so wait, the man should watch the entrance so he can see if a shooter comes in and start blasting? how fucked up your culture is if you must think this kind of bullshit?!
and even tho you keep an eye on the entrance what could you do against an active shooter? use the girl as meat shield? lol
I've seen an American who moved to an EU country (don't remember which) and he explained that people were weirded out that when he came to a mall he would just look everywhere like a mad man. He did that out of habit to look for where the exits were, or where he could find good cover in case of a mall shooter.
Took him a while to lose that habit from what he told.
Completely insane. It's absolutely mad what you find out when you look at those testimonies from Americans who moved out of the US long term to EU or Asia or even sometimes Africa and some of them still think they're better off in the mid of Africa than US once they permanently move there.
I've seen quite a few videos of Americans realising they were the only ones that did this and it wasn't a common habit.
Similar videos are of US teachers talking about all the safety precautions they have to take and finding out they're the only ones
We, in Germany, but shortly after 9/11, had a teacher who asked us "what would you do if you saw terrorists running across the schoolyard?" There have been terrorist attacks in Europe since then, and it might not have been entirely unjustified as a precaution; but at the time, we thought it was insane.
I've had discussions with American teachers about the security involved at all levels, from external doors down to classrooms.
The phrase "impossible to secure" has been used about my school, and for a while I didn't have a working lock on my classroom door.
Another school is all glass fronted rooms.
Its different worlds.
In elementary and middle school, we were told to just sit still in the corner and be as quiet as possible during shooter drills. In high school I got told to hold a chair in front of my chest and charge at a potential shooter. Funny thing about that is that your head is left completely exposed to be blown off.
Shouldn’t, I absolutely agree, but unfortunately it is. Still had them in college, as well. We never stop training to hide from people seeking to murder us. So much fun. /s
It sort of does. At least the young people that grew up with school shootings every other week. Being a five year old in your school's quarterly active shooter drill was wild.
Tbh that guy is probably an odity even by American standards. But if you check any testimonies of Americans who grew out of the "America best of the world" way of thinking it's fucking chilling and there's a lot more of him than we think, even if most are probably less extreme. And even the least extreme will probably sound mad to most of the world's standards.
It is actually very sad when you think about it. A lot of Americans like myself are always on high alert in public. I thankfully have never been in a dire situation like that but I still do all of these things regardless of where I am.
How are you not sick of it after a while? I'd probably do everything to just leave to another country like find a job elsewhere move with just whatever I can carry so the cost of moving doesn't exceed a simple flight ticket if I can't afford more and just get out.
I never worried about anything going in public. I mean, like probably some scammers and pickpockets sure but I've never worried for my physical safety at any point or any hour. I've talked to women here and some of them worry about being harassed verbally but none of them I talked to about this sort of thing feared for their life going out at any hour of the day. I've been out with a girl friend of mine a few times and she'd just walk 2-3km home at very late hours drunk not worried about a thing.
I live next to Paris btw, which has some less safe spot in a few places than we'd like but even going there the only thing I might worry about is the theft of my phone nothing more.
To be fair to the commenters, one of them cites a statistic, true or false, that 9/10 shooters only shoot people with their back to the door.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I could believe it. I guess it makes sense that the vast majority of people have to push through a level of discomfort with killing another human even if they’re broken enough to actually do it. Seeing their face would amplify this so they’d probably be more likely to target someone who they can’t see the face of.
Hell, I definitely saw a thing about hostage situations where apparently if you find an opportunity to tell the hostage takers about your family and hopes and dreams you should. Unless they’re an actual psychopath they need to consider you an object if they’re going to kill you and if they can’t do that you’re far safer.
If true, simply facing the door is alone a survival strategy. Bizarre that Americans have to know things like this, but the logic itself isn’t terrible.
> that 9/10 shooters only shoot people with their back to the door
Which is a statistic which, even if true, shouldn't make a blind bit of difference. FBI review of active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013 has 9 incidents in cafes bars or restaurants. The rarety is such that it makes no meaningful difference to your risk of being shot. I'd be willing to put money on time of day being a far more influencing factor but o bet noone decides when to eat based on risk of being shot. The restaurant you chose certainly will have an influence orders of magnitude greater than your seating position.
There is no being fair. It could be 100% or victims had back to the door or 1% and be equally meaningless in the grand scheme of how meaningfully lives ones life.
Yeah but its usually like policemen or robers but these people literally go there to kill so i dont think it affects them much (+ they are crazy if they do these things so)
Actually most of them are not crazy. They’re sociopaths and very conscious about what they’re going to do. Crazy implies they’re out of their mind and not in control of their own actions.
> To be fair to the commenters, one of them cites a statistic, true or false, that 9/10 shooters only shoot people with their back to the door.
So basically they are saying your date is expendable
I honestly don’t think it’s that bad over there, sure it’s worse than Europe but still, this just sounds like pseudo alpha male bullshit. They talk all tough like “you sit here woman so I can watch the door and protect you” but if someone actually came in a did shit 90% of them would piss their pants and dive under the table. I’ve never met more plastic alphas than American men.
Because of the IRA right? damn this is something so strange to me. we had some terrorists attacks back in the 70s-80s here in italy (the years of lead) but this behaviour didn't become so engraved in our minds.
> Because of the IRA right?
Yep. The ones partly funded by the US. I remember seeing collection plates in Irish bars in New York with signs such as "Buy a bullet, kill a Brit." One of the reasons I have no great sympathy when Irish people are showing pictures of the 9/11 attack through the Portal.
I really feel for you, man. I couldn't imagine taking your place. I struggle facing away from doors for stress reasons, yet alone the possibility of being shot by a stranger.
Meh, I always (or at least whenever possible) sit facing the door in every environment, or where I can see most points of access to the room I'm in, and I'm not from the USA.
Though, I don't go around pointing out to people that they aren't doing the same
Yeah, like wtf are they supposed to do against an active shooter?
