Multiple concert venues in my city use these, so I interact with them all the time. They have replaced standard metal detectors, bag searches, and manual patdowns w/ hands and/or metal-detecting wands. Security checkpoints are the primary point of delay for getting into venues, and places that have rolled these out process people through about 95% faster. It's a huge difference. If it does trigger, you just get the manual patdown you would have gotten anyway, so the false positive cases aren't any lost time.
The article and settlement seem to only mention the false positive rate, which is a bad thing to focus on. Every true positive is a much faster experience. Only subjecting 110 out of 3000 people to a longer search is a big improvement. Given the negative outcomes of a gun slipping through and the lack of a cost of a false positive, we probably want it to be tuned to be more false positive prone anyway. We don't need these to detect guns THAT well, we just need them to weed out people who definitely don't have them.
I do have concerns about what its false negative rate is relative to the standard practice it replaces. I do not really trust whatever psuedo-AI they're bolting to their metal detectors; it's probably easier to get a gun through. That said, the false negative rate probably isn't good already. TSA isn't great on their false positive rate, does more intense screening, and isn't being staffed by hungover 20-somethings. So maybe the false negative rate didn't actually increase by much?
LordDragonfang 19 days ago [-]
>TSA isn't great on their false positive rate, does more intense screening, and isn't being staffed by hungover 20-somethings. So maybe the false negative rate didn't actually increase by much?
TSA is abysmal on the false negative rate for things that actually matter. The FNR for actual weapons and explosives is somewhere between 80 and 95%[1]. It's because they waste all of their attention looking for nail clippers and water bottles.
Even an FNR of 50% would be a massive improvement.
An acceptable false negative rate really depends on the consequences of getting caught.
If someone's nefarious plan depends on smuggling a gun in, they want to be confident they won't be arrested or shot at the entrance. Even failing to detect 20% of firearms means there's an 80% chance they'll be caught before they can do whatever it is they plan on doing. This is also why it's important to have armed guards alongside the scanners. Scanners aren't very useful if the only armed person is the bad guy.
If the consequences of getting caught are negligible (as is the case for anyone trying to bring a box cutter through airport security), then the attacker can try as many times as they want without issue. Even if the false negative rate is low, they only have to get lucky once.
Annoyingly, I can't find any info about false positive/negative rates for various scanners. There doesn't seem to be the equivalent of Consumer Reports or Underwriters Labs for scanners. My guess is that the numbers must be pretty bad if companies aren't willing to go through public 3rd party testing.
mrandish 19 days ago [-]
The TSA's own security tests clearly show a significant percentage of guns, knives and explosives regularly get through. This is further confirmed by the number of travelers who, after arriving, discover the handgun they accidentally left in some pouch in their suitcase that was never detected.
> There doesn't seem to be the equivalent of Consumer Reports or Underwriters Labs for scanners. My guess is that the numbers must be pretty bad if companies aren't willing to go through public 3rd party testing.
Of course they are but the main reason there's no publicly available objective testing isn't only that sellers don't want it. In reality, no stakeholder in the security market wants it. The vast majority of high-volume public security like airports, concerts and sporting events is largely unnecessary and mostly ineffective but our current political/media environment requires appearing to "do something" to "make it safe". The Vice-President of "Make it (Seem) Safe" knows that their shareholders, politicians and the public aren't willing to pay more or be even more inconvenienced than they already are for 800% better "Make it (Seem) Safe"-ness.
Metaphorically speaking, the tiger repellent is working just fine, thank you. Those truly worried about tiger attacks feel safer and those being well-paid for preventing tiger attacks can claim virtually 100% effectiveness. So, if you start the world's best Tiger Repellent Testing Laboratory, you'll find a shocking lack of interest in buying your test data from both sellers and buyers in this brisk, profitable and growing market. Much like the lack of interest in objective testing data for lie detectors, astrology readings and placebo pills. The smaller minority of customers actually willing to pay more for improved detection (like Tel Aviv airport), do their own in-context performance testing anyway. In fact, a good proxy for doing your own effectiveness testing is available for free. Just look at what those under constant active threat with real consequences actually pay for and do.
yonaguska 19 days ago [-]
I unknowingly transported ammo both to and from Mexico. I used an old backpack that I had previously used as a range bag from years ago. I ended up finding several 223 rounds in Mexico, then when I got back, even more 22lr.
Failing to detect 20% of firearms is probably a really deal. I would bet the majority of findings are just ordinary people who forgot to leave their gun in the car (akin to how TSA used to take grandma's knitting needles away every flight).
So, if your process really only detects people not trying to bypass it and people not even in the wrong then it's a problem.
Although I mean with the long lines at security you might as well just gun everybody down outside the stadium in that nice open area they are all packed into ...
pxmpxm 19 days ago [-]
I guess on a more general level, I'm confused why a metal detector with bit some machine learning on top wouldn't make a better widget? You'd think that different shape metal object produce different magnetic flux, and there's probably more dimensions to that than just size?
imtringued 18 days ago [-]
If it's just a gate that you are walking through then it's all or nothing. Basically just a metal detector.
If you have a conveyor belt system and a CT scanner like setup then yes, you could build a better metal detector.
dawnerd 19 days ago [-]
Theme parks are switching to these too and it's oh so much nicer to just walk through and if you're unlucky having your bag searched.
mrandish 19 days ago [-]
> Security checkpoints are the primary point of delay for getting into venues, and places that have rolled these out process people through about 95% faster. It's a huge difference.
I assume expediting peak crowd throughput at low labor cost is the primary, if not entire, value of the device. I hate that it's being marketed dishonestly but I also assume most concert venue buyers know (or suspect) it probably doesn't work all that well in practice. However, in a concert context accurate detection isn't their main priority. They need to get more bodies per minute into the venue at lower cost while appearing to conduct security checks sufficiently 'real' enough to act as a deterrent to get those who care about getting 'caught' to leave their knife or concealed carry handgun (or whatever) in the car.
The only hard and fast requirement is meeting the contractual security requirements of the venue and promoter's insurance carriers - because no insurance = no concert. It's a bonus if the 'security' also looks plausible enough to reassure the small fraction of perpetually fearful people statistically challenged enough to actually worry about terrorists or an active shooter killing them while at a Taylor Swift concert (as opposed to the infinitely more likely chance of dying in a car crash on the way to the concert).
In a perfect world, everyone would be rational and numerate enough that we wouldn't need to maintain the pretense of 'security theater' in contexts where actual security isn't necessary. But in the imperfect world we live in, I prefer having concert (and airport) security be as minimally disruptive and inexpensive as possible regardless of effectiveness (since it's unnecessary and mostly ineffective in those contexts anyway). I just wish companies would sell these products as 'security placebos' instead of lying about it because fraud is wrong.
mlyle 19 days ago [-]
I don't know anything about the devices that are being sold, but it doesn't seem impossible to me that with better signal processing from a metal detector, you could reduce false positives a bit while maintaining or slightly improving the false negative rate.
mrandish 19 days ago [-]
Sure, I agree that's an interesting and likely solvable technical problem. However, the vast majority of the addressable market in today's over-secured society don't really need improved detection. Concert venues, sports arenas and similar customers buy massive volume and they are much more concerned with faster throughput enabled by shorter cycle time and minimal false positives. Of course the head of security at Madison Square Garden can never publicly admit they don't care about better detection enough to pay more for it, but I'm confident the sales managers at these security vendors understand exactly what their largest market segments really care about.
Customers like Tel Aviv International Airport, who actually care to some meaningful extent about improved detection, are a small minority segment of the overall market. Creating new technical measures able to demonstrate improved performance in rigorous objective tests on the metrics these customers care about (some sweeter spot on the matrix of false pos, false neg, true pos, true neg, net throughput, cost) would be valuable but only to that small segment.
mlyle 19 days ago [-]
Note that I said lower false positives and equal or slightly better false negatives, which aligns with what you say customers want.
Of course I suspect venues really don't care about false negative rates much at all, so there's a big temptation for everyone to just turn sensitivity down.
HeyLaughingBoy 19 days ago [-]
Very likely, but who's going to pay for the engineering efforts? If the customer doesn't care about having a better device, or a better device would actually make their job harder, then it's wasted effort on the part of the manufacturer.
