Why does America have more school shootings than other countries?

April 18, 2007 4:06 AM

I realise this is a very sensitive topic at the moment, but that's what makes it so relevant. It seems to me that the US has a history of school shooting type incidents that no other country has. Is that true? If so, what is it that makes this more common in the US than anywhere else?

I come from Australia and can't think of any incidents like the recent Virginia Tech massacre that have happened here. I'm not saying that makes us better in any way. The Port Arthur massacre here was equally horrible, but we've never had a school shooting incident, as far as I'm aware. I haven't heard about any other countries where it happens as much as it does in the US either.

I hope this doesn't come across in an accusatory tone. I'm genuinely curious, and I think finding out why these things happen would be the first step towards preventing them.

So: why? I know it's easier to purchase a gun in the states than in some other countries, but that alone doesn't seem like enough to explain it. I'm a foreigner and have travelled through America a fair bit, but I can't come up with any reason why these things would happen more there than anywhere else.

Thanks in advance, and I'm sorry if this is painful for anyone associated with the recent Virginia Tech shooting.

posted by twirlypen to human relations (49 comments total)

200 million guns makes it easier maybe.
posted by fondle at 4:10 AM on April 18, 2007

The point of Bowling for Columbine that everyone seemed to miss, was that Canada has comparable rates of gun ownership to the US and a tiny fraction of the per-capita gun violence. It seems part of it is the guns—I'm certain the football-hooligan element in Britain would be regularly killing people had they easier access to them—and part of it is some element of the culture.

Not that cultural grounds explain that last shooting; that seems to have been more a question of lunatic (which one has everywhere) combined with easy access to firearms.
posted by Aidan Kehoe at 4:15 AM on April 18, 2007

I have to agree with fondle; our gun laws are more protective of gun owners than any other first world nation, both to our detriment and benefit.

While having an armed populace is very good from a national security perspective (it's really hard, as we can see in Iraq, to attack, occupy and hold an armed population), when crazy people just lose their marbles, its a whole lot more dangerous for the public as a whole.

No amount of gun control is going to fix this, and it would be like alcohol prohibition, and fail miserably - it works in Canada and Australia because you have never had this right. Were we to attempt to take away gun ownership or severely restrict it, the NRA blow hards would be right - only outlaws would have guns; they just don't disappear because they're now illegal.

So, this is the burden we suffer. As you pointed out, people losing their marbles in a violent manner is not insular to the US, but having guns available in such numbers just exacerbates the problem.
posted by plaidrabbit at 4:20 AM on April 18, 2007 [2 favorites]

The rest of the world has them occur, but rarely:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_Massacre - dunblane massacre, scotland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Pius_X_High_School_massacre , Canada

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Fabrikant , Canada

School massacres like these tend to be statistical outliers. They are exceptionally rare, and very difficult to draw conclusions from.

A student is far more likely to die from alcohol poisioning (I believe it's 2 or 3,000 alcohol-related deaths each year in the US) than from a gun.

You're going to hear the talking heads bloviating about an American Culture of Violence (although the attacker was from overseas), how gun control is a failure (the guns were bought legally and students should have been armed and able to shoot him) and how gun control is transcendentally important.

Arguing from a rare event like this to drive public policy is the same as developing policy by anecdote. It's like using this year's soggy, miserable, cold as hell spring to discredit global warming.
posted by jenkinsEar at 4:23 AM on April 18, 2007

based on a quick google search of random web sites:
http://www.canadianembassy.org/government/guncontrol-en.asp
http://www.statcan.ca/english/edu/clock/population.htm
http://www.newsbatch.com/guncontrol.htm

I found that Aidan Kehoes comment that "Canada has comparable rates of gun ownership to the Us" incorrect.

The last link claims 35% of americans own guns; doing the math from statics in the first two links I get 7% of Canadians own guns.

