There are 115,000 schools in the united states. 107 incidents halfway through the year, so 214 approximately by the end of the year, comes out to .19 percent chance of this happening at your school, but that’s only if you assume that it’s evenly distributed, which it certainly is not. I’d guess that if you are in an inner city school with the associated higher crime rates, then your risk is much higher.

But also if you look at numbers of deaths, school shootings isn’t even on the charts. Homicide deaths in general are in second place (but close to suicide deaths) at 10 out of 100,000 kids, and school shootings are a tiny fraction of that. There are 43 million adolescents (10-19) in the united states, so 29 deaths are about .7 percent of the total homicide deaths. Or put another way, your kid is 150 TIMES more likely to die from a regular homicide than from a school shooting.

But still, there is some small risk of a shooting happening and you wanting to know if your kid is safe. So I guess the question is if the tradeoff is worth it. Seems to me like that would not be a good reason not to ban cell phones. Like there might be reasons a cell phone ban is a bad idea, but that isn’t really one of them.

I feel like school shooters are rare enough that a policy about cell phones wouldn’t need to factor them in.

Lol Harris is a terrible candidate. Maybe Michelle Obama or something.

I guess it comes down to whether the laws are just or unjust, if the state that makes the laws is good or bad. When you have a clash of cultures that are not compatible with each other, or different states with incompatible ideas, there will be a winner and a loser, where the winner makes the laws and therefore determines what constitutes “terrorism”. But just because one culture won, doesn’t mean that it is just or good. It could be the good guys in charge, or just as easily the bad guys. It depends not so much on good or bad, but on military power. So how do you know when it’s the good guys in charge? If the “bad guys” of today, the “terrorists”, were in charge instead and you and I were on the other end of the power dynamic, would it be a better world? Would we be resorting to violence against citizens and against the state in order to further our political cause? Hard to say. Most of us would probably assimilate into their culture, but certainly some of us would be the new resistance, the new terrorists, killing innocents because we believed that strongly in our cause.

But this is all based on the assumption that laws and power dynamics will always exist, that they are in fact necessary. Someone will always be in charge, and others will wish they were, and will be willing to resort to violence to get the power or to break the laws. Do you envision a world where power dynamics and laws don’t exist? I can’t see it.

Yeah maybe they were contacted, I don’t recall. And yes the organizers should be available for interviews, and should also be given a chance to clarify what they stand for, what their message is and who the big backers are. That way you can get an idea of what they ACTUALLY stand for and not just what the leader says.

No, but I’m also not sure where you are going with that question. I suppose hezbollah flags directly have something to do with the Palestine protests, whereas nazi flags didn’t really have anything to do with the convoy, so maybe it’s more understandable to have hezbollah/hamas flags there. But they are still terrorists, right? Or are we OK with them now? I’m just not sure what you mean.

This is the standard that was applied when a few nazi flags showed up at convoy rallies. You either need to reclaim the cause for your protest, or admit that it actually stands for something else and then ask yourself if you want to be part of that.

Overdoses and drug deaths skyrocketed during covid, so it’s no surprise for them to settle down afterwards.

The problem with politics on lemmy is that it isn’t a discussion at all, but a one-sided circle jerk. Almost every post is some flavor of Right Wing Bad, and any attempt at nuance or calling out hypocrisy results in a sea of downvotes and what appears to be shadow bans. There are no dissenting opinions allowed. If you spend your time consuming heavily moderated and filters content, it’s going to produce anxiety. But more importantly, it isn’t even reality.

For the sake of discussion, voting rights should belong to everyone the laws apply to. If you go by a different set of laws (tribal or territorial), why would you have a say in laws (by voting) that apply to everyone but you? Similarly, if you demonstrate that you won’t follow the laws, then why should you get a say in making them?

His wife flew the flags, supposedly. Which could be true or could be just his excuse. The pine tree flag is being turned into a right wing extremist symbol specifically to attack Alito. It has never been an issue before, and has been flown all over the place, including San Francisco’s city hall. It’s very weird and should be very concerning to everyone. I’m not even speaking to his credibility or fitness for the position he has, but the fact that someone is making a concerted effort to rewrite history in order to attack the Supreme Court is crazy.

But at this point, the damage is done and a flag that actually meant something has become tarnished in public opinion to the point where it’s lost it’s meaning and value.

A million? How did you get that number? How many died directly as a result of covid? (Estimated 1.2 million total, depending on your source) And how many of them actually could have been prevented if everyone got vaccinated as soon as they could have? How many died from covid despite being vaccinated? It’s not like it was available or even as effective as everyone initially hoped. It actually blows my mind that everyone forgot how evil and influential the pharmaceutical industry is, the lengths they would go to, how absolutely filthy rich they got. I remember for decades they got in trouble for fudging efficacy data or even straight up fabricating, bribing politicians and doctors, and now years later we still got people like you going to bat for them. White knighting for big pharma… what a world.

I tried finding numbers on how many could have been saved if everyone got vaccinated who could have been, but they vary wildly depending on assumptions. Most of the answers to my questions above can’t even be found because nobody did the math besides sources you would diregard anyway. Boy do I ever wish we could have an honest conversation about it instead of political partisanship coloring everything about it.

Yes well, there is always a way to justify actions you support and condemn those that you don’t support. The only way to avoid an authoritarian regime of one kind or the other is to hold certain rights to be inviolable and above the scope of government. If you give the government power to remove your rights under certain circumstances then they will create those circumstances in order to use that power. Come on, you know this. And even if was for a cause you support this time, next time it might not be.

Careful not to underestimate the authoritarian left. They seemed willing to go pretty far during COVID.

People aren’t thinking about consequences when they commit murder, so it doesn’t really matter how severe they are.

Death penalty isn’t necessary at all anymore, as there isn’t any risk to society in keeping them imprisoned. In the past we were sometimes forced to execute because there weren’t viable long term prisons. That’s the only legitimate need for the death penalty to exist in my opinion.

I can’t imagine it works as a deterrent given the psychopathic nature of these crimes.

I suppose it could bring some kind of peace to a victim of aggravated rape, that their rapist had paid the ultimate price so that would be nice. I’m not sure it works that way though or if it’s a healthy coping mechanism.

Overall it feels like it should be a relic of the past.

I’m not sure if these people are propagandists or just dumb. It seems like a very obvious non story if you actually read what happened.

The charges were about collusion, and not about whether or not the Russians tried to interfere.

The entire system is being challenged from top to bottom, with supreme Court justices and Judges all over being called into question.

It’s a little confusing what Biden even meant. I assumed he was asking if white people were swapped out for Black people on Jan 6, and all else were equal.