School shooting in CT, 18 kids 8 adults dead.

[Autumnlicious]

Why is it we never hear about mass shootings in European countries?

Because you don't pay attention?

Edit: Actually I looked it up, of the 15 worst school shootings in the last 30 years, 5 were in Europe and only 3 were in the United States. Ignorance is bliss I guess.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ram..._massacres

Ok asshat, because you /had/ to go cherry picking, here we go!

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ram..._massacres
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ram...:_Americas
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ram...rs:_Europe


Source 1 has these properties:
- Ranked by number of kills:
The United States: 5 out the top 10 by deaths
Germany: 2 of the top 10 in deaths
- Ranked by instances since year 2000
-- China is at top, with 16 of the 36 instances
-- United States is 8/36 instances
-- the rest start being divided between Germany, Finland, Israel, Brazil, etc

Source 2 properties:
- #1 rampage takes place in Bogota, Colombia
- United States occurs in over >50% of the rampages
- Sorted by year, the United States occupies over last 10 years: 19 of 23. Yes, 19 of the rampages of 23 since 2000 were UNITED STATES.

Source 3 properties:
- sorted by year, there are 16 rampages since 2000. Russia has 3, Germany, UK, France and Switzerland vie for 2 instances each.
- There is no clear European country that is prone to gun violence (which is bizarre, considering Russia is a huge fucking place. expected it to be higher)
- Number of deaths over the 16 is lesser than number of deaths in the US by gun rampages.

Conclusion => You're wrong.

Finally, let's take YOUR source:

1. Kehoe, Andrew Philip, 55 May 18 1927 Bath Township, MI U.S. 44 58 FME Committed suicide
2. Cho, Seung-Hui, 23 April 16 2007 Blacksburg, VA U.S. 32 17 F Committed suicide
3. Lanza, Adam. Dec. 14 2012 Newtown, CT U.S. 27 3 F Committed suicide
4. Hamilton, Thomas Watt, 43 March 13 1996 Dunblane U.K. 17 13-15 F Committed suicide
5. Steinhäuser, Robert, 19 April 26 2002 Erfurt Germany 16 1 F Committed suicide
6. Whitman, Charles Joseph, 25 July 31 /August 1 1966 Austin, TX U.S. 15 32 FM Shot by police, Killed an unborn child
7. Kretschmer, Tim, 17 March 11 2009 Winnenden & Wendlingen Germany 15 9-13 F Committed suicide
8. Lépine, Marc, 25 Dec. 6 1989 Montreal Canada 14 14 FM Committed suicide
9. Harris, Eric David, 18, Klebold, Dylan Bennet, 17 April 20 1999 Columbine, CO U.S. 13 21 F E Both committed suicide
10. Gadirov, Farda, 28 April 30 2009 Baku Azerbaijan 12 13 F Committed suicide [59]
11. Menezes de Oliveira, Wellington, 23 April 7 2011 Rio de Janeiro Brazil 12 12 F Committed suicide
12. Bai Ningyang, 18 May 8 2006 Shiguan China 12 5 MA Sentenced to death
13. Seifert, Walter, 42 June 11 1964 Volkhoven Germany 10 22 FM Committed suicide
14. Saari, Matti Juhani, 22 Sep. 23 2008 Kauhajoki Finland 10 1-3 F A Committed suicide
15. Wu Huanming, 47 May 12 2010 Linchang China 9 11 M Committed suicide

Analysis:
5 of the so-called cited school massacres of 15 are United States.
6 of 15 are in the North Americas (It is not fair to compare the whole of Europe to just the United States, FYI)
5 of 15 are in Europe, of which 1 is in the U.K. (sometimes not considered part of Europe, except in this analysis)
1 in Middle East
2 in Asia
1 in South Americas.

So, CapnAwesome, you must /truly/ be American, if the laziness of stereotypes can be trusted. Because you're own claimed information is crap to implying what you meant. Instead, it actually indicates that the United States, on the whole of North Americas, can lay claim to school massacres. Canada can't even compete, and it is a significant land mass nearby.

---

At the risk of feeding this horribly timed argument, I must point out that one could make enough explosives to have killed many, many more people with far less hassle than buying a gun. Furthermore, you can make a deadly chemical gas with what is in my bathroom right now. That's just the reality of it. You can kill people with very little and kill a lot of people at that.

I'm ashamed of myself for contributing. Damn.

nope, you're also horribly wrong.

Leave it to educated people to know jack shit about the FBI/NSA and it's techniques to tracing materials used to create explosives.

Explosives that can be made easily in bulk through common house hold items are actually tracked and logged. When a person of interest purchases enough within an unusual interval, they flag themselves to the FBI and NSA for further investigation.

Given the estimates that the FBI and NSA are still ten to thirty years ahead of the consumer market when it comes to numerical analysis (the biggest employer of mathematicians is the FBI btw), pattern analysis, et al, it would stand to reason that they're actively preventing that which you described.

All considered, the hardest bomb to predict via usage rates, a fertilizer bomb, can be tracked through noting the uptake of fertilizer across several locales and cross-indexing it to the distance possibly covered by a set of one to few individuals operating in a cell mentality.

Once again, this is mathematics land, but not impossible to do.

Storytime:
I had a good hour to deal with one of the former heads of the NSA at a function in Washington D.C. Everything I postulated at as a question of "hiding" a bad guy was met with a near dismissive algorithmic and terse-to-the-point-of-uselessness description of how to monitor the environment to catch him.

I gave up when he started staring at me after a while and began writing my name into a notepad.

My dad asked me later why was I trying so hard to be recruited by them. I wasn't.

End Story time.

On an off note, I've often wondered how often the security agencies actively seek out people who would create explosives, furnish them with enough and then bust them.