I also see that Canada has strict gun control laws while the US has none.
posted by Osmanthus at 4:25 AM on April 18, 2007

Monash University shooting, in Melbourne in 2002 (via)

I don't know about how it works out in shootings per capita, but there are a lot of people in the US (300 million) -- more than culturally similar countries, like Canada (32 million), the UK (60 million), or Australia (20 million). That could be a contributing factor to the perceived frequency; it seems logical that more people equals more anything (IANASociologist). Also, there have been a number of high-profile shootings in Canada as well (I can think of the Montreal massacre, another one in Montreal last year, and one in Alberta a few years ago off the top of my head) so I don't know if it's just a US thing.

I wouldn't say that the gun culture has nothing to do with it, though, if nothing else than making guns relatively easy to obtain.
posted by AV at 4:26 AM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Belgian public television had the fine taste to show "Bowling for Columbine" yesterday evening. It deals with questions like yours, without giving any clear answers.

In Canada or Swiss even more people own guns than in the States.

As much as I dislike to stereotype a culture - I am a historian - there is something childish and uncivilized in American culture. This is not just a bad thing, it makes the country very entrepreneurial - people just want to pursuit the American dream. Yet, that same childlike enthusiasm and energy can becomes a ravaging force in frustration.

Meanwhile, for some reasons that macho and testosteron driven part of American culture, as portrayed in movies and video games, exports suprisingly well as a role model.

There was a school shooting in Germany, in Erfurt, where 18 people get killed in 2002.

And even Dutch teachers cannot be sure anymore that pupils won't mean it when they treaten to kill.
posted by ijsbrand at 4:26 AM on April 18, 2007

Canada definitely has a lot less gun crime, but we have had some high-profile school/campus shootings: campuses still have memorials for the shootings at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in 1989; there was a school shooting in Taber, Alberta a few months after Columbine; last year there was a shooting at Dawson College also in Montreal; apparently there was ALSO a shooting at Concordia University in Montreal in 1992. It's not as many, but when you consider we have a tenth of the population, it's still more than Michael Moore might lead you to believe.

That's not really an answer; I don't know if anyone can tell you why North America* seems to produce more of this particular kind of crime -- there are social and cultural factors (and I don't think it's as simple as being "a childish and uncivilized culture"), but it's all kind of armchair stuff, because we can't really know.

Or you know, it's totally gun-control related, and people in other countries would shoot up schools more if they had easier access to guns.

*Not to lump Canada and the US together -- there are distinctions, but this doesn't seem to be one of them.
posted by SoftRain at 4:40 AM on April 18, 2007

Take a look at Loren Coleman's blog on school shootings.

He blames the media causing a copycat effect, and in the link I provided there, posted in March, posits that we'd see more violent copycat killings in schools, this Spring, and that it would be perpetrated by 'outsiders' rather than the caucasion males we've seen in the past.

He seems to have hit it right on the button, so I am willing to put some stock in that the media's hyping of the events is helpign to create a copycat effect.
posted by opsin at 4:44 AM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Well, although I mostly agree with ijsbrand, I think there is an element of fashion at play here as well. People may just start doing shooting sprees because that's what other people did and it got them enough fame/infamy and attention.

In the UK, you have football hooligans. In France, you had car burnings. In Germany you have neo-Nazis. In my home country (Greece) we got "student demonstrations" with 25-year olds that burn down university buildings. At the end of the day, I think all of these are just exercises in frustration, and these kids channel them in the way that's feasible (no guns freely available in mainland Europe) and fashionable (so that they know it will get them at least some positive attention).

For the US shootings though, I think there's also a mental health factor. The VT shooter and the Columbine shooters before him had clear mental health issues, and their support system (family, school) did not address them. American society makes it hard to cater to ppl with mental problems (traditionally done by the family, which is nowhere near as close-knit in the US as in say mainland Europe or even the UK).
posted by costas at 4:53 AM on April 18, 2007

Farmers and such in Canada have rifles, but in urban and sub-urban areas, there are NO legal handguns on the street other than for the police/security officers. Individuals can own handguns for target practice, but they are kept under lock and key at the target range.