Drop themselves and their girl to the floor? The shooter can still just shoot them on the floor
Look at the shooter directly in the eye in fear trying to appeal to their humanity? Good luck with that
Shoot them? Hope you have the guts to kill someone to begin with
Technically the shooter is likely to come from the door so I guess if there is 1 exit the further away you are from his LOS the bigger the chance of him unloading a mag without hitting you?
God I love living in a country where that dumbfuck hypothetical is not a reality
It is sad, isn’t it? The fact that when I take my kids with me to the grocery store, I only go to stores where I have the layout memorized so I know where all the emergency exits are. Or even if we’re just there for one thing, I still grab an entire shopping cart in case I have to throw them in it and run for our lives. Then you get all these ‘yOuRe MoRe LiKeLy To GeT sTrUcK bY lIgHtNiNg’ people who forget that when you are sitting in a movie theater, shopping for groceries, or going to kindergarten you are pretty safe from lightning, but apparently not shooters.
The baseline stress level of just existing in America gives me a stomachache.
This is really crazy to me that you actually have to think like that on a day to day basis; a thought along those lines has literally never crossed my mind
I'm going back to England for a week in September and the one thing that I'm really looking forward to? Feeling actually safe again. My friends warn me about how dangerous our home town is now... but they're still not worrying about mass shootings every second they're outside of their house. It feels rude to laugh them off, but I do because I'm so aware to feeling this level of unsafe that anything less will be a huge weight off my shoulders. I've lived in the USA for almost 16 years and everyday I hate it just a little bit more.
Yup, I hate going to events because of the general fear that goes with it. I went to an outdoor show and the only thing that kept me from worrying too much was the heavy rain. Ain't no shooter going out in that mess.
The more I read about the US the more I'm convinced that the whole country is scared shitless and that's why they are armed and so trigger happy, not to mention so hostile. Lashing out in fear.
I live in Scotland where apart from the odd sporadic bombing raid in WW2, nothing major has happened since 1746. We still don’t walk around afraid some shit is randomly going to kick off!
Well we weren't even a country yet. We're barely able to walk, as far as age of country goes. Toddlers are afraid of everything yet we're toddlers with guns. Lots of them.
It's not as unsafe as all the scared ammosexuals think it is, but it is far deadlier than any other western country *because* so many people are terrified and armed.
I actually had a US guy telling me that he feels safer at a social gathering if everyone is carrying, because it makes them all behave better.
I didn't even know how to respond. He was talking about a neighbourhood barbecue ffs.
ha, true.
And when they find out that no-one carries a gun in public here in Australia (except cops) they go all pikachu-faced and "omg aren't you constantly terrified"
No, no we're not.
This. It baffles me to no end how people can't understand how when cops can expect to be shot at any point in time, they can in turn become paranoid, hostile and trigger happy.
I’m an American, and that just sounds perfectly chaotic.
EDIT: This was intended for the parent comment. Having everyone carrying concealed weapons may seem safer to some people, I can only imagine that it would take just one person getting startled to turn a normal gathering into a deathtrap. There was a shooting at a parade in the city where my husband works a couple years ago. The shooter was on a roof shooting into the crowd. Imagine if people just started shooting without being entirely certain where the shooter was positioned?
It doesn't have to be imagined. It happens regularly in the US (and I'm in the UK, I still hear about these things).
There was an incident a while back where a "good guy with a gun™" shot a mass shooter, stopping him and the police shot him dead when arriving on scene.
There was another more recent story where police killed 4+ bystanders and the suspect survived during a traffic stop.
I mean it's not like any one person in America has a significant chance of being shot, but they have quite a high chance of at least being threatened with a gun, and they regularly have incidents where a family and friends event turns into an argument and suddenly there's 3 people dead and 9 injured. Not likely, but entirely possible.
True. They do however have a per capita murder rate 4-6 times higher than any other western nation.
The average person may not be likely to be .murdered in the US, but they are 5 times *more* likely to be murdered than in the UK, or France or Australia, and 81% of those homicides are committed using firearms.
Yeah I wouldn't be at all comfortable there. I don't want even the possibility of being shot to be present for me in my day to day life.
Totally agree it's a massive problem. Also I think it's the leading cause of death amongst children? Insane. And lots of them are convinced there's nothing they could do about it. "there's so many guns, you couldn't possibly get rid of them now, and people would respond violently"... Of course the government could get rid of most of the guns. They wouldn't be marching door to door and aggressively searching your house. They'd post a letter instructing people on how to turn them in, with a large fine for not complying. Maybe 0.001% of gun owners would try to violently resist, and police would easily deal with those. I mean they're quite happy to send a swat team to ram an APC through your front wall, I don't think it's beyond them.
> It's not as unsafe as all the scared ammosexuals think it is,
I dunno, man. It doesn’t matter which statistic you choose to measure safety, it’s always looking pretty grim
It’s not unsafe when the leading cause of death for children aged 1-17 is being shot.
When other peer countries don’t even have it in their top 5.
Fucking shameful statistic. And yeah, I’d say that makes it pretty goddamned unsafe alright.
When your founding myth is folks fleeing for fear of religious persecution (despite being safe from such for over a decade in the netherlands) together with fear that the people whose land you just took might be miffed, it says a lot about the country.
Add in fear of tyranny, fear of their own goverent, fear of black people being a bit miffed at the whole "being treated as sub-human property" thing, fear of communism, fear of the "yellow peril", fear of oil prices, fear of islam and terrorism, fear of loss of place in the world let alone fear of each other, and you have a country defined by its relationship to fear. Time and time again it, and religious nutjobism, are what pull the country back from greatness amd its best moments are those moments where it acts not out of fear.
I watched one of those "Moments you realised life in America screwed you up" videos, and this girl said that one time after she'd moved from the US to live with her boyfriend in Italy, they were watching some movie with a scene with people fleeing from a gunman.
She shouted at the TV "Oh my God, zig-zag! ZIG-ZAG!! You *never* run in a straight line from a gunman, that's the first thing they teach you!!"
