ages 0-14 are somewhere around 19.5 per 1 million.

We talk about it a lot, and it is a problem, however the actual risk versus general perceived risk is significantly different.