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.

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.

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.

How do you think MSNBC and CNN would cover it?

I agree with you, but this is blatant misrepresentation of what actually happened, and that should worry you. I’m not saying this to defend Trump, I’m saying this to point out the misrepresentation of events by the news media.

We escaped it by my wife quitting work, so that’s always an option.

I think the key point is that people in Texas feel as though they have control over their schools. People want to leave when the schools don’t reflect their values and they are powerless to change it.

Is it better to have someone else do it? Easier for sure, but is it actually better from an ethical standpoint?

Yes, maybe in a nearby gravel pit.

Well when you literally name your group after the personification of evil according to Christianity, intending to be antagonist to Christians, you can expect some antagonism. That’s not to justify pipe bombs obviously, but you can’t simply choose a name like that then act confused when people assume the worst about you.

There’s actually a lot more bad choices but you never know about them because nobody cares.

To me it’s a little bit different when it’s groups of people who want to murder each other for personal reasons, compared to a mentally ill person wanting to lash out at society by murdering indiscriminately. I wish we bothered to talk about them differently, since they illustrate different problems within society and will have different solutions.

Well sure, except that problems with social media are everywhere, even in suburban and rural areas where kids have plenty of places to go.