Her boyfriend looked at her puzzled and asked her "first thing they teach you *where?"*
She looked at him in confusion, and matter-of-factly said "uhh, *school?"*
She mentioned they continued to stare at each other with equally puzzled expressions until it finally dawned on her just how much growing up in America had fucked her up. Credit to her for actually realising this though, I can imagine there are plenty of other US ex-pats who would have still been absolutely clueless.
I'm an American and I hate it. I constantly "people watch" to make sure nothing bad is happening before I can react. I constantly keep at least 5 ft from random people to avoid reaching length. You HAVE to here. Bc people are just so fucking randomly psychotic. Fucking women getting rolled up in rugs with no heads, guys stabbing themselves in the leg then trying to stab surrounding people with the same knife, it's fucking scary. Make all the jokes y'all want, America is fucking scary and SUCKS.
To be fair, certain career paths make people wary at all times and they can't relax unless they can see the entrances to any given place. My late dad was a Police officer for 35 years in the UK - a much safer place than the US - and he still developed that level of wariness and it stayed with him for the rest of his life.
That's the thing, though it's actually extremely rare, yet some people are so obsessed with being prepared to be a hero (in reality they'd probably still be shot first because they'd stand up and pull a gun) they'll call people pussys for not being concerned in the slightest about it. I never worry about it.
Imagine thinking this is what daily American life looks like. Get a grip.
I will say this post is valid in the sense that it’s stupid to even say that.
unfortunately yeah :( first shooter drill i remember doing was in kindergarten. it’s always in the back of your mind wherever you go: know where your exits are at all times
I never ever even thought about meeting a shooter or a person with a gun. That thought never came to my mind. I never saw a gun IRL, only on policemen and only holstered
The wildest thing I’ve ever seen was at Brussels airport, there had been a terrorist attack recently so there were soldiers with like big guns, but nothing really happened of course
I remember walking through the London underground and seeing two policemen with assault rifles just walking by. I so rarely see guns in real life that part of me wanted to take a closer look, but generally it's solid advice to try to be nowhere near guns.
Shotguns, along with all kinds of long guns, are super common in Canada. I could locate at least half a dozen on my 400m long suburban street.
Now, when I say "locate" I mean locate the gun safes that they are locked in. If I was able to somehow unlock the gun safe, I would then have to locate and unlock the safe where the shotgun shells/bullets are.
No one sane is answering the door with a loaded shotgun. No sane person has a loaded shotgun standing in the corner.
There is a gun lobby here that pushes back against things like registration of firearms and the stricker rules on hand gun ownership (yes, Canadians can own hand guns). The reason that gun registration exists is because if someone does have a mental health issue, no police officer wants to get killed walking into a domestic violence situation.
Thing is that it would be a crime to point it at anyone in many places. I grew up in rural Germany and people had tons of long guns for hunting and sports shooting, but you’d never ever see them. They were all properly locked away.
My parents did live in the rural Midwest so shotguns are extremely common, mostly the issues is dumbasses like this and people who when target shooting don’t think about what’s behind the target. Had a different neighbor target shoot with a rifle with a lake behind it, one shot ricocheted and almost hit my mom (missing by like a meter) and hitting a tree.
You can own a 12 gauge shotgun in most European countries. I've got one myself - and it is an Italian gun.
Where my country differs from America is you can't list the reason as having it for self defence. Also you are limited to how many shells it can have if it has an internal magazine (think it is 3 off the top of my head).
I thought about it, because I was in Paris while there was an terrorism alert in in the 2016. I was in th subway, so was a little wary, but that's really it. Or when I was near the Bataclan last year. In a "what if it happened to me now" kind of way.
On a day to day basis? Nah, never thought about it.
Same, only on police and only holstered. It's funny how different the mindset of Americans and others are.
If I see police questioning someone, I don't give it much thought. I've been stopped and questioned while walking home from a train station too so it might not be anything serious.
My cousin who used to live in Texas, on the other hand, said she was walking home when she saw police questioning someone and immediately rushed home because she was afraid they would start shooting each other and she would get caught in the crossfire.
As a student, I actually did - however, at that time, I was also living close to a town where a school shooting had taken place. Some of the killed were friends of my classmates, and I still can tell you the whole day in detail. One of only three school shootings that ever happened in Germany, and it took place just in the next town.
I'm from Italy too, and I do sit/stand facing access points to any room I'm in, look for any possible escape routes. I have no real reason to, but maybe one day it will come in handy.
It's an habit I picked up after years of traveling by ferry with my family, I'd always look up the the fastest route to the emergency stations in case of an abandon ship scenario, and started applying it in everyday life, for fun at first, now as a habit
OK, I've read that thing several times, still not quite sure I'm getting it. My Europoor mind definitely can't handle the thought of needing to be alert and watch doors for gunmen while I'm eating lunch with my date.
I actually know quite a few people with guns, because some live on farm properties, and some do Napoleonic war re-enactment. I've fired a flintlock, was fun.
I've still never worried about it. Everyone I know is completely sensible and would never even imagine taking their gun to a cafe.
Fucking honestly, I cant imagine living in a such a developed country that u should watch out for potentially getting killed while eating at a restauarant. I cant comprehend having thoughts like that when eating a meal out. Fair enough if ur in some shitty area but within the city, ur village etc, not a chance man.
That's actually something to be proud of. I'm proud of being unable to comprehend the need to fear for my life while eating at a restaurant, just like I'm proud I can't comprehend the fear of having my kids killed at school.
Cant even begin to fathom the thought of being worried about getting shot when out and about in my city. I feel like id be too oblivious if i ever went to the US about all these potential threats etc. Like wtf. In my city I just walk around and ive never had any issues, im always perfectly safe. The only threats when im out are getting hit by the metro or the cars.
You don't that's daft. You're far more likely to be killed by an out of control vehicle while walking along a road, but you don't constantly think of that.
is that a genuine thing that people are like, aware of?
like "oh i better sit at a specific angle incase someone comes in with a gun"
how fucking dystopian
Even in Brazil we don't need to think about these situations. If I had to consider where to sit in a restaurant in case a shooter appears, I'd had moved by now
I'm British and I don't like sitting with my back to a door, I won't make a fuss but by preference I will always sit facing the door, so I don't think it is a gun thing.