Bowling for Columbine was waaay off target when it attempted to suggest that access to guns in Canada and the US is the same. It simply isn't.
posted by modernnomad at 5:06 AM on April 18, 2007

The Monash University shooting aside, in Australia it is very hard for a minor to get hold of a gun. By law all weapons must be stored in a very secure locked box with firing components separate, which makes it hard to take Dad's rifle to school.
Even if you did, all weapons have small magazines (5 shot max from memory) that makes a mass shooting impractical.
There is next to no possibility of acquiring a gun oneself as a minor, the expense is high and even higher for an illegal weapon.
Even an adult must first undergo a training programme in gun safety before a license is issued, and the license itself is $200 for 5 years. Add to this you need a "genuine" reason to apply for a license like belonging to a target club or having written permission from a rural land holder to hunt on their property.
Consequently, gun ownership across the board has dropped greatly.
When I was a lad it was quite common for Aussie kids to have an air rifle or even a .22 but this changed drastically even before the big changes driven by Port Arthur.
My kids have never seen a real gun except in a cops holster, and apart from the odd acquaintance farmer, don't have any close friends or family who own weapons.
I actually think it is reasonable to teach kids firearm safety as a part of growing up, so they don't end up boozing and hunting on a mates property when they turn 18, but there is very little scope to do so informally.
So in Australia at least, I think this is very much due to gun control laws.
Of course, it seems unlikely such laws would ever work in the US, as it appears the gun owners have little trust in the government, and the extraordinary penetration of guns is something that would take generations to wind back.
And just to prove there is nothing new under the sun, think Boomtown Rats I Don't Like Mondays.
posted by bystander at 5:09 AM on April 18, 2007

Last night I went to see The Killer Within which is a documentary about one of the origainl school shooters, Bob Bechtel, who shot up a Swarthmore College dorm in the 1950s. The movie featured a Princeton sociology professor Katherine Newman who has a book called, Rampage, the Social Roots of School Shootings, which might shed some light on your question. In the movie her ideas came across as totally spot on and rock solid, I could paraphrase them but a summary of the book would probably do more justice.
posted by The Straightener at 5:16 AM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

no matter how many laws you make, there will still be guns on the black market for sale.

perhaps american are just a bit more violent.
posted by goldism at 5:17 AM on April 18, 2007

> no matter how many laws you make, there will still be guns on the black market for sale.

Agreed, but this is not an argument against gun regulation. In Australia 600,000 semi-automatic and pump action weapons were decommissioned (although we now know several hundred were later sold on the black market by a dishonest gun dealer) after Port Arthur.
We have a black market for guns, but by definition it makes them harder to get hold of, and more expensive, than was the case when these weapons were unregulated.
posted by bystander at 5:21 AM on April 18, 2007

you know, i think you have to distinguish between types of shootings as well. i think columbine probably was a culturally specific event--a reaction to a certain cultural norm by two ostracized teens who left clues and sought fame. i think what happened in virginia was pathological--he was clearly unhinged in a way that i think the columbine kids were not. i mean, he didn't even answer to his own name.

fwiw, i'm no sociologist or anthropologist, but i see a lot of parallels between the columbine kids and suicide bombers in palestine. i don't see a parallel with this kid in virginia--he was just lethally disturbed. so the columbine kids had guns, and palestinian suicide bombers have bombs. i think it's just a question of what's available.
posted by thinkingwoman at 5:41 AM on April 18, 2007

There is a gun culture in the US, there is no doubt about that. Add to that adolescent angst and you have a deadly combination. There is a gun culture in other countries such as Afghanistan and Brazil. Kids there have a different outlet for their adolescent furies than fellow students.

Horrible atrocities can happen anywhere. The US does not have the market on these. I think the reason for this atrocity doesn't lie in the gun culture or videogames (as has already been said in the news), it is alienation mixed with mental illness. If he wanted to kill people there are a hundred ways to do mass killing that do not involve guns.
posted by JJ86 at 5:48 AM on April 18, 2007

perhaps american are just a bit more violent.

I don't think so.

i think it's just a question of what's available.