Engineering exists to solve a problem. It's entirely likely that your definition of the "problem" differs from that of the paying customer.
lupusreal 19 days ago [-]
> get more bodies per minute into the venue at lower cost while appearing to conduct security checks sufficiently 'real' enough to act as a deterrent
Or they just need to convince most of their customers it will be safe to attend, while covering their ass by following "best practices" if something slips through, people get hurt and they get sued.
mrandish 19 days ago [-]
> convince most of their customers it will be safe to attend
Apparently, you've never met my Aunt Sue. She has a graduate degree in innumeracy with a minor in illiteracy and a specialization in worrying about whatever the media tells her to worry about. However, she always votes.
More seriously, it's not cost-effective to "convince most customers it will be safe enough to attend." The game theory around fallacious public perception makes it a losing proposition for a politician or company to ever appear to reduce security requirements because as soon as "rare bad thing happens", they will be blamed - even though their reduction in pointless measures had no bearing on it.
Most independent experts agree that securing cockpit doors in 2002 made subjecting every passenger to the TSA's increased security measures unnecessary and, objectively, a very poor ROI in both cost and disruption. However, the TSA will never, ever go away - even though it could and should. Not only is reducing security politically costly, the TSA is now a multi-billion dollar federal bureaucracy, paying hundreds of vendors with lobbyists and employing tens of thousands of unionized workers spread across the most populous congressional districts. Yes, this is frustrating.
lupusreal 19 days ago [-]
They don't need to convince most of the public, just enough so they can fill up their venue. There are some Aunt Sues who are too afraid to go to concerts, but concert venues are still able to fill up when they have a popular act so it stands to reason that they're managing public perception of the risk well enough for their own needs.
19 days ago [-]
Zak 19 days ago [-]
> The only hard and fast requirement is meeting the contractual security requirements of the venue and promoter's insurance carriers
I think it would be a good idea to create an explicit carve out in the law saying that there is no premise liability for a property owner or event organizer due to a third party committing a crime.
staticautomatic 19 days ago [-]
So, do away with all negligent security cases?
Zak 19 days ago [-]
Yes. In general, business owners aren't expected to prevent crimes against their customers. If someone attacks me at a bar or grocery store, I probably won't get very far trying to sue the owner for failing to check everyone for weapons on entry. I'm not sure I'd have more success with a concert venue, but it appears insurance companies perceive enough risk to demand certain procedures.
Codifying that expectation in law would reduce costly and obnoxious security theater. Of course, a business advertising a certain level of security could be sued for failing to provide it.
staticautomatic 19 days ago [-]
Ok, but it seems like a bit of a non-sequitur to say “ business owners aren't expected to prevent crimes against their customers” when there’s a body of law to the contrary.
Zak 19 days ago [-]
Is there? In most US states, the concept of premises liability seems to be derived entirely from case law, not statute. Some states appear to have statutes limiting its scope, such as https://colorado.public.law/statutes/crs_13-21-115
Edit: to be clear, I don't think there's anything actually stopping someone from attempting to sue a bar or grocery store over a crime committed there, but it usually doesn't happen and would likely be an uphill battle for the plaintiff.
staticautomatic 19 days ago [-]
So what? It's not like common law has less effect. "Body of law" is understood by lawyers to include both common and statutory law.
potato3732842 19 days ago [-]
The point is that it can easily be overridden with statute
"business owners meeting definition X are only liable in conditions Y"
19 days ago [-]
abduhl 19 days ago [-]
This is a stupid point. “The current law can easily be overridden by passing a new law.”
No shit.
Zak 19 days ago [-]
I think a better argument here is that common law/case law here is ambiguous enough to create a situation where there's an unreasonable and unpredictable risk for certain kinds of businesses.
Another problematic case this sort of liability leads to is hotels in Las Vegas routinely searching guest rooms after a lawsuit following the 2017 shooting. I don't think it's desirable to expect hotels to search rooms or to call the police if someone has "too much" luggage. That's paranoid, an invasion of privacy, and unlikely to prevent a future mass murder.
I don't want a world where I have to submit to searches to go anywhere or do anything, and I hope that's not a fringe position.
staticautomatic 18 days ago [-]
You say that as if statues are any less ambiguous.
abduhl 19 days ago [-]
I was only responding to GP's statement that common law can be overridden by statute.
If I wanted to respond to the idea that premises liability should be eliminated then I would have responded to your first post.
And I actually do think that most people would call your position a fringe position once you actually start talking details like "but what about guns in schools?" If you truly believe that you shouldn't have to submit to a search to go ANYWHERE or do ANYTHING then you hold a fringe position.
Zak 19 days ago [-]
My position is that it is undesirable for premises liability to lead to an increase in private businesses searching their guests, not that nobody should be searched anywhere for any reason. I do think it should be rare in practice: airports, probably; concerts, probably not absent some unusual threat; hotel rooms pretty much never.
It appears routinely searching students in public schools is fairly rare in the USA; under 8% use metal detectors[0]. That certainly does not mean they're allowed to bring guns, just that they probably won't be discovered if they do.
No, your position is: "I think it would be a good idea to create an explicit carve out in the law saying that there is no premise liability for a property owner or event organizer due to a third party committing a crime." and "I don't want a world where I have to submit to searches to go anywhere or do anything."
This means that nobody should be searched when they go anywhere or do anything, and if they aren't and someone gets shot by a third party, stabbed by a third party, or mugged by a third party then there is no liability to the business/landowner in any case. Ever. Searches will not be rare in practice, they will not occur. Airports? Never. Concerts? Never. Hotel rooms? Never. Schools? Never.
And hence we've already established the problem with your position and why it's fringe. Not even you can realistically argue for your own positions without caveats. This is a great example of a motte and bailey fallacy.
Zak 19 days ago [-]
I see the miscommunication now. It's possible to interpret what I wrote as "no places/activities should require searches", but what I meant was "not all places/activities should require searches". That's a bit hyperbolic of course since the resources don't exist to search everyone, everywhere, all the time. There has been an increase in recent years, and I would like it reversed.
I am opposed to premises liability being a motivation for anyone to conduct searches. Liability isn't the reason searches are conducted at airports or courthouses to give a couple examples, so eliminating it would not eliminate those searches. Businesses also might have other motivations, such as making their customers feel safer; if that outweighs customers finding it annoying or offensive, some of those would likely continue.
> someone gets shot by a third party, stabbed by a third party, or mugged by a third party then there is no liability to the business/landowner in any case. Ever.
This does correctly state my position.
Zak 19 days ago [-]
I will concede the technical point: there is a body of law that sometimes expects business owners to prevent crimes and sometimes doesn't, with a whole lot of ambiguity about exactly what any given owner is actually expected to do. I think that ambiguity should be reduced by putting criminal acts out of scope.
scrose 20 days ago [-]
Interesting how a guy whose entire administration is being investigated and indicted by the FBI ran almost entirely on a ‘law and order’ platform, with this pilot being one of the staples.
19 days ago [-]
timewizard 19 days ago [-]
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stronglikedan 19 days ago [-]
The "investigated and indicted by the FBI" that lead to nothing for the "law and order" candidate? Interesting that the "lawfair" candidate would have had the complete opposite outcome, had the laws been equally enforced.
bwilliams18 19 days ago [-]
You're confusing Eric Adams with Donald Trump.
idontwantthis 20 days ago [-]
Clark County School District recently signed a $5 million contract with a different AI “Weapon Detection System”. There is no way any of them are real is there?
Edit: CCSD uses Remark. Maybe their AI actually knows what a person walking with a gun somewhere on their body looks like in all situations and for all skin colors.
pavel_lishin 20 days ago [-]
Seems like it would cost less than $5m to independently test this unit before purchase.
Aeolun 19 days ago [-]
There’s definitely some form of filtering you can apply to metal detector results to make a relatively good guess on whether it’s a false positive or not.
Just need to train it with a variety of hidden and unhidden items. I kinda like the idea of a team of test people hiding their weapons everywhere and then taking multiple trips through the thing just to teach it.
idontwantthis 19 days ago [-]
It’s not a metal detector it’s optical. What does a person with a pistol strapped to their inner thigh walk like?
Or a knife? There is no possible way to detect that visually.
mlyle 19 days ago [-]
> There is no possible way to detect that visually.