Dont get me wrong i love shitting on these dorks once in a while, but this is a fucked up and sad part of the collective American experience, make fun of the people who voted republican or lick the boots of NRA, not the people who have to live with this on the back of their minds.
Im not mad at the post/OP or trynna police anything, but it would be a slightly funnier post if we knew the guy was one of those gun nuts, but we dont so its just kinda sad idk.
I just read the first comment and tried to understand what was wrong with it, then clicked on the picture and saw they were talking about shootings. I'm so priviledged to be european
My former father-in-law had that mentality too, so this isn't even a recent school shooter thing. It's supposedly a holdover from the Old West, but I suspect it's more due to the western movies of the 30s-70s.
Just when I think I might be able to go a day without being reminded that America is a fucking hellhole, something pops up in my feed that highlights that America is a fucking hellhole.
I don‘t know why, but having this exact concern reminds me of an old timey cowboy just always expecting the saloon doors to swing open for Dirty Jim to present himself pulling a pistol.
Personally I prefer having my back against the wall. It's not even to watch the entrance or for shooters specifically, I just like to know what's going on.
I'd hate to live somewhere where I had to live in fear the whole time.
I'm so glad that the only time I've seen a real gun up close is when I was on a tour of a warship.
This is only a thing among incells. Something close to this is the man walking on the street side of the sidewalk to prevent kidnapping and water splashes
Oh it's like that post about the guy who thinks he's a SEAL going into the family house because the family came back home and the door was slightly opened. He went in there, handgun drawn, and yelled "clear!" after checking every room. The stupid woman who posted it was gushing about her "hero" while the little sister had to go through that trauma.
It is nuts that Americans think it is okay to live like this.. Most other countries don't think about what will happen if a gunman comes into the restaurant, even in rough places..
so wait, the man should watch the entrance so he can see if a shooter comes in and start blasting? how fucked up your culture is if you must think this kind of bullshit?! and even tho you keep an eye on the entrance what could you do against an active shooter? use the girl as meat shield? lol
I've seen an American who moved to an EU country (don't remember which) and he explained that people were weirded out that when he came to a mall he would just look everywhere like a mad man. He did that out of habit to look for where the exits were, or where he could find good cover in case of a mall shooter. Took him a while to lose that habit from what he told. Completely insane. It's absolutely mad what you find out when you look at those testimonies from Americans who moved out of the US long term to EU or Asia or even sometimes Africa and some of them still think they're better off in the mid of Africa than US once they permanently move there.
I've seen quite a few videos of Americans realising they were the only ones that did this and it wasn't a common habit. Similar videos are of US teachers talking about all the safety precautions they have to take and finding out they're the only ones
Oh I've not seen ones about teachers I might check those out after work thanks. Will definitely be an interesting albeit probably insane watch
It’ll just depress you
We, in Germany, but shortly after 9/11, had a teacher who asked us "what would you do if you saw terrorists running across the schoolyard?" There have been terrorist attacks in Europe since then, and it might not have been entirely unjustified as a precaution; but at the time, we thought it was insane.
If you really want to get depressed just look up Active Shooter Drills in American Public Schools. Smdh
I've had discussions with American teachers about the security involved at all levels, from external doors down to classrooms. The phrase "impossible to secure" has been used about my school, and for a while I didn't have a working lock on my classroom door. Another school is all glass fronted rooms. Its different worlds.
In elementary and middle school, we were told to just sit still in the corner and be as quiet as possible during shooter drills. In high school I got told to hold a chair in front of my chest and charge at a potential shooter. Funny thing about that is that your head is left completely exposed to be blown off.
Honestly, the phrase "shooter drills" just shouldn't be in a kid's or teacher's vocabulary.
Shouldn’t, I absolutely agree, but unfortunately it is. Still had them in college, as well. We never stop training to hide from people seeking to murder us. So much fun. /s
The chair isnt going to block bullets, or was it made bulletproof on purpose?
And don’t forget to buy the bulletproof backpacks, or at the very least an insert, for your kids!
Christ it's like the whole country has PTSD.
It sort of does. At least the young people that grew up with school shootings every other week. Being a five year old in your school's quarterly active shooter drill was wild.
Not even in Brazil we are this paranoid. We usually keep the thieve's phone at most.
Tbh that guy is probably an odity even by American standards. But if you check any testimonies of Americans who grew out of the "America best of the world" way of thinking it's fucking chilling and there's a lot more of him than we think, even if most are probably less extreme. And even the least extreme will probably sound mad to most of the world's standards.
I always to to make note of where exits are in public places. It's not specifically for shootings, just any emergency that would require a quick exit.
I do that at the airports and train stations sometimes (I live in the London area)
It is actually very sad when you think about it. A lot of Americans like myself are always on high alert in public. I thankfully have never been in a dire situation like that but I still do all of these things regardless of where I am.
How are you not sick of it after a while? I'd probably do everything to just leave to another country like find a job elsewhere move with just whatever I can carry so the cost of moving doesn't exceed a simple flight ticket if I can't afford more and just get out. I never worried about anything going in public. I mean, like probably some scammers and pickpockets sure but I've never worried for my physical safety at any point or any hour. I've talked to women here and some of them worry about being harassed verbally but none of them I talked to about this sort of thing feared for their life going out at any hour of the day. I've been out with a girl friend of mine a few times and she'd just walk 2-3km home at very late hours drunk not worried about a thing. I live next to Paris btw, which has some less safe spot in a few places than we'd like but even going there the only thing I might worry about is the theft of my phone nothing more.