Exactly. If it wasn't school shootings, it would be bus stop knifings, or whatever was played up in the media.
posted by muddgirl at 5:48 AM on April 18, 2007

although the attacker was from overseas

I would really dispute that. From what I've read, the guy moved to the States when he was 8. I don't know DC that well, so perhaps he grew up in a neighbourhood/school system that was significantly segregated, but otherwise .... My husband moved to the US significantly later than that (he was 16) and is entirely Americanized apart from his accent.
posted by jamesonandwater at 5:48 AM on April 18, 2007

I'd look at mental illness, how it's identified, treated, and the stigma that it may carry, by country. No one who is mentally well inflicts this sort of violence, and it may be possible that other cultures deal with such individuals in a way that better addresses the possibility of someone violently lashing out.
posted by mikeh at 5:53 AM on April 18, 2007

We have a black market for guns, but by definition it makes them harder to get hold of, and more expensive, than was the case when these weapons were unregulated.

Could Australian geography also be a factor? In the US, our experience with aggressive drug laws has shown how little laws will do to curb demand and subsequently, supply.

To the original question, I can't imagine a sound catch all answer coming into play; as we're talking about individuals, each with their own story.
posted by paxton at 5:55 AM on April 18, 2007

The source may be that in American culture of late it is politically incorrect to label anyone as disturbed, and in need of help. Everyone is so afraid of litigation that teachers and other caregivers, heck even the police in some cases won't be the one to say "this kid/person is dangerous and needs to be institutionalized before he hurts hismelf or someone else." If as in the V.T. case someone does point out potential problems he is often un-supported by the 'authorities' because of privacy issues and that threat of litigation.
posted by Gungho at 6:06 AM on April 18, 2007

There was a school shooting in Germany when I was there in 2002. I don't know whether that got coverage anywhere else.

Plus there's just more America. School shootings are a really rare event, even in America, but with 300 million people they're gonna happen once in a while.
posted by dagnyscott at 6:09 AM on April 18, 2007

Out of 300 million people, you're occasionally gonna see one go batshitinsane.

Plus, there's this circular-reinforcement thing; the idea that "America Having Guns Is Bad" is popular in the media, and gun violence is frequently emphasized there. It gets eyeballs. Nothing gets attention like fear and spectacle. So because we're sensitized to it and the media pushes it so hard (to sell more advertising), we notice it more.

Note that Monash University link; you didn't hear about it, did you? I certainly don't remember it. But if it had happened in the US, you WOULD, for two reason: the media would hype it, and it fits into the preconceived notion that "America is a violent place".
posted by Malor at 6:14 AM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

argh. two reasons plural. sigh.
posted by Malor at 6:15 AM on April 18, 2007

jamesonandwater, I disagree with your contention that the length of time he lived in the US would indicate how integrated he is with the American culture. I live in the area this kid grew up in. It has a very diverse population, more so than any other place I've lived. One of the things that I've noticed is that while many, many immigrants work to integrate, there is a large number who do not. Our government services end up having to provide translators for over a hundred languages. I've found that people here tend to help each other function in their own language. For example, instead of learning English, some will have just their kids learn it and then rely upon their children for translation. This is the case with my next door neighbors. The parents are only in their late 40's and don't speak English. They've been here for over 10 years.

I'm not saying this is the case with this particular kid and his family. We know he was fluent, etc. This individual was just so deranged that cultural integration probably had little to nothing to do with his actions.
posted by onhazier at 6:18 AM on April 18, 2007

Our nation is a very, very, very violent group. We cherish it, find pleasure in it and to some degree worship it. For the most part we descended from it. Like Australia most of us here came from a stock of miscreates fed up with "the system" and risked their lifes to get the fuck out. People like this tend not to put much credence in anything. Unlike our Aussie counterparts the US is heavily armed, both as a nation and as a society. Fast forward 300 years and what do you get? A country that is always on the brink of something good or bad. There is no inbetween. Everything is related to the risk, the gamble- it drives us forward, entertains us and makes us appear as a collection of condescending, self serving assholes to many parts of the world, and even to some citizens of our own society.