Well, let's not go that far. Security personnel definitely detect people carrying weapons by gait and the way their clothing hangs. Certainly computers could help do the same.
Can it ever be reliable enough? Ehh, I doubt it.
shakna 18 days ago [-]
And will that disproportionately flag against the disabled? Like people who drag a leg, use walking sticks and frames, etc? Have an insulin pump under the clothing?
mlyle 18 days ago [-]
Unfortunately, security screening already pays disproportional attention to the disabled. E.g., we are talking about this in a thread about metal detectors, which will flag on most of these people.
xrd 20 days ago [-]
I cannot find any summaries for the cost of these detection devices. What did this cost, anyone know?
> The laboratory found that the card contained only a standard radio frequency ID tag of the type used in stores to prevent shoplifting. According to the laboratory's Dr. Markus Kuhn, it was "impossible" for the card to detect anything and it had "absolutely nothing to do with the detection of TNT". The card could not be programmed, had no memory, no microprocessor and no form of information could be stored on it. Despite the high cost of the devices, the cards were worth only about two to three pence (3–5¢) each. Kuhn commented: "These are the cheapest bit of electronics that you can get that look vaguely electronic and are sufficiently flat to fit inside a card." The "card reader" was found to be an empty plastic box.
recursivecaveat 20 days ago [-]
> He told The Times that ATSC had been dealing with doubters for ten years and that the device was merely being criticised because of its "primitive" appearance. He said: "We are working on a new model that has flashing lights".
Damn, why am I not a scam artist? This worked so well for so long. If he put $20 of random electronics and tiny glass tubes of chemicals in there I think he could've gotten away with it.
gs17 20 days ago [-]
> Promotional material issued by ATSC claimed that the ADE 651 could detect such item as guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies, contraband ivory and bank notes at distances of up to 1 kilometre (0.62 mi), underground, through walls, underwater or even from aircraft at an altitude of up to 5 kilometres (3.1 mi).
Could they have at least tried to make their lies believable?
pavel_lishin 20 days ago [-]
I assume it's like Nigerian Prince emails - if they were believable, they might have appealed to buyers who would have done something like purchasing one and testing it, instead of spending millions of dollars on garbage.
jandrese 20 days ago [-]
This is it exactly. All of the serious people left before they finished the sales pitch. If they had sold one to someone competent that would be grounds for a lawsuit or fraud charges. They had to filter out the customer base to just two kinds of buyers:
1. The people who fail to realize that it's a big scam and will be fat dumb and happy forever.
2. The people who don't want something functional, they want a "probable cause" generator they can pull out when there isn't any evidence to go on.
mrandish 20 days ago [-]
Sounds like they're basically making minimally plausible props for customers more focused on security theater performances than any actual security.
It's scummy and dumb but legally the only real problem I see is lying and collecting money under false pretenses making it fraud. Alternatively, they could have chosen to market these products confidentially as essentially security placebos. There's a market for things like fake security cameras, which arguably have some value for deterrence and reassurance. I suspect many of their current customers would probably have been just as happy buying these products knowing they didn't work.
jandrese 20 days ago [-]
I don't think it's quite as innocent as security theater. I think these are more for generating probable cause when they need to shake down someone who isn't doing anything illegal.
mrandish 19 days ago [-]
Ah, well if the design allows manual triggering as opposed to some random percentage, then that would obviously be bad.
ceejayoz 19 days ago [-]
It’s mostly based on the ideomotor effect. It’s all manual triggering, just mostly unconscious.
palmfacehn 19 days ago [-]
"Hear me out, we run the same playbook, but this time with AI"
>The ADE 651 is a fraudulent bomb detector[1] produced by the British company Advanced Tactical Security & Communications Ltd (ATSC). It was claimed to detect many substances, such as drugs or explosives, from long distances. The device was sold to various countries, particularly in Iraq where the government was claimed to have spent £52 million for security operations.
>The device features a swiveling antenna attached to a plastic grip and requires charging by a user's static electricity. Users would insert "programmed substance detection cards" to supposedly detect specific substances, which were claimed to absorb the vapors of those substances. However, investigations revealed that the product was incapable of detecting anything, essentially being a dowsing rod. The ADE 651 was used primarily by Iraqi security forces for security checkpoints. Due to the false sense of security, many critics pointed to numerous incidents where bombings occurred despite the presence of the ADE 651 at security checkpoints, underscoring its ineffectiveness.
giantg2 20 days ago [-]
I mean, the company has never really said how their systems worked. It's basically left the users/scanned with the impression that it's magic. It seems to me that it's basically some of 3D metal detection paired with cameras. It would be cool to understand how they make it work, but I guess it's a trade secret. They haven't readily put up numbers about false positive rates, and even less data about false negatives. I get the impression that this relies heavily on placebo effect - "they have scanners so I better not try to take my weapon in".
timewizard 19 days ago [-]
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liliiavyshnska 19 days ago [-]
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kylehotchkiss 20 days ago [-]
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AngryData 20 days ago [-]
I can't agree with this stance at all. US shootings and crimes will not be stopped or declined by stronger invasions of privacy and increased searches. US's high crime problems boil down to poor socioeconomic factors. Poverty, desperation, lack of economic mobility and opportunity, draconian law enforcement, poor social services and safety net.
Over and over and over again throughout history, harsher law enforcement and invasion of personal privacy has failed to appreciably reduce crime or violence or murder. At best you merely create divisions in society between the privileged and the desperate that hides the problems from the privileged and wealthy so they can ignore it until eventually it boils over because the privileged and wealthy members of society are shielded from actually seeing the systemic problems that everyone else is dealing with.
potato3732842 20 days ago [-]
Don't forget the massive illegal drug industry that has to DIY the kind of business-dispute settling violence that normal industries use court ordered state violence for.
That alone accounts of a huge amount of our violence.
soared 20 days ago [-]
Source, does gang/drug violence really account for a lot of our violence? This says only 16% of homicides are drug related.
I think HN User potato3732842's comment was probably true back in the 90's.
But now, yes, the nature of threats to US citizens have changed. There has obviously been a decrease in the whole drug and gang violence side because of interdiction and enforcement. Meanwhile a massive expansion of the whole "school or workplace shooter" thing. Law enforcement has not changed to effectively meet this threat yet, so it seems like it's happening with impunity. Just as in the 90's law enforcement had not changed to meet the drug violence threat yet, so drug violence seemed like it happened with impunity back then.
We just need for law enforcement to increase the pace at which they adapt to meet new threats.
razakel 20 days ago [-]
Canadians have guns. Mexicans have guns. Australians have guns.
They don't have school shootings on an almost daily basis.
The problem is definitely not the guns. It doesn't help, but it's not the root cause.
AnthonyMouse 20 days ago [-]
> Mexicans have guns.
Mexico has some of the most stringent gun laws in the world. They also have more than four times the murder rate of the US. So while it's technically true that Mexicans have guns, this is more along the lines of "people inclined to violate the law against murder have no qualms about violating the law against unlawful possession of a firearm" rather than that it's easy to lawfully acquire a firearm in Mexico.
razakel 20 days ago [-]
Practically anyone can own a shotgun in the UK, which also has restrictive gun laws. There has only ever been one school shooting (and the guy responsible owned his weapons completely legally).
What I'm saying is that gun control won't solve the problem, but it will help.
AnthonyMouse 20 days ago [-]
> What I'm saying is that gun control won't solve the problem, but it will help.
I still don't get how this is supposed to work.
It seems like there are two main categories of shootings. The first is the ones that most often make the news, i.e. school shootings. But the people who do this are typically people who snap rather than career criminals, and then they would pass the background check etc. Also, these are in practice a small minority of shooting deaths.
The second is gang violence. This is where you really get the high body counts. But it's also where gun laws aren't going to be followed, and then you get the same result as you do in Mexico, i.e. stringent laws that do nothing because drug cartels are already operating a criminal smuggling operation and don't give a crap about following gun laws.
The best argument I've heard in favor of "gun control" reducing fatalities is something like, if you make it inconvenient for normal people to have guns then fewer of them will do it and you get fewer accidents. But then there are any number of alternative ways to get a similar result, like subsidizing gun safes or training etc., which don't require you to fight the people you're otherwise intending to purposely inconvenience.
yesco 20 days ago [-]
I am happy to inform you that the United States also does not have school shootings on an "almost daily basis". Not trying to be pedantic here, but gross exaggerations misrepresent the issue.