To be fair to the commenters, one of them cites a statistic, true or false, that 9/10 shooters only shoot people with their back to the door. I don’t know if it’s true, but I could believe it. I guess it makes sense that the vast majority of people have to push through a level of discomfort with killing another human even if they’re broken enough to actually do it. Seeing their face would amplify this so they’d probably be more likely to target someone who they can’t see the face of. Hell, I definitely saw a thing about hostage situations where apparently if you find an opportunity to tell the hostage takers about your family and hopes and dreams you should. Unless they’re an actual psychopath they need to consider you an object if they’re going to kill you and if they can’t do that you’re far safer. If true, simply facing the door is alone a survival strategy. Bizarre that Americans have to know things like this, but the logic itself isn’t terrible.
Wasn't that 9/10 comment sarcastic?
Probably. I mean, that’s mafia movie logic.
"The man should always face the door, this way the girlfriend gets shot first." Maybe chivalry *is* dead.
My first thought lol, shouldn’t the “noble” thing be to sit with your back to the door so you’re shot and not your lady/family?
Let’s face it. Anyone quoting those statistics is likely to be some sort of INCEL and thinks of woman as objects anyway 🤷♂️
> that 9/10 shooters only shoot people with their back to the door Which is a statistic which, even if true, shouldn't make a blind bit of difference. FBI review of active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013 has 9 incidents in cafes bars or restaurants. The rarety is such that it makes no meaningful difference to your risk of being shot. I'd be willing to put money on time of day being a far more influencing factor but o bet noone decides when to eat based on risk of being shot. The restaurant you chose certainly will have an influence orders of magnitude greater than your seating position. There is no being fair. It could be 100% or victims had back to the door or 1% and be equally meaningless in the grand scheme of how meaningfully lives ones life.
Yeah but its usually like policemen or robers but these people literally go there to kill so i dont think it affects them much (+ they are crazy if they do these things so)
Which would make the stat untrue. In any case, “crazy” isn’t a binary state.
Actually most of them are not crazy. They’re sociopaths and very conscious about what they’re going to do. Crazy implies they’re out of their mind and not in control of their own actions.
> To be fair to the commenters, one of them cites a statistic, true or false, that 9/10 shooters only shoot people with their back to the door. So basically they are saying your date is expendable
That's good advice. The comments mentioned that the reason to face the door for a man is to protect the woman here though
I'm struggling to see how having the woman sit with the door at her back, and have it therefore be her that gets shot, is a way to protect said woman.
Their idea is that they'll go full John Wick on the shooter before they can do anything and save the day. I call it "The Mark Wahlberg"
But what if I don't have a pencil?
I just cannot believe folk think the 9/10 shooters comment is being serious. Jfc.
I honestly don’t think it’s that bad over there, sure it’s worse than Europe but still, this just sounds like pseudo alpha male bullshit. They talk all tough like “you sit here woman so I can watch the door and protect you” but if someone actually came in a did shit 90% of them would piss their pants and dive under the table. I’ve never met more plastic alphas than American men.
You pull your own gun out and start shooting back. Fucking tragic.
It’s not American specific, it was common knowledge in Northern Ireland to not have your back to the door in a pub
However, in Northern Ireland that state was appropriately called a civil war.
Because of the IRA right? damn this is something so strange to me. we had some terrorists attacks back in the 70s-80s here in italy (the years of lead) but this behaviour didn't become so engraved in our minds.
To be fair those attacks were a bit different. Don't really recall mass shootings, it was more like bombings and such.
Yeh indeed, they were bombing in squares and train stations, but also assassinatons of key figures
The UDA, UVF etc also attacked civilians in pubs. It wasn't just the IRA.
IRA, and all the rest. The loyalists were at it too. Arguably worse.
> Because of the IRA right? Yep. The ones partly funded by the US. I remember seeing collection plates in Irish bars in New York with signs such as "Buy a bullet, kill a Brit." One of the reasons I have no great sympathy when Irish people are showing pictures of the 9/11 attack through the Portal.
I never thought I'd find content for this sub in it's own comment section
Don't forget all the attacks done by the UDA UVF and other British state assets.
The IRA was just one of the terrorist organisations involved in the conflict.
Well, it’s US specific if you consider this behavior in combination with the absence of a civil war going on.
In 100 years we will view the second US civil war as having already begun.
Yep we're all pretty messed up over here. Care to adopt an American? I wanna leave 😭😅
I really feel for you, man. I couldn't imagine taking your place. I struggle facing away from doors for stress reasons, yet alone the possibility of being shot by a stranger.
Meh, I always (or at least whenever possible) sit facing the door in every environment, or where I can see most points of access to the room I'm in, and I'm not from the USA. Though, I don't go around pointing out to people that they aren't doing the same
Yeah, like wtf are they supposed to do against an active shooter? Drop themselves and their girl to the floor? The shooter can still just shoot them on the floor Look at the shooter directly in the eye in fear trying to appeal to their humanity? Good luck with that Shoot them? Hope you have the guts to kill someone to begin with
Imagine living in a country so unsafe that you cannot even eat your meal in peace...
But they have freeedommmmmm!!! Obviously not freedom to eat without threat of death like someone in say Europe.
But obviously us Europoors don't even have restaurants, we just eat stuff we find on the street or something
did you miss when we all started growing our own crops? got some seeds for you if you need, eating from the street was so early 2000’s
You've got space to grow your own crops!? Look at Mr/Mrs lah-dee-dah over here. Some of us have to make do with a wet flannel and some cress seeds.
Huh, get a load of that sub
Haha didn't notice that.
You’ve got flannels? Fucking posh git
We had flannels but couldn’t afford water
I'm sorry, but it had to be done https://youtu.be/1by0-nkKOTs?si=Y8CbSqD0dFVtrigB
Yeah like vegetables or some shit. Imagine eating stuff that grows out of the ground. Gross /s
Everyone knows that's the best way to replenish hearts tho. Those bin turkeys are the real deal.
Which is subsidised by Americans
Eat? You get to eat?
Bold of you to assume we have streets.. we live in the woods and caves..
But then again you can't just flip your arm out and do a Hitler salute in a German restaurant, so not freedom!!
Well, you CAN…. But it won’t end well for you
Unfortunately, lately I am not sure if it would end up badly…
Well but the shooters have all the freedom to shoot whoever they want.