There's the background. Now I will answer your question. The US, as a group, is not well received by those with brain damage. To the mentally disturbed, with violent tendencies, we appear to be uncaring and out to get them.
posted by bkeene12 at 6:19 AM on April 18, 2007 [2 favorites]

Fatal shootings at universities worldwide in recent years. [list].
posted by AwkwardPause at 6:20 AM on April 18, 2007

Exactly. If it wasn't school shootings, it would be bus stop knifings, or whatever was played up in the media.

I don't think so. A firearm provides a unique brand of superiority and dominance not really found elsewhere. These loner kids are not going to go out and try and physically assault people - they just can't. You can't blow off steam running around knifing people or hitting them with a baseball bat, you'd get tired for a start, and the first person bigger than you would stop you in your tracks. As soon as someone clicked to what you were doing you'd be wrestled to the ground and arrested in no time.

A gun is different. I have no experience at all with firearms but they clearly make people feel invincible and that must be attracive to this type of downtrodden kid. You are untouchable to individuals of any size, groups of people, adults, and to a certain extent even the police. Albeit for a short time only. Guns and bombs are the only feasible option for these people, it just so happens that guns are very easy to acquire in the USA and don't require the expertise that building a bomb would.

If this guy hadn't been able to acquire a gun he probably would have just thrown himself under a train one day, or something equally sad and mundane.
posted by fire&wings at 6:38 AM on April 18, 2007

I agree with you onhazier - for adults. The entirety of my social circle are immigrants (I am too, one who relied on the Irish network for many things when I moved to New York) and are varying degrees of fluent/integrated/blah blah. Their kids are a different story entirely.
posted by jamesonandwater at 6:46 AM on April 18, 2007

There is next to no possibility of acquiring a gun oneself as a minor, the expense is high and even higher for an illegal weapon.

The VT shooter was 23.
posted by puffin at 7:15 AM on April 18, 2007

It seems like Canada has had more school shootings recently, and definitely more per capita (but if you subtract Montreal from that, it may no longer be the case).
posted by oaf at 7:43 AM on April 18, 2007

Exactly. If it wasn't school shootings, it would be bus stop knifings, or whatever was played up in the media.

Funny, reading this thread I was reminded that my small Canadian town had a school "knifing" shortly after Columbine. Two kids were injured, non killed. It didn't make much of a media splash. I remember thinking that that's the kind of violence you get when kids don't have access to guns.
posted by carmen at 7:47 AM on April 18, 2007

perhaps american are just a bit more violent.

Reminds me of the line in the film Barcelona, when this very issue was raised:

Woman: You can't say Americans are not more violent than other people.
Fred: No.
Woman: All those people killed in shootings in America?
Fred: Oh, shootings, yes. But that doesn't mean Americans are more violent than other people. We're just better shots.

I think this "question" is a bit ChatFilter, but I think this sums it up:

* An antiquated interpretation of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
* Access to guns based on same.
posted by terrapin at 7:49 AM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

The point of Bowling for Columbine that everyone seemed to miss, was that Canada has comparable rates of gun ownership to the US and a tiny fraction of the per-capita gun violence.

This is absolutely false. 1 in 3 owns a gun in the USA. I've lived in Canada for almost 40 years and, with the exception of police officer weapons, I've never even seen a gun in person. I don't know a single person who owns one--not a shotgun, hunting rifle, or handgun.
posted by dobbs at 8:25 AM on April 18, 2007

I think the US since its inception has the cult of the rugged individualist which comes out in gutsy entrepreneurs and frontiersman. The truth of these images are irrelevant, it is that they are American archetyes, if you will. The flip side of that individualism which has often served America well is that if you are a loner, have mental problems, or are a little 'off" you are never so alone as you are in America. Nobody to hear you, nobody to allow you to vent, you are practically invisible. The flipside of the individualist archetype is Ted Kaczynski, Robert De Niro in "Taxi Driver" and now the 'school shooter.'
posted by xetere at 8:29 AM on April 18, 2007

A huge aspect of American identity politics is based on the notion that problems can be solved with guns. It worked for the Revolution, the Pioneers, the Civil War, the Nazis and so on, so this tradition is a strong one that permeates all American culture. It comes as no surprise that people would look to guns to solve smaller problems.
posted by rhizome at 10:05 AM on April 18, 2007

I come from Australia and can't think of any incidents like the recent Virginia Tech massacre that have happened here.