> GVA has reported 971 cases of school shootings across the United States in 2024, with many of them having no victims or injuries. The database has tracked 112 school shootings in which a victim was injured or killed.
Somewhere between ~3/day and ~0.3/day, depending what you count. Close enough.
mattw2121 20 days ago [-]
USA Today's reporting is wrong. There are not 971 cases of school shootings. There are about that many "school incidents". Some of those incidents, like the one listed below, are where police responded to a report of someone with a gun and never found the person or gun.
> Additionally, some of the 112 that did have a victim didn't even happen on campus. See this linked incident.
Did you look at your link?
> Student shot in leg during dispute in parking lot as school was dismissing
That's a school shooting. The parking lot is absolutely part of the campus.
mattw2121 19 days ago [-]
Yes I have. An altercation between two people in a parking lot is different than a school shooting.
Have you looked at the other items listed where there are victims? Multiple times I see that it was an altercation in a dorm room of a college. Sorry, I would consider that an altercation in a residence, not a school shooting. Here's another one that a kid shot himself in the leg and it's counted as a school shooting.
These stats from GVA are inflated with respect to school shootings.
simoncion 20 days ago [-]
> That's a school shooting.
Ah. I now understand why school shooting numbers that people are quoting are so very high as of late.
Shit like Columbine is a school shooting. Shit like that is a shooting that happened to happen at school. If the assailant had used a knife, would you be calling it a "school stabbing"? If you would, then I disagree with that characterization, too.
For lots of folks, the term "school shooting" is strongly associated with the notion that a massacre happened... and not at all with the notion that some folks got into a heated argument, and one of them decided to attack the other with a weapon.
ceejayoz 20 days ago [-]
Not every school shooting is a mass shooting, no.
simoncion 19 days ago [-]
Based on this: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42552320> many things classified as "school shooting" are not what any reasonable person would think of when they hear the term.
A kid shooting HIMSELF in the leg? Yes, it meets an extremely literal definition, but it would be incredibly stupid to -say- lock down a campus because of that.
wl 20 days ago [-]
Issues of what constitutes a "school shooting" aside, my personal experience with GVA is that their database contains duplicate incidents and they will not actually correct those errors when pointed out.
cpitman 20 days ago [-]
Looking at this database, they have a really loose definition of a "school shooting".
1 out of the first 10 being what most people would call a "school shooting" brings that 971 cases number into question.
ceejayoz 20 days ago [-]
That page has a CSV export; it's ~2000 rows.
They appear to have correctly filtered out the "Non-Shooting Incident" sort of results from it (which your picks appear to mostly be) to arrive at the ~900 numbers.
cpitman 20 days ago [-]
I've also been looking at the export, but I don't see any way to filter down to "Shooting incidents". Just sampling the first 10, 10% of 2000 is looking like way less.
Were you able to find a way to validate the 900 number?
N2yhWNXQN3k9 20 days ago [-]
Depends how you define school shooting as well. Click around on https://www.chds.us/sssc/data-map/ . There are numerous incidents like "Teacher killed himself in classroom after school hours" "Shots fired in the evening, no one injured".
N2yhWNXQN3k9 20 days ago [-]
Also, if you go into that data a total of 260 Students were fatally wounded by a firearm from 1970 to 2022 during the school day.
If this is accurate, the odds of being fatally shot as a student during school hours is extremely low, about 1 in 10,000,000 over the span of this data collection. Higher odds than winning a powerball jackpot, but, in context, an extremely rare event.
It wouldn't be a stretch to hypothesize that the administrators forcing students through metal detectors, doing active shooter drills, etc, are doing more net harm than the thing that they are attempting to defend against (as a purely utilitarian calculation).
benmanns 20 days ago [-]
Also keep in mind there’s something like 180 days per year of K-12 education in the US each year, so that’s something like 0.62 to 5.4 per school day.
dmoy 20 days ago [-]
It really depends on the definition of "school shooting". If you mean the type that makes national headlines where someone shoots a bunch of random people, then no it's not daily
If by "school shooting" you include all the people shot in or right next to schools, then yea it's almost daily (or at least every couple days or so). That includes fights escalating to guns, targeted shootings of single people due to whatever revenge.
razakel 20 days ago [-]
There were 112 school shootings where someone was injured or killed this year.
f1shy 20 days ago [-]
Swiss also… everywhere. And the laws are not so different in the USA as the rest of the world as often portrayed. Also the violence all around the world is more uniform than many think or want to admit (if counted relative to people count) But a shooting in USA will be displayed everywhere while a shooting, say in Germany, will not be covered as much. Just in south germany (BW) there are a couple of people killed per week, but that is covered only occasionally, when at all, by very local newspapers.
ceejayoz 20 days ago [-]
> But a shooting in USA will be displayed everywhere...
No, it won't. Unless it's a very large or very notable one (school w/multiple deaths, lots of deaths, politician, etc.), it'll be a line item on the day's evening news for the local TV station. We have 10k+ a year, not "a couple per week". I don't even hear of most of the ~50/year that happen in my fairly small city.
> In 2017, compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related homicide rate was 25 times higher. Although the US has half the population of the other 22 nations combined, among those 22 nations studied, the U.S. had 82 percent of gun deaths, 90 percent of all women killed with guns, 91 percent of children under 14 and 92 percent of young people between ages 15 and 24 killed with guns, with guns being the leading cause of death for children.
razakel 20 days ago [-]
A school shooting in Germany would be headline news around the world.
Nobody really cares when it's criminals shooting other criminals.
The latest American one only made the news because a girl did it.
chefandy 20 days ago [-]
Blanket black-and-white statements about what will or won’t ‘solve’ gun violence can only exist in oversimplified worlds that conflate causes, catalysts, prerequisites, cultural influences, economics, etc. If anybody is expecting one sphere of concern— e.g socioeconomic equality, bans, mental health treatment, draconian sentences for violent crimes, etc.— to essentially resolve the issue to the exclusion of all others, then nothing will ever look like it’s going to work because it’s not one problem. It’s not even one symptom. Street gang violence, criminal cartel violence, and mass killings by extremists are serious problems with very different root causes that express themselves in very different ways. It’s also totally disingenuous to say their having a common tool is inconsequential, or that the same approach to addressing that makes sense everywhere, or that taking away the rights of people with different values is an inconsequential concern. You can’t solve all problems at once, and dismissing one approach out-of-hand because you can cite problems it won’t solve and assert all sorts of assumed negative effects without any evidence is nothing more than avoidance.
gruez 20 days ago [-]
>US's high crime problems boil down to poor socioeconomic factors. Poverty, desperation, lack of economic mobility and opportunity, draconian law enforcement, poor social services and safety net.
Source? This doesn't pass the sniff test. First, US's poverty rate isn't the lowest, but is below many lower income countries that also have lower homicide rates. The figures for poverty rates take into account PPP, so it's not a matter of "Americans are richer in absolute dollars but poorer in relative dollars". Second, looking at the data, the correlation between income inequality is all over the place. For instance Malaysia is only marginally lower than the US in terms of income inequality, but is almost an order of magnitude lower in homicide rate. Trinidad and Tobago has even lower income inequality, but has almost an order of magnitude more.
That study doesn't have any mention of controls in the abstract. Therefore it can't prove a casual link. For instance, it could be the case that rich people with the means flee more violent areas, and/or that less violent people are more successful in life, which allows them resources to escape violent areas, and that's responsible for the correlation, rather than "socioeconomic factors" making people more violent.
giantg2 20 days ago [-]
"That study doesn't have any mention of controls in the abstract."
Yeah, it's an abstract... the point is, there are studies you can go look up.
gruez 20 days ago [-]
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giantg2 20 days ago [-]
Lol I'm trying to help you help yourself. I'm not doing all the work for you. I've seen enough studies to convince me but don't have them handy. I could tell you to go read American Homicide and others to understand the historical trends. You're arguing that they aren't related. Do you have studies proving your side? Just saying they aren't related isn't actual proof. Your argument must also meet a burden of proof as absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I've provided a study. Care to provide a counter?
gruez 20 days ago [-]
[flagged]
giantg2 20 days ago [-]
Looks like maybe the stats were added later in an edit, as I didn't see them. Comparing stats from separate countries is terrible. This has no control for any of the other possible factors associated. Those aren't studies, but just random stats. I at least offered a study. I didn't offer any "flak", but a starting point for you with a source.
gruez 19 days ago [-]
>Comparing stats from separate countries is terrible. This has no control for any of the other possible factors associated. Those aren't studies, but just random stats. I at least offered a study.