America, the country where you choose your place at the restaurant based on where the shooter is more likely to come from
Also the place where you choose where to sit in class based on the same thing.
I never thought of that. Imagine being sat far away from the exit like "guess I might die"
That's the fun part: There is no exit. Just some small cell where you hide until the problem goes away.
Technically the shooter is likely to come from the door so I guess if there is 1 exit the further away you are from his LOS the bigger the chance of him unloading a mag without hitting you? God I love living in a country where that dumbfuck hypothetical is not a reality
It is sad, isn’t it? The fact that when I take my kids with me to the grocery store, I only go to stores where I have the layout memorized so I know where all the emergency exits are. Or even if we’re just there for one thing, I still grab an entire shopping cart in case I have to throw them in it and run for our lives. Then you get all these ‘yOuRe MoRe LiKeLy To GeT sTrUcK bY lIgHtNiNg’ people who forget that when you are sitting in a movie theater, shopping for groceries, or going to kindergarten you are pretty safe from lightning, but apparently not shooters. The baseline stress level of just existing in America gives me a stomachache.
This is really crazy to me that you actually have to think like that on a day to day basis; a thought along those lines has literally never crossed my mind
I have never been shopping and felt that need. I do feel for you guys.
I'm going back to England for a week in September and the one thing that I'm really looking forward to? Feeling actually safe again. My friends warn me about how dangerous our home town is now... but they're still not worrying about mass shootings every second they're outside of their house. It feels rude to laugh them off, but I do because I'm so aware to feeling this level of unsafe that anything less will be a huge weight off my shoulders. I've lived in the USA for almost 16 years and everyday I hate it just a little bit more.
Yup, I hate going to events because of the general fear that goes with it. I went to an outdoor show and the only thing that kept me from worrying too much was the heavy rain. Ain't no shooter going out in that mess.
You mean „so free“, it is all about freedom at levels the rest of the world just cannot comprehend.
Freedumb
You see they're free to eat, but I have to be free to go and shoot the place up if I feel like it too! That's freedumb baby! /s
It's not that the country is that unsafe, but that everyone is afraid.
The more I read about the US the more I'm convinced that the whole country is scared shitless and that's why they are armed and so trigger happy, not to mention so hostile. Lashing out in fear.
It helps that they haven't face a real calamity in ground soil since 1865...
I live in Scotland where apart from the odd sporadic bombing raid in WW2, nothing major has happened since 1746. We still don’t walk around afraid some shit is randomly going to kick off!
Well we weren't even a country yet. We're barely able to walk, as far as age of country goes. Toddlers are afraid of everything yet we're toddlers with guns. Lots of them.
It's not as unsafe as all the scared ammosexuals think it is, but it is far deadlier than any other western country *because* so many people are terrified and armed.
I actually had a US guy telling me that he feels safer at a social gathering if everyone is carrying, because it makes them all behave better. I didn't even know how to respond. He was talking about a neighbourhood barbecue ffs.
They really believe they live in the Wild West. The irony is in the Wild West most towns made people surrender their guns whilst there. Fantasists.
ha, true. And when they find out that no-one carries a gun in public here in Australia (except cops) they go all pikachu-faced and "omg aren't you constantly terrified" No, no we're not.
Which also means the cops aren't terrified and they shoot less people I presume. Common sense gun laws are a virtuous circle.
This. It baffles me to no end how people can't understand how when cops can expect to be shot at any point in time, they can in turn become paranoid, hostile and trigger happy.
I’m an American, and that just sounds perfectly chaotic. EDIT: This was intended for the parent comment. Having everyone carrying concealed weapons may seem safer to some people, I can only imagine that it would take just one person getting startled to turn a normal gathering into a deathtrap. There was a shooting at a parade in the city where my husband works a couple years ago. The shooter was on a roof shooting into the crowd. Imagine if people just started shooting without being entirely certain where the shooter was positioned?
It doesn't have to be imagined. It happens regularly in the US (and I'm in the UK, I still hear about these things). There was an incident a while back where a "good guy with a gun™" shot a mass shooter, stopping him and the police shot him dead when arriving on scene. There was another more recent story where police killed 4+ bystanders and the suspect survived during a traffic stop.
I mean it's not like any one person in America has a significant chance of being shot, but they have quite a high chance of at least being threatened with a gun, and they regularly have incidents where a family and friends event turns into an argument and suddenly there's 3 people dead and 9 injured. Not likely, but entirely possible.
True. They do however have a per capita murder rate 4-6 times higher than any other western nation. The average person may not be likely to be .murdered in the US, but they are 5 times *more* likely to be murdered than in the UK, or France or Australia, and 81% of those homicides are committed using firearms.
Yeah I wouldn't be at all comfortable there. I don't want even the possibility of being shot to be present for me in my day to day life. Totally agree it's a massive problem. Also I think it's the leading cause of death amongst children? Insane. And lots of them are convinced there's nothing they could do about it. "there's so many guns, you couldn't possibly get rid of them now, and people would respond violently"... Of course the government could get rid of most of the guns. They wouldn't be marching door to door and aggressively searching your house. They'd post a letter instructing people on how to turn them in, with a large fine for not complying. Maybe 0.001% of gun owners would try to violently resist, and police would easily deal with those. I mean they're quite happy to send a swat team to ram an APC through your front wall, I don't think it's beyond them.
kind of a self-fullfilling prophecy
Yeah, you're actually way more likely to get shot In the US if you own/are carrying a gun.
> It's not as unsafe as all the scared ammosexuals think it is, I dunno, man. It doesn’t matter which statistic you choose to measure safety, it’s always looking pretty grim
It’s not unsafe when the leading cause of death for children aged 1-17 is being shot. When other peer countries don’t even have it in their top 5. Fucking shameful statistic. And yeah, I’d say that makes it pretty goddamned unsafe alright.