Martin Bryant, from your very own Tasmania. One of the worst/most prolific mass murderers in world history.

A web wit who developed a scoring system for mass murderers applied it to a list of examples; non-USAns hold the top 3 spots.
posted by ikkyu2 at 10:05 AM on April 18, 2007

Ah, sorry, I see you mentioned the Port Arthur massacre in your question. I don't see it as fundamentally different from any of the other events under discussion. A guy with a gun flips out and kills a lot of innocent people for really bizarre or incomprehensible reasons at (place he is accustomed to spend a lot of time).
posted by ikkyu2 at 10:08 AM on April 18, 2007

we're just a violent culture, we got where we are today because of our guns

we've always been about putting our money, er, guns, where our mouth is

for better or for worse

(this as opposed to just growing based on what some higher imperialist power would like for us)
posted by Salvatorparadise at 10:26 AM on April 18, 2007

I also see that Canada has strict gun control laws while the US has none.

We have no gun control laws? No. Wrong. Utterly wrong.

We have spotty, inconsistent gun control laws. But we do have them. It varies by jurisdiction. Big cities like Chicago and New York tend to have very strict gun control laws. Rural areas, particularly those in the South and West, tend to have less restrictive laws.

Now, as for your question, I actually am an American and I've spent my whole life here. So I'm not going to invoke stupid Euro-cliches about how childish and immature we are. I would say that America has more school shootings because we have a colder, harsher society. As someone else mentioned above, in America, if you are alone, you are very much alone. Add to that the Darwinian social atmosphere of the American school system and you've got quite a combustible mix.

Also, as noted above, recent changes in the legal rights of students and mentally ill people have created a situation where someone who is menacing, who has problems, can't be kicked out of school unless and until they actually do something.
posted by jason's_planet at 11:45 AM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

I think a big factor in the US is that gun regulation is unevenly distributed. There are places where guns are easily obtained, and others where guns are completely banned. The result is that people who want to use a gun to commit violence have:

a) a place to go get a gun without much hassle.
b) a place to use their gun with the foreknowledge that their victims will not shoot back (for at least as long as it takes for the police to show up)

For tragedy to occur, all the attacker has to achieve is transportation of the gun across the barrier dividing zone A from zone B, and no security system is 100% effective.

Essentially, you can make a society that is permissive or restrictive about gun ownership, but you can't do both by chopping the map up into regions that do one or the other.
posted by Crosius at 11:45 AM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

dobbs writes "This is absolutely false. 1 in 3 owns a gun in the USA. I've lived in Canada for almost 40 years and, with the exception of police officer weapons, I've never even seen a gun in person. I don't know a single person who owns one--not a shotgun, hunting rifle, or handgun."

Well, it of course depends on the meaning of "comparable", but Canada has a gun ownership rates over 20%, your personal experience aside.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:48 AM on April 18, 2007

Would that the Metatalk related thread on the original thread regarding the Virginia Tech shoots were as eloquent as much of what I've read here in this thread.

Of course Canadians have had school shootings, but something is clearly very different between the two cultures. And this is an issue that has so many dimensions regardless of nationalism - topics like how societies deal with the outsiders living among us, how we deal (or fail to provide support for) the mentally ill, how we view relationships and solutions to problems. Like so much in life, it's an interdisciplinary, multifaceted issue with no quick fixes. The older you get, the more you realize there *are* no quick answers or fixes - that there are more layers to any issue than we're willing to admit.