Comparing between countries is "terrible" because "there's no control for any of the other possible factors associated", but the study you offered which also seemingly has no controls is fine... because "starting point"?
giantg2 19 days ago [-]
You only looked at the abstract. Go look at the study instead of making up claims about lack of controls.
Der_Einzige 20 days ago [-]
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parsimo2010 20 days ago [-]
It would be nice to have better screening tools, but that doesn’t mean a company should get to lie about what their products are capable of and how they work.
Ironically, millimeter wave imagers, that are legitimately capable of finding hidden weapons pretty much anywhere, isn’t deployed outside airports because of the cost and the huge backlash that anything that has the resolution to accurately distinguish a gun can also image your private parts quite well. Evolv wants you to think they can have comparable accuracy with higher throughput and lower cost, but I’ll bet every airport in the country would have them if those claims were true. So instead Evolv preys on nervous leaders who want some protection in large public gatherings but aren’t knowledgeable about security.
Syonyk 20 days ago [-]
> So instead Evolv preys on nervous leaders who want some protection in large public gatherings but aren’t knowledgeable about security.
That's certainly consistent with their email list. I have no idea how I got on it, but I was on it for a while about church security, and it was constant "webinar" reminders (I assume, sales pitch without having to actually interact with people one-on-one) about how you might have people "bringing guns into" your church without knowing it, etc.
It would have been interesting tech to play with. I figure that a quarter of the church on any given Sunday was carrying in some definition of "concealed" or another (ranging from "Dude, I can read the serial number on your gun through your shirt..." to "I'm certain there are people carrying that I would never expect to be carrying and will never know unless there's a reason it needs to come out").
SoftTalker 20 days ago [-]
In at least some parts of the USA there is probably a fair overlap between people who carry any time they leave their house and people who go to church every Sunday.
stronglikedan 20 days ago [-]
> “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” lie has been repeatedly disproven over and over again
Has it? They certainly don't stop themselves (unless resulting from being surrounded by good guys with guns).
You're trying to disprove the political slogan, which is obviously rhetoric. "The only way to X is Y" is generally going to be false because absolutist statements in general are going to be false.
The real question is, for example, does prohibiting school staff from having firearms make it better or worse? Which is pretty hard to measure when there is a federal law against it. But a point in favor of "better" is that senseless mass shootings tend to happen disproportionately in schools and other places where the shooter knows nobody else is allowed to be armed.
ceejayoz 20 days ago [-]
> The real question is, for example, does prohibiting school staff from having firearms make it better or worse? Which is pretty hard to measure when there is a federal law against it.
Federal law forbids unauthorized individuals from possessing firearms at schools. All it requires is the state authorize it.
> According to the Texas Association of School Boards, "school districts can grant written permission for anyone, including designated employees, to carry firearms on campus" under Texas Penal Code 46.03, but the law does not lay out standards for training. The only thing a school employee needs in order to carry a firearm on campus is a license to carry, which requires a background check and a proficiency demonstration. Otherwise, individual districts determine the amount and type of additional requirements, which can include active-shooter training courses and psychological evaluations.
It's entirely legal to arm teachers under Federal law. (I don't think it's a good idea; I've met enough teachers.)
AnthonyMouse 20 days ago [-]
> It's entirely legal to arm teachers under Federal law.
Apparently it still requires the state to explicitly authorize it, and states allowing teachers to do this is a relatively recent development. So now we get to find out if it works, e.g. if school shootings in Texas go up or down relative to the trend in states that don't do this.
giantg2 20 days ago [-]
What federal law is that? I heard more than half of states allow it now.
"unauthorized" is in the first sentence for a reason.
States can (and do) authorize teachers to carry guns.
giantg2 20 days ago [-]
That's what I was thinking. States can and do authorize others, such as people with carry permits too. So it can be a lot of people, and it's my understanding this has been going on for decades in many states.
foivoh 20 days ago [-]
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tremon 20 days ago [-]
That last example is very weak, since the platitude explicitly mentions good guys with guns.
ceejayoz 20 days ago [-]
If there's not a single good guy in ~400 cops, that indicates a substantial related issue.
harpiaharpyja 20 days ago [-]
Indeed
beart 20 days ago [-]
Yes it has, unless your definition of "stop" is limitd to "after people have been killed", and your definition of "only" is limited by current public policy in the US.
unwise-exe 20 days ago [-]
Sure sure, the "one neat trick" for getting around the bill of rights by deputizing the private sector to do things that only get recognized as rights violations if it's the government doing it.
Urd- 20 days ago [-]
Because a crazed gunman will (A) go through the scanner and (B) will not open fire when their weapon is detected.
javagram 20 days ago [-]
Gun and weapon detection is still useful to stop shootings and stabbings that arise out of fights, where one member may suddenly present and use a previously concealed weapon.
Agreed that the usefulness against a crazed gunman is less clear, although crazies do not always have a rational plan. If the weapon was concealed in a backpack or something the security may be able to tackle them before they access it. If they’re carrying it in an easily accessible, concealed holster, that’s less effective and they might be able to draw and use it after being detected.
dmoy 20 days ago [-]
> Gun and weapon detection is still useful to stop shootings and stabbings that arise out of fights, where one member may suddenly present and use a previously concealed weapon.
Which might be a reasonable thing to aim for? It was mentioned up thread there's >100 school shootings/yr. The vast, vast majority (>>90%) of those are not the "crazy person randomly shoots up school" type, but rather the "two people in a fight / two groups in a fight / targeted revenge on single person".
Of course the downside with the latter is that simply weapons checking at the school won't stop it from happening right before / after school, or otherwise outside of school.
vel0city 20 days ago [-]
I'm still sad about having so many scanners preventing things like pocketknives in public spaces though. I generally carry a pocketknife with me everywhere I go, and there have been a number of times where I just haven't even thought about the fact it's on me when I end up going to a sporting event. They're pretty useful things; I probably use mine a few times a day.
Luckily some venues are nice about checking it with security, but still a pain to have to remember to go back and pick it up when leaving.
Wouldn't it be nice of people would just quit shooting and stabbing each other at things like sporting events :(
Spooky23 20 days ago [-]
You can make the scanner a condition of entry. Disclose that it’s happening and it’s a deterrent. Better for crazy people to do crazy at the front door.
roamerz 20 days ago [-]
(C) crazed gunman neutralized by good guy with gun. In this case it was 3 minutes after the fact (Median Police Response Time to Active Shooter Attacks) rather than immediately as there were no available Good Guys with Guns due to gun policies.
I would never ever choose to be involved in an active shooter situation but if I were I’d surely want to be armed rather than not.
One minute police response time, by your metric. ~80 minutes later, the ~400 very well armed cops on scene managed to finally go in.
SoftTalker 20 days ago [-]
Well the "good guy with a gun" argument presumes the good guy is willing to use his gun and probably risk his own life doing it. This would happen more easily if he's already inside and under direct threat by the bad guy(s).
A cop outside is not obligated or expected to put his own life at risk. He's expected to show up for work tomorrow.
roamerz 19 days ago [-]
Yup agree 100% with the first statement.
I do not agree with the second at all. Law Enforcement are both obligated and expected to put their own life at risk protecting the public. That said they are also expected to show up for work tomorrow! It’s a sad day when they don’t.
dmoy 19 days ago [-]
Ok, but in the US they are not obligated to do that. It's been put forth to the Supreme Court at least once.
A cop can be at the scene of you getting actively murdered and do nothing about it, and legally the cop is ok.
Morally, you could definitely argue they're not okay.
dmoy 19 days ago [-]
> Supreme Court
1981 Warren v. District of Columbia
2005 Castle Rock v. Gonzales
roamerz 19 days ago [-]
Yeah that was horrible and a bad day for everyone. I was referring to instances where LE does their job correctly.
throw10920 20 days ago [-]
Please don't go off into political flamewar tangents on articles on less political topics. We can talk about whether or not a technology is effective and how much manufacturers should be allowed to overstate claims without getting into unnecessary political strife that degrades HN.
