On Wednesday, a 14-year-old at Apalachee High School in Georgia shot and killed four people, wounding several others. In the aftermath, various opinions emerged, including one from Vice Presidential hopeful J.D. Vance, who commented:

“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said at a Phoenix rally. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able.”

While some may tempted to agree with him as we have become acustomed to them, it overlooks a critical point: kids in other develop countries don’t have to worry about being shot between lunch and gym.

Between 2009 and 2018, the U.S. recorded 288 school shootings, far more than nations like Mexico, which had 8, and South Africa, which had 6 during the same period. Many high-income countries, such as Canada, France, and Germany, each reported only 2 school shootings during the same time frame, further highlighting the disparity.

The fact is the U.S. has 57 times as many school shootings as other high-income nations.

This is not meant to be a call for gun control or to be prescriptive… its more to provide perspective. We may have become numb to this kind of thing, but for most industrialized countries this would be the worst school tragedy in decades… There is a very good chance it wont be the worst we have this year.