I've lived in Canada and I've lived in the U.S. I'll admit that after hearing about the shootings for a split second I said to myself, "that's it, I'm moving back to Canada". Of course, I calmed down after that initial tweak, and rationality set it. But I think my perspective is one that highlights the numerous things the two countries share - including culture (always overrated as a cause - too convenient, that!), gun ownership (although not nearly to the insane levels as in the US), emphasis on individual rights and freedoms (although again, not like in the US), - and the things we differ on - i.e. a populace far more comfortable with taxation, an emphasis on community and a cultural mosaic (as opposed to a melting pot), no laws priviledging the so-called 'right' of an individual to bear arms, and the emphasis on a history of peace keeping or supporting coalitions in Canada as opposed to a more complicated (to be polite) foreign policy in the U.S. That is a shadow that hangs over us subconsciously - how can it not, with a bloody war in Iraq, and countless foreign military bases across the world.

Again, no simple answers, and people have done an excellent job in enumerating all the little facets that make up America and its relationship to violence. The question is, what now? The country may need the kind of dialogue that Metafilter excels at - a long hard look at a problem, and people's collective ideas on how to solve it in the best possible way. I despair that we may never have that dialogue, though...
posted by rmm at 11:52 AM on April 18, 2007

For anyone interested in the cultural differences between the US and Canada, including attitudes toward guns, in statistical terms, the 2004 book Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values by Michael Adams is fucking fascinating.
posted by loiseau at 12:27 PM on April 18, 2007

One possibly significant difference between the US and most of the rest of the developed world is that when the rest of us feel a need to access healthcare for mental problems we don't have to check the list of prices first. They will be non-existent or at least heavily subsidised, for treatment and for prescription drugs. However, the stereotypical US shooter is normally described as middle class, so wouldn't these kids be covered by medical insurance? Would a student's "co-pay" be big enough to discourage someone who was already struggling at university from asking for medical help? (I assume that if things gets bad enough, a free service will haul you away and lock you up, another incentive to keep quiet about your problems.)
posted by Idcoytco at 1:06 PM on April 18, 2007

Another Canadian chiming in to agree with dobbs and modernnomad - it is rediculous to suggest that Canada is remotely like the U.S., as far as gun ownership. The people who own guns in Canada are overwhelmingly living outside of large urban centres. You are talking about hunting rifles in the country vs. handguns in cities and suburbs. Apples and oranges.
posted by saucysault at 9:22 PM on April 18, 2007

The United States has about ten times as many people as Canada. Take a statistically very rare event, and it'll happen more in a bigger population. There's nothing about 300 million people that makes them more or less prone to these random events than Canada's estimated (Google it) population of 32 million. We've just got about ten times more people. When you have events like this that are measured in a raw number of events, and not a rate or as a percentage of the total population, it becomes easy to say, "Wow, we've got a lot more of those here!"
posted by CipherSwarm at 6:42 AM on April 19, 2007

CipherSwarm: I think most people are inherently talking about "per capita" rates when they discuss these issues. You can't just say "the US has more population so we hear about it more" - there is something fundamentally different between the United States and other developed nations that gives it a much higher level of gun violence.

Here's a fairly old study from 1998 I dug up with a quick Google search which compares gun violence rates among the world's 36 richest nations:
US - 14.24 per 100 000 people
Canada - 4.31 per 100 000 people

So that still means the US has 3x as many gun violence related incidents as Canada (or to use your words, "Yes, you have got a LOT more of those there!")

What are the issues? These are some of them (many touched upon in various threads around this topic during the last couple days):
- US's "every man for himself" culture
- 2nd amendment, gun culture and easy access to guns
- inconsistent laws between jurisdictions
- population density in urban areas
- lingering issues from slave history
- income disparity
- lack of resources/access to services for mental heath issues
- media fixation on violence, "if it bleeds, it leads" has become "if it bleeds, it feeds (for the next week)"
- you can't blame pop culture since not everybody who watches a Tarantino film goes out and kills someone. But for certain individuals, I do believe it is a factor as well.


Swirl all these reasons in a blender and you've got a lethal combination that makes the US the world leader in gun violence by a long shot (at least in terms of developed nations) - whether a single drive-by shooting or a
massacre at a university.
posted by Jaybo at 10:49 AM on April 22, 2007