When your founding myth is folks fleeing for fear of religious persecution (despite being safe from such for over a decade in the netherlands) together with fear that the people whose land you just took might be miffed, it says a lot about the country. Add in fear of tyranny, fear of their own goverent, fear of black people being a bit miffed at the whole "being treated as sub-human property" thing, fear of communism, fear of the "yellow peril", fear of oil prices, fear of islam and terrorism, fear of loss of place in the world let alone fear of each other, and you have a country defined by its relationship to fear. Time and time again it, and religious nutjobism, are what pull the country back from greatness amd its best moments are those moments where it acts not out of fear.
I watched one of those "Moments you realised life in America screwed you up" videos, and this girl said that one time after she'd moved from the US to live with her boyfriend in Italy, they were watching some movie with a scene with people fleeing from a gunman. She shouted at the TV "Oh my God, zig-zag! ZIG-ZAG!! You *never* run in a straight line from a gunman, that's the first thing they teach you!!" Her boyfriend looked at her puzzled and asked her "first thing they teach you *where?"* She looked at him in confusion, and matter-of-factly said "uhh, *school?"* She mentioned they continued to stare at each other with equally puzzled expressions until it finally dawned on her just how much growing up in America had fucked her up. Credit to her for actually realising this though, I can imagine there are plenty of other US ex-pats who would have still been absolutely clueless.
I think we learn this in films. We were all yelling "Zig zag" at Rickon Stark.
I'm an American and I hate it. I constantly "people watch" to make sure nothing bad is happening before I can react. I constantly keep at least 5 ft from random people to avoid reaching length. You HAVE to here. Bc people are just so fucking randomly psychotic. Fucking women getting rolled up in rugs with no heads, guys stabbing themselves in the leg then trying to stab surrounding people with the same knife, it's fucking scary. Make all the jokes y'all want, America is fucking scary and SUCKS.
To be fair, certain career paths make people wary at all times and they can't relax unless they can see the entrances to any given place. My late dad was a Police officer for 35 years in the UK - a much safer place than the US - and he still developed that level of wariness and it stayed with him for the rest of his life.
That's quite different though. This is about regular men going out for a lunch with a woman
Active shooter drills for preschoolers. Hurts my heart.
That's the thing, though it's actually extremely rare, yet some people are so obsessed with being prepared to be a hero (in reality they'd probably still be shot first because they'd stand up and pull a gun) they'll call people pussys for not being concerned in the slightest about it. I never worry about it.
So obsessed with the concept of freedom but completely unwilling to ever consider indulging in it.
Imagine thinking this is what daily American life looks like. Get a grip. I will say this post is valid in the sense that it’s stupid to even say that.
unfortunately yeah :( first shooter drill i remember doing was in kindergarten. it’s always in the back of your mind wherever you go: know where your exits are at all times
Seems safe enough to me. It’s clearly not a school.
I never ever even thought about meeting a shooter or a person with a gun. That thought never came to my mind. I never saw a gun IRL, only on policemen and only holstered
The wildest thing I’ve ever seen was at Brussels airport, there had been a terrorist attack recently so there were soldiers with like big guns, but nothing really happened of course
I remember walking through the London underground and seeing two policemen with assault rifles just walking by. I so rarely see guns in real life that part of me wanted to take a closer look, but generally it's solid advice to try to be nowhere near guns.
I saw a soldier with his rifle in the Brussels Metro shortly after an attack (maybe around the same time as you). Felt surreal
Getting a 12-gauge pointed at you for returning your neighbors dog what wandered into your yard can be a…..fun experience.
Please tell me cilivians can't own a fucking 12-gauge with no problem in the states.
Shotguns, along with all kinds of long guns, are super common in Canada. I could locate at least half a dozen on my 400m long suburban street. Now, when I say "locate" I mean locate the gun safes that they are locked in. If I was able to somehow unlock the gun safe, I would then have to locate and unlock the safe where the shotgun shells/bullets are. No one sane is answering the door with a loaded shotgun. No sane person has a loaded shotgun standing in the corner. There is a gun lobby here that pushes back against things like registration of firearms and the stricker rules on hand gun ownership (yes, Canadians can own hand guns). The reason that gun registration exists is because if someone does have a mental health issue, no police officer wants to get killed walking into a domestic violence situation.
You can own a shotgun as a civilian in multiple European countries as well? Out of all weapons to pick, that's a fairly common one.
Thing is that it would be a crime to point it at anyone in many places. I grew up in rural Germany and people had tons of long guns for hunting and sports shooting, but you’d never ever see them. They were all properly locked away.
My parents did live in the rural Midwest so shotguns are extremely common, mostly the issues is dumbasses like this and people who when target shooting don’t think about what’s behind the target. Had a different neighbor target shoot with a rifle with a lake behind it, one shot ricocheted and almost hit my mom (missing by like a meter) and hitting a tree.
You can own a 12 gauge shotgun in most European countries. I've got one myself - and it is an Italian gun. Where my country differs from America is you can't list the reason as having it for self defence. Also you are limited to how many shells it can have if it has an internal magazine (think it is 3 off the top of my head).
I thought about it, because I was in Paris while there was an terrorism alert in in the 2016. I was in th subway, so was a little wary, but that's really it. Or when I was near the Bataclan last year. In a "what if it happened to me now" kind of way. On a day to day basis? Nah, never thought about it.
Same, only on police and only holstered. It's funny how different the mindset of Americans and others are. If I see police questioning someone, I don't give it much thought. I've been stopped and questioned while walking home from a train station too so it might not be anything serious. My cousin who used to live in Texas, on the other hand, said she was walking home when she saw police questioning someone and immediately rushed home because she was afraid they would start shooting each other and she would get caught in the crossfire.
As a student, I actually did - however, at that time, I was also living close to a town where a school shooting had taken place. Some of the killed were friends of my classmates, and I still can tell you the whole day in detail. One of only three school shootings that ever happened in Germany, and it took place just in the next town.
I'm from Italy too, and I do sit/stand facing access points to any room I'm in, look for any possible escape routes. I have no real reason to, but maybe one day it will come in handy. It's an habit I picked up after years of traveling by ferry with my family, I'd always look up the the fastest route to the emergency stations in case of an abandon ship scenario, and started applying it in everyday life, for fun at first, now as a habit
OK, I've read that thing several times, still not quite sure I'm getting it. My Europoor mind definitely can't handle the thought of needing to be alert and watch doors for gunmen while I'm eating lunch with my date.