AlgorithmicTime 20 days ago [-]
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Animats 19 days ago [-]
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19 days ago [-]
unwise-exe 20 days ago [-]
I thought advertising and marketing materials were expected to exaggerate things to the point of blatant falsehood.
Is that changing, or is this company being singled out for some reason, or are they really that much worse than everyone else?
Zak 20 days ago [-]
It is, and has long been illegal to make false statements of fact in marketing materials.
Puffery, on the other hand is allowed. That usually entails non-falsifiable statements like "Evolv is the best way to detect guns". "Best" doesn't really mean anything because there are a bunch of tradeoffs that go into designing a security screening system.
conover 19 days ago [-]
Right. "The world's best cookie". I think the idea is that no reasonable person would understand that statement to mean that literally, of all the cookies in the world, this one right here is the best.
Zak 19 days ago [-]
At least equally important to whether a reasonable person would take it literally is that there's no way to prove it isn't. If I call something the best cookie, the closest thing that has to a concrete meaning is "I like it better than any other cookie".
kjs3 20 days ago [-]
In the US (YMMV) there's a distinction in advertising between exaggeration for effect, like "this expensive cream will make you beautiful", and straight up falsification like "we can detect all guns everywhere" when you demonstrably can't.
skywhopper 20 days ago [-]
It’s illegal, and has been for many decades. It’s not enforced nearly as often or as strictly as it should be.
The article and settlement seem to only mention the false positive rate, which is a bad thing to focus on. Every true positive is a much faster experience. Only subjecting 110 out of 3000 people to a longer search is a big improvement. Given the negative outcomes of a gun slipping through and the lack of a cost of a false positive, we probably want it to be tuned to be more false positive prone anyway. We don't need these to detect guns THAT well, we just need them to weed out people who definitely don't have them.
I do have concerns about what its false negative rate is relative to the standard practice it replaces. I do not really trust whatever psuedo-AI they're bolting to their metal detectors; it's probably easier to get a gun through. That said, the false negative rate probably isn't good already. TSA isn't great on their false positive rate, does more intense screening, and isn't being staffed by hungover 20-somethings. So maybe the false negative rate didn't actually increase by much?
TSA is abysmal on the false negative rate for things that actually matter. The FNR for actual weapons and explosives is somewhere between 80 and 95%[1]. It's because they waste all of their attention looking for nail clippers and water bottles.
Even an FNR of 50% would be a massive improvement.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-...
If someone's nefarious plan depends on smuggling a gun in, they want to be confident they won't be arrested or shot at the entrance. Even failing to detect 20% of firearms means there's an 80% chance they'll be caught before they can do whatever it is they plan on doing. This is also why it's important to have armed guards alongside the scanners. Scanners aren't very useful if the only armed person is the bad guy.
If the consequences of getting caught are negligible (as is the case for anyone trying to bring a box cutter through airport security), then the attacker can try as many times as they want without issue. Even if the false negative rate is low, they only have to get lucky once.
Annoyingly, I can't find any info about false positive/negative rates for various scanners. There doesn't seem to be the equivalent of Consumer Reports or Underwriters Labs for scanners. My guess is that the numbers must be pretty bad if companies aren't willing to go through public 3rd party testing.
> There doesn't seem to be the equivalent of Consumer Reports or Underwriters Labs for scanners. My guess is that the numbers must be pretty bad if companies aren't willing to go through public 3rd party testing.
Of course they are but the main reason there's no publicly available objective testing isn't only that sellers don't want it. In reality, no stakeholder in the security market wants it. The vast majority of high-volume public security like airports, concerts and sporting events is largely unnecessary and mostly ineffective but our current political/media environment requires appearing to "do something" to "make it safe". The Vice-President of "Make it (Seem) Safe" knows that their shareholders, politicians and the public aren't willing to pay more or be even more inconvenienced than they already are for 800% better "Make it (Seem) Safe"-ness.
Metaphorically speaking, the tiger repellent is working just fine, thank you. Those truly worried about tiger attacks feel safer and those being well-paid for preventing tiger attacks can claim virtually 100% effectiveness. So, if you start the world's best Tiger Repellent Testing Laboratory, you'll find a shocking lack of interest in buying your test data from both sellers and buyers in this brisk, profitable and growing market. Much like the lack of interest in objective testing data for lie detectors, astrology readings and placebo pills. The smaller minority of customers actually willing to pay more for improved detection (like Tel Aviv airport), do their own in-context performance testing anyway. In fact, a good proxy for doing your own effectiveness testing is available for free. Just look at what those under constant active threat with real consequences actually pay for and do.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kyle-busch...
So, if your process really only detects people not trying to bypass it and people not even in the wrong then it's a problem.
Although I mean with the long lines at security you might as well just gun everybody down outside the stadium in that nice open area they are all packed into ...
If you have a conveyor belt system and a CT scanner like setup then yes, you could build a better metal detector.
I assume expediting peak crowd throughput at low labor cost is the primary, if not entire, value of the device. I hate that it's being marketed dishonestly but I also assume most concert venue buyers know (or suspect) it probably doesn't work all that well in practice. However, in a concert context accurate detection isn't their main priority. They need to get more bodies per minute into the venue at lower cost while appearing to conduct security checks sufficiently 'real' enough to act as a deterrent to get those who care about getting 'caught' to leave their knife or concealed carry handgun (or whatever) in the car.
The only hard and fast requirement is meeting the contractual security requirements of the venue and promoter's insurance carriers - because no insurance = no concert. It's a bonus if the 'security' also looks plausible enough to reassure the small fraction of perpetually fearful people statistically challenged enough to actually worry about terrorists or an active shooter killing them while at a Taylor Swift concert (as opposed to the infinitely more likely chance of dying in a car crash on the way to the concert).
In a perfect world, everyone would be rational and numerate enough that we wouldn't need to maintain the pretense of 'security theater' in contexts where actual security isn't necessary. But in the imperfect world we live in, I prefer having concert (and airport) security be as minimally disruptive and inexpensive as possible regardless of effectiveness (since it's unnecessary and mostly ineffective in those contexts anyway). I just wish companies would sell these products as 'security placebos' instead of lying about it because fraud is wrong.
Customers like Tel Aviv International Airport, who actually care to some meaningful extent about improved detection, are a small minority segment of the overall market. Creating new technical measures able to demonstrate improved performance in rigorous objective tests on the metrics these customers care about (some sweeter spot on the matrix of false pos, false neg, true pos, true neg, net throughput, cost) would be valuable but only to that small segment.
Of course I suspect venues really don't care about false negative rates much at all, so there's a big temptation for everyone to just turn sensitivity down.
Engineering exists to solve a problem. It's entirely likely that your definition of the "problem" differs from that of the paying customer.
Or they just need to convince most of their customers it will be safe to attend, while covering their ass by following "best practices" if something slips through, people get hurt and they get sued.
Apparently, you've never met my Aunt Sue. She has a graduate degree in innumeracy with a minor in illiteracy and a specialization in worrying about whatever the media tells her to worry about. However, she always votes.
More seriously, it's not cost-effective to "convince most customers it will be safe enough to attend." The game theory around fallacious public perception makes it a losing proposition for a politician or company to ever appear to reduce security requirements because as soon as "rare bad thing happens", they will be blamed - even though their reduction in pointless measures had no bearing on it.
Most independent experts agree that securing cockpit doors in 2002 made subjecting every passenger to the TSA's increased security measures unnecessary and, objectively, a very poor ROI in both cost and disruption. However, the TSA will never, ever go away - even though it could and should. Not only is reducing security politically costly, the TSA is now a multi-billion dollar federal bureaucracy, paying hundreds of vendors with lobbyists and employing tens of thousands of unionized workers spread across the most populous congressional districts. Yes, this is frustrating.
I think it would be a good idea to create an explicit carve out in the law saying that there is no premise liability for a property owner or event organizer due to a third party committing a crime.
Codifying that expectation in law would reduce costly and obnoxious security theater. Of course, a business advertising a certain level of security could be sued for failing to provide it.
