Originally Posted by
verminaard
I am not trying to minimize anything, but lets have a little perspective. There are ~400 million people in the US. Given that, the violence rate in our country is actually extremely low historically. Granted, compared specifically to other Western democracies of today it is high, but from a historically perspective it is low. Most societies through most time (and many societies today) have had a lot more violence and mortality, and life was generally shorter, meaner and uglier.
The bottom line to keep in perspective is that generally the human experience is getting better and things are moving up. It isn't a straight line, and there are blips, and this is certainly a blip. However, we also have to keep in mind just how many more people there are than 50 or 100 or 200 years ago, and hence even low probability events are going to happen more often.
Obviously it doesn't help that we live in a society that glorifies gun violence and has millions of guns, and that certainly plays into things, but given that is the case and just how many people there are from a statistical perspective things aren't as doom and gloom as is often projected.
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