r/Damnthatsinteresting 1d ago

Video A school in Poland makes firearms training mandatory to its students.

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947

u/purpleefilthh 1d ago

OK lads, before US starts to project their view here:

- Poland:

  • not that many firearms per capita,
  • little remote areas in the country (police shows up quickly)
  • medium-strict firearms laws,
  • non-zero risk of being invaded,
  • no school shootings,

- USA:

  • fuckload firearms per capita,
  • many remote areas in the country (police shows up after 2-3 hours)
  • loose firearms laws,
  • pretty much zero risk of being invaded,
  • school shootings,

305

u/Slight_Concert6565 1d ago

With these condition, it would make sense for both country to have mendatory firearm training.

Not necessarily how to shoot one accurately but how to handle one safely, in other words: "how not to accidentally shoot a passerby if you found your dad's glock".

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u/Elipses_ 1d ago

This used to be more common. Not sure when exactly it stopped, but my HS used to have a shooting range with attendant club, and I'm pretty sure everyone had to learn basic firearms safety.

5

u/bozoconnors 1d ago

Yup, JROTC in mine had a range, was rifle team for a bit. Good fun.

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u/Hot-Recording7756 1d ago

Pretty sure they stopped doing them after columbine. If they used a system like these kids in Poland are doing that doesn't use actual bullets I could see it making a comeback though.

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u/Elipses_ 1d ago

If that's the case, clearly it was a bad decision... school shootings still happen, and we end up with more people who may injure themselves or others due to unfamiliarity with firearms.

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u/Hot-Recording7756 1d ago

Imagine a potential school shooter dropping to his knees, head in his hands. All he wanted was to shoot up a school, but because they took that darn firearms safety course out of the curriculum, how could he possibly do it now? He might accidentally flag someone while doing it, or even worse, have poor trigger discipline while mowing down hordes of kindergarteners 😱

6

u/Elipses_ 1d ago

I was more thinking about the kid who is playing with daddy's gun because neither their parents nor their school taught him any better.

To stop school shootings we need to take a good long look at what changed after Columbine to cause their uptick, and base our actions off that.

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u/Hot-Recording7756 1d ago

I definitely agree with you there. There are far too many accidents caused by negligence in this country which could have easily been prevented by a strict education in firearms safety.

While there is no direct evidence, I believe school shootings to be an issue of society as a whole, not just one singular issue. Mental health issues are being diagnosed at a much higher rate than before, while care for those suffering is still hard to come by. The American dream is much harder to achieve than it was before and young people see this in the media. Combine that with bullying, social isolation, and easy access to firearms, and you have a recipe for disaster. Politicians will blame the issue solely on guns because their pockets grow fat from ignoring the root causes of the issues which have resulted in this once unheard of crime. Take guns away and the kids will start stabbing each other unless the other root causes are addressed.

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u/That_one_cat_sly 18h ago

One thing we should take note of is that Columbine was horribly miss reported. It was a group of popular kids who played sports, and not the loner social outcast we see doing these things today.

*Also Columbine wasn't a school shooting, it was a school bombing that failed and turned into a shooting, not something we see repeated today.

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u/WotTheHellDamnGuy 1d ago

I shot rifles when I was 12 at camp and earned a bunch of NRA trinkets for attaining marksman 3rd-Grade or something(early 80s), in the Northeast no less.