Edit: to be clear, I don't think there's anything actually stopping someone from attempting to sue a bar or grocery store over a crime committed there, but it usually doesn't happen and would likely be an uphill battle for the plaintiff.
"business owners meeting definition X are only liable in conditions Y"
No shit.
Another problematic case this sort of liability leads to is hotels in Las Vegas routinely searching guest rooms after a lawsuit following the 2017 shooting. I don't think it's desirable to expect hotels to search rooms or to call the police if someone has "too much" luggage. That's paranoid, an invasion of privacy, and unlikely to prevent a future mass murder.
I don't want a world where I have to submit to searches to go anywhere or do anything, and I hope that's not a fringe position.
If I wanted to respond to the idea that premises liability should be eliminated then I would have responded to your first post.
And I actually do think that most people would call your position a fringe position once you actually start talking details like "but what about guns in schools?" If you truly believe that you shouldn't have to submit to a search to go ANYWHERE or do ANYTHING then you hold a fringe position.
It appears routinely searching students in public schools is fairly rare in the USA; under 8% use metal detectors[0]. That certainly does not mean they're allowed to bring guns, just that they probably won't be discovered if they do.
[0] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=334
This means that nobody should be searched when they go anywhere or do anything, and if they aren't and someone gets shot by a third party, stabbed by a third party, or mugged by a third party then there is no liability to the business/landowner in any case. Ever. Searches will not be rare in practice, they will not occur. Airports? Never. Concerts? Never. Hotel rooms? Never. Schools? Never.
And hence we've already established the problem with your position and why it's fringe. Not even you can realistically argue for your own positions without caveats. This is a great example of a motte and bailey fallacy.
I am opposed to premises liability being a motivation for anyone to conduct searches. Liability isn't the reason searches are conducted at airports or courthouses to give a couple examples, so eliminating it would not eliminate those searches. Businesses also might have other motivations, such as making their customers feel safer; if that outweighs customers finding it annoying or offensive, some of those would likely continue.
> someone gets shot by a third party, stabbed by a third party, or mugged by a third party then there is no liability to the business/landowner in any case. Ever.
This does correctly state my position.
Edit: CCSD uses Remark. Maybe their AI actually knows what a person walking with a gun somewhere on their body looks like in all situations and for all skin colors.
Just need to train it with a variety of hidden and unhidden items. I kinda like the idea of a team of test people hiding their weapons everywhere and then taking multiple trips through the thing just to teach it.
Well, let's not go that far. Security personnel definitely detect people carrying weapons by gait and the way their clothing hangs. Certainly computers could help do the same.
Can it ever be reliable enough? Ehh, I doubt it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651 made tens of millions of dollars at ~$5,000/unit.
> The laboratory found that the card contained only a standard radio frequency ID tag of the type used in stores to prevent shoplifting. According to the laboratory's Dr. Markus Kuhn, it was "impossible" for the card to detect anything and it had "absolutely nothing to do with the detection of TNT". The card could not be programmed, had no memory, no microprocessor and no form of information could be stored on it. Despite the high cost of the devices, the cards were worth only about two to three pence (3–5¢) each. Kuhn commented: "These are the cheapest bit of electronics that you can get that look vaguely electronic and are sufficiently flat to fit inside a card." The "card reader" was found to be an empty plastic box.
Damn, why am I not a scam artist? This worked so well for so long. If he put $20 of random electronics and tiny glass tubes of chemicals in there I think he could've gotten away with it.
Could they have at least tried to make their lies believable?
1. The people who fail to realize that it's a big scam and will be fat dumb and happy forever.
2. The people who don't want something functional, they want a "probable cause" generator they can pull out when there isn't any evidence to go on.
It's scummy and dumb but legally the only real problem I see is lying and collecting money under false pretenses making it fraud. Alternatively, they could have chosen to market these products confidentially as essentially security placebos. There's a market for things like fake security cameras, which arguably have some value for deterrence and reassurance. I suspect many of their current customers would probably have been just as happy buying these products knowing they didn't work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
>The ADE 651 is a fraudulent bomb detector[1] produced by the British company Advanced Tactical Security & Communications Ltd (ATSC). It was claimed to detect many substances, such as drugs or explosives, from long distances. The device was sold to various countries, particularly in Iraq where the government was claimed to have spent £52 million for security operations.
>The device features a swiveling antenna attached to a plastic grip and requires charging by a user's static electricity. Users would insert "programmed substance detection cards" to supposedly detect specific substances, which were claimed to absorb the vapors of those substances. However, investigations revealed that the product was incapable of detecting anything, essentially being a dowsing rod. The ADE 651 was used primarily by Iraqi security forces for security checkpoints. Due to the false sense of security, many critics pointed to numerous incidents where bombings occurred despite the presence of the ADE 651 at security checkpoints, underscoring its ineffectiveness.
Over and over and over again throughout history, harsher law enforcement and invasion of personal privacy has failed to appreciably reduce crime or violence or murder. At best you merely create divisions in society between the privileged and the desperate that hides the problems from the privileged and wealthy so they can ignore it until eventually it boils over because the privileged and wealthy members of society are shielded from actually seeing the systemic problems that everyone else is dealing with.
That alone accounts of a huge amount of our violence.
https://www.niagararecovery.com/blog/drug-related-crime-stat...
But now, yes, the nature of threats to US citizens have changed. There has obviously been a decrease in the whole drug and gang violence side because of interdiction and enforcement. Meanwhile a massive expansion of the whole "school or workplace shooter" thing. Law enforcement has not changed to effectively meet this threat yet, so it seems like it's happening with impunity. Just as in the 90's law enforcement had not changed to meet the drug violence threat yet, so drug violence seemed like it happened with impunity back then.
We just need for law enforcement to increase the pace at which they adapt to meet new threats.
They don't have school shootings on an almost daily basis.
The problem is definitely not the guns. It doesn't help, but it's not the root cause.
Mexico has some of the most stringent gun laws in the world. They also have more than four times the murder rate of the US. So while it's technically true that Mexicans have guns, this is more along the lines of "people inclined to violate the law against murder have no qualms about violating the law against unlawful possession of a firearm" rather than that it's easy to lawfully acquire a firearm in Mexico.
What I'm saying is that gun control won't solve the problem, but it will help.
I still don't get how this is supposed to work.
It seems like there are two main categories of shootings. The first is the ones that most often make the news, i.e. school shootings. But the people who do this are typically people who snap rather than career criminals, and then they would pass the background check etc. Also, these are in practice a small minority of shooting deaths.
The second is gang violence. This is where you really get the high body counts. But it's also where gun laws aren't going to be followed, and then you get the same result as you do in Mexico, i.e. stringent laws that do nothing because drug cartels are already operating a criminal smuggling operation and don't give a crap about following gun laws.
The best argument I've heard in favor of "gun control" reducing fatalities is something like, if you make it inconvenient for normal people to have guns then fewer of them will do it and you get fewer accidents. But then there are any number of alternative ways to get a similar result, like subsidizing gun safes or training etc., which don't require you to fight the people you're otherwise intending to purposely inconvenience.
> GVA has reported 971 cases of school shootings across the United States in 2024, with many of them having no victims or injuries. The database has tracked 112 school shootings in which a victim was injured or killed.
Somewhere between ~3/day and ~0.3/day, depending what you count. Close enough.
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/3096236
Additionally, some of the 112 that did have a victim didn't even happen on campus. See this linked incident.
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/3091356
Did you look at your link?
> Student shot in leg during dispute in parking lot as school was dismissing
That's a school shooting. The parking lot is absolutely part of the campus.
Have you looked at the other items listed where there are victims? Multiple times I see that it was an altercation in a dorm room of a college. Sorry, I would consider that an altercation in a residence, not a school shooting. Here's another one that a kid shot himself in the leg and it's counted as a school shooting.
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/3092594
These stats from GVA are inflated with respect to school shootings.
Ah. I now understand why school shooting numbers that people are quoting are so very high as of late.
Shit like Columbine is a school shooting. Shit like that is a shooting that happened to happen at school. If the assailant had used a knife, would you be calling it a "school stabbing"? If you would, then I disagree with that characterization, too.
For lots of folks, the term "school shooting" is strongly associated with the notion that a massacre happened... and not at all with the notion that some folks got into a heated argument, and one of them decided to attack the other with a weapon.
