133
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] podian@piefed.social 1 points 6 days ago

As much as I want ICE abolished (and would not mind worse), from reading the article and looking at the references, the logic in the claim is a bit dubious.

1A) 0 ICE has ever been killed "in the line of duty" on the American streets.

1B) The article arrives at a death rate of 1 in 95k / yr based on slightly broader (but still valid) conditions.

  1. In 2024 there were 336 school shooting incidents and 276 victims wounded or killed; in 2025 there were 233 and 148 respectively (k12ssdb; I assumed all victims are students btw).

  2. There were about 50 million K-12 students enrolled in public schools in 2024

  3. Elementary school shooting incidents are just over 20% (incidents no victims, and not for 2024 but the entire k12ssdb reporting period)

5A) Taking the larger and more tragic number of dead+wounded from (2) divided by 50 million we get about 1 in 181k.

5B) For every three shooting victims, roughly one dies. So I would triple that to 1 in 540k or so. This is a ballpark for the elementary school death rate (what the article refers to).

  1. For the article headline claim to be ordinarily true, [1B] should be greater than [5B]. It is not as 95k isnt greater than 540k or even 181k. Still, I find this unacceptably close to the ICE death rate by orders of magnitude but it's not the most honest comparison.

  2. In an alternative interpretation, the article could be using the value in [1A] for the basis of the claim instead of [1B], which would be trivial as the nonzero number of elementary school shooting deaths would always be greater than 0. But it's not worded that way. Risk is by definition future-facing.

  3. The population of ICE agents is "only" about 20k (still too many) as of very recently, which is not nearly high enough to beat the "rounding errors" or granularity of a 1 in 100k/yr death rate.

In closing remarks, fuck ICE. ACAB.

[-] DougHolland@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

I love the math, appreciate the slide rule work, and flunked algebra so I can't argue.

this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
133 points (100.0% liked)

AMUSING, INTERESTING, OUTRAGEOUS, or PROFOUND

2972 readers
100 users here now

This is a page for anything that's amusing, interesting, outrageous, or profound.

♦ ♦ ♦

RULES

❶ Each player gets six cards, except the player on the dealer's right, who gets seven.

❷ Posts, comments, and participants must be amusing, interesting, outrageous, or profound.

❸ This page uses Reverse Lemmy-Points™, or 'bad karma'. Please downvote all posts and comments.

❹ Posts, comments, and participants that are not amusing, interesting, outrageous, or profound will be removed.

❺ This is a non-smoking page. If you must smoke, please click away and come back later.

❻ Don't be a dick.

Please also abide by the instance rules.

♦