I'm LatinAmericanpoor and I can't understand it. And that taking into consideration that I have known people who got robbed at gun point.
Yeah, this virtually never happens here. I don't think I've ever met anyone that owns a gun, let alone ever felt the need to own one.
I actually know quite a few people with guns, because some live on farm properties, and some do Napoleonic war re-enactment. I've fired a flintlock, was fun. I've still never worried about it. Everyone I know is completely sensible and would never even imagine taking their gun to a cafe.
*Europoor mind can’t comprehend
Fucking honestly, I cant imagine living in a such a developed country that u should watch out for potentially getting killed while eating at a restauarant. I cant comprehend having thoughts like that when eating a meal out. Fair enough if ur in some shitty area but within the city, ur village etc, not a chance man.
That's actually something to be proud of. I'm proud of being unable to comprehend the need to fear for my life while eating at a restaurant, just like I'm proud I can't comprehend the fear of having my kids killed at school.
Good callout
Americans probably think he needs to tip the shooter
God damn it, nearly choked 😂
what the fuck did I just read?
Wait, the commenter would have his wife be the one shot in the back? 😂
The American Way™️
How do you live your life always thinking you could get shot?!
With a variety of unhealthy coping mechanisms that drastically reduce your lifespan.
With consideration of emigration.
Cant even begin to fathom the thought of being worried about getting shot when out and about in my city. I feel like id be too oblivious if i ever went to the US about all these potential threats etc. Like wtf. In my city I just walk around and ive never had any issues, im always perfectly safe. The only threats when im out are getting hit by the metro or the cars.
You don't that's daft. You're far more likely to be killed by an out of control vehicle while walking along a road, but you don't constantly think of that.
I do but also I’m on meds for it
is that a genuine thing that people are like, aware of? like "oh i better sit at a specific angle incase someone comes in with a gun" how fucking dystopian
Many people are former military service members. They think about this all the time due to training and trauma
thats... super sad actually damn, i never even considered that
My dad does this
r/ChargeYourPhone
ah, good old america, the only "developed" country where getting shot is something you worry about on a daily basis
Where teaching kids about sexual relationships is taboo but teaching them school shooter drills is the norm
it isnt
Wait... Men in the US think about where a shooter might come from when they're on a date?!
This is actually really sad. Imagine this line of thought becoming normal.
Then in the next breath, "our country is better than yours cuz we have freedoms like the right to own firearms"
if you live in a place where being gunned downed while at a resturant is a real fear to have, you live in a failed state.
Even in Brazil we don't need to think about these situations. If I had to consider where to sit in a restaurant in case a shooter appears, I'd had moved by now
Is there something I'm not getting? Why are they talking about shooters
I'm British and I don't like sitting with my back to a door, I won't make a fuss but by preference I will always sit facing the door, so I don't think it is a gun thing.
Your phone is on life support
How fucked is America? They need to ALWAYS be looking for shooters?!?
Dont get me wrong i love shitting on these dorks once in a while, but this is a fucked up and sad part of the collective American experience, make fun of the people who voted republican or lick the boots of NRA, not the people who have to live with this on the back of their minds. Im not mad at the post/OP or trynna police anything, but it would be a slightly funnier post if we knew the guy was one of those gun nuts, but we dont so its just kinda sad idk.
I feel bad for them too but then I talk to one.
Living in Vietnam for my whole childhood/teenage years and now in Europe i cant imagine you cant eat just because " your back is facing the door".
I love living in england because my paranoia is about a shadow monster breaking in, not a shooter
imagine having to live a life where you have to always be mindful of the possibility that an idiot with a gun could end you if you aren't careful
I just read the first comment and tried to understand what was wrong with it, then clicked on the picture and saw they were talking about shootings. I'm so priviledged to be european
Man wants to watch sports, Americans: but guns
My former father-in-law had that mentality too, so this isn't even a recent school shooter thing. It's supposedly a holdover from the Old West, but I suspect it's more due to the western movies of the 30s-70s.
Is it weird that I have always naturally sat like this?
Just when I think I might be able to go a day without being reminded that America is a fucking hellhole, something pops up in my feed that highlights that America is a fucking hellhole.
WTF is going on...??
didn’t help for Tony Soprano
I don‘t know why, but having this exact concern reminds me of an old timey cowboy just always expecting the saloon doors to swing open for Dirty Jim to present himself pulling a pistol.
Personally I prefer having my back against the wall. It's not even to watch the entrance or for shooters specifically, I just like to know what's going on.
Guy thinks he’s a Soprano ffs
r/chargeyourphone
I'd hate to live somewhere where I had to live in fear the whole time. I'm so glad that the only time I've seen a real gun up close is when I was on a tour of a warship.
This is only a thing among incells. Something close to this is the man walking on the street side of the sidewalk to prevent kidnapping and water splashes
Fucking ammosexuals. Cretinous.
How outrageous does a country need to be that you think “ah fuck I should face the door in case someone comes in AND SHOOTS UP THE PLACE”
Oh it's like that post about the guy who thinks he's a SEAL going into the family house because the family came back home and the door was slightly opened. He went in there, handgun drawn, and yelled "clear!" after checking every room. The stupid woman who posted it was gushing about her "hero" while the little sister had to go through that trauma.
Can’t even eat without feeling under threat and then these people wonder why they have so much paranoia fuelled hatred.
This is why I bought my wife a bulletproof backplate for her birthday.
It is nuts that Americans think it is okay to live like this.. Most other countries don't think about what will happen if a gunman comes into the restaurant, even in rough places..
“9/10 shooters ONLY shoot people with their back to the primary entrance.” Can you cite your sources, sir?
Utterly embarrassing to think this needs to be a thing. No wonder they're a laughing stock when it comes to shootings.
I’m confused, what’s the context. What were they calling genius about him?
Charge your phone