A kid shooting HIMSELF in the leg? Yes, it meets an extremely literal definition, but it would be incredibly stupid to -say- lock down a campus because of that.
I'm just going in order here, no picking and choosing. Here's the link if anyone wants to follow along: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/school-shootings
1. A teacher had a gun in their possession, there was no shooting: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/3099438
2. An adult robbery suspect was found by police on a high school campus, fled the police, and was then shot somewhere else: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/3098506
3. Parent showed a gun during an argument with the school (this one is closer to bad, but still, no shooting): https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/3098581
4. Teenager brought gun to a baseball game: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/3098572
5. Adult found trespassing on campus with cocaine and a modified flare gun: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/3098062
6. Students fought and showed a gun: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/3098023
7. Student in possession of a gun: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/3097870
8. Student in possession of a gun: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/3097949
9. Adult bicyclist dropped a handgun in parking lot of campus while student basketball game was underway inside: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/3095500
10. Abundant Life Christian School
1 out of the first 10 being what most people would call a "school shooting" brings that 971 cases number into question.
They appear to have correctly filtered out the "Non-Shooting Incident" sort of results from it (which your picks appear to mostly be) to arrive at the ~900 numbers.
Were you able to find a way to validate the 900 number?
If this is accurate, the odds of being fatally shot as a student during school hours is extremely low, about 1 in 10,000,000 over the span of this data collection. Higher odds than winning a powerball jackpot, but, in context, an extremely rare event.
It wouldn't be a stretch to hypothesize that the administrators forcing students through metal detectors, doing active shooter drills, etc, are doing more net harm than the thing that they are attempting to defend against (as a purely utilitarian calculation).
In 2023 it was three events: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2023-active-shooter-repo...
If by "school shooting" you include all the people shot in or right next to schools, then yea it's almost daily (or at least every couple days or so). That includes fights escalating to guns, targeted shootings of single people due to whatever revenge.
No, it won't. Unless it's a very large or very notable one (school w/multiple deaths, lots of deaths, politician, etc.), it'll be a line item on the day's evening news for the local TV station. We have 10k+ a year, not "a couple per week". I don't even hear of most of the ~50/year that happen in my fairly small city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
> In 2017, compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related homicide rate was 25 times higher. Although the US has half the population of the other 22 nations combined, among those 22 nations studied, the U.S. had 82 percent of gun deaths, 90 percent of all women killed with guns, 91 percent of children under 14 and 92 percent of young people between ages 15 and 24 killed with guns, with guns being the leading cause of death for children.
Nobody really cares when it's criminals shooting other criminals.
The latest American one only made the news because a girl did it.
Source? This doesn't pass the sniff test. First, US's poverty rate isn't the lowest, but is below many lower income countries that also have lower homicide rates. The figures for poverty rates take into account PPP, so it's not a matter of "Americans are richer in absolute dollars but poorer in relative dollars". Second, looking at the data, the correlation between income inequality is all over the place. For instance Malaysia is only marginally lower than the US in terms of income inequality, but is almost an order of magnitude lower in homicide rate. Trinidad and Tobago has even lower income inequality, but has almost an order of magnitude more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentag...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_in...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35546249/
Yeah, it's an abstract... the point is, there are studies you can go look up.
Comparing between countries is "terrible" because "there's no control for any of the other possible factors associated", but the study you offered which also seemingly has no controls is fine... because "starting point"?
Ironically, millimeter wave imagers, that are legitimately capable of finding hidden weapons pretty much anywhere, isn’t deployed outside airports because of the cost and the huge backlash that anything that has the resolution to accurately distinguish a gun can also image your private parts quite well. Evolv wants you to think they can have comparable accuracy with higher throughput and lower cost, but I’ll bet every airport in the country would have them if those claims were true. So instead Evolv preys on nervous leaders who want some protection in large public gatherings but aren’t knowledgeable about security.
That's certainly consistent with their email list. I have no idea how I got on it, but I was on it for a while about church security, and it was constant "webinar" reminders (I assume, sales pitch without having to actually interact with people one-on-one) about how you might have people "bringing guns into" your church without knowing it, etc.
It would have been interesting tech to play with. I figure that a quarter of the church on any given Sunday was carrying in some definition of "concealed" or another (ranging from "Dude, I can read the serial number on your gun through your shirt..." to "I'm certain there are people carrying that I would never expect to be carrying and will never know unless there's a reason it needs to come out").
Has it? They certainly don't stop themselves (unless resulting from being surrounded by good guys with guns).
Guns aren't required:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/25/us/indiana-school-shooting-te...
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/15/1136617873/buffalo-clinic-gun...
https://time.com/6249944/monterey-park-mass-shooting-brandon...
https://nypost.com/2022/02/01/waffle-house-shooting-video-sh...
https://abcnews.go.com/US/abc-news-exclusive-teacher-hugged-...
Guns (even nearly 400 of them, carried by explicitly trained professionals) don't necessarily help:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvalde_school_shooting
The real question is, for example, does prohibiting school staff from having firearms make it better or worse? Which is pretty hard to measure when there is a federal law against it. But a point in favor of "better" is that senseless mass shootings tend to happen disproportionately in schools and other places where the shooter knows nobody else is allowed to be armed.
Federal law forbids unauthorized individuals from possessing firearms at schools. All it requires is the state authorize it.
Result: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-teachers-guns-at-school/
> According to the Texas Association of School Boards, "school districts can grant written permission for anyone, including designated employees, to carry firearms on campus" under Texas Penal Code 46.03, but the law does not lay out standards for training. The only thing a school employee needs in order to carry a firearm on campus is a license to carry, which requires a background check and a proficiency demonstration. Otherwise, individual districts determine the amount and type of additional requirements, which can include active-shooter training courses and psychological evaluations.
It's entirely legal to arm teachers under Federal law. (I don't think it's a good idea; I've met enough teachers.)
Apparently it still requires the state to explicitly authorize it, and states allowing teachers to do this is a relatively recent development. So now we get to find out if it works, e.g. if school shootings in Texas go up or down relative to the trend in states that don't do this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-Free_School_Zones_Act_of_1...
States can (and do) authorize teachers to carry guns.
Agreed that the usefulness against a crazed gunman is less clear, although crazies do not always have a rational plan. If the weapon was concealed in a backpack or something the security may be able to tackle them before they access it. If they’re carrying it in an easily accessible, concealed holster, that’s less effective and they might be able to draw and use it after being detected.
Which might be a reasonable thing to aim for? It was mentioned up thread there's >100 school shootings/yr. The vast, vast majority (>>90%) of those are not the "crazy person randomly shoots up school" type, but rather the "two people in a fight / two groups in a fight / targeted revenge on single person".
The former is tracked as an active shooting incident, by the FBI. In 2023 there were 3 such incidents: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2023-active-shooter-repo... (10 year average is a bit higher).
Of course the downside with the latter is that simply weapons checking at the school won't stop it from happening right before / after school, or otherwise outside of school.
Luckily some venues are nice about checking it with security, but still a pain to have to remember to go back and pick it up when leaving.
Wouldn't it be nice of people would just quit shooting and stabbing each other at things like sporting events :(
I would never ever choose to be involved in an active shooter situation but if I were I’d surely want to be armed rather than not.
11:30am: First 911 call.
11:31am: Officer arrives at school.
One minute police response time, by your metric. ~80 minutes later, the ~400 very well armed cops on scene managed to finally go in.
A cop outside is not obligated or expected to put his own life at risk. He's expected to show up for work tomorrow.
I do not agree with the second at all. Law Enforcement are both obligated and expected to put their own life at risk protecting the public. That said they are also expected to show up for work tomorrow! It’s a sad day when they don’t.
A cop can be at the scene of you getting actively murdered and do nothing about it, and legally the cop is ok.
Morally, you could definitely argue they're not okay.
1981 Warren v. District of Columbia
2005 Castle Rock v. Gonzales
Is that changing, or is this company being singled out for some reason, or are they really that much worse than everyone else?
Puffery, on the other hand is allowed. That usually entails non-falsifiable statements like "Evolv is the best way to detect guns". "Best" doesn't really mean anything because there are a bunch of tradeoffs that go into designing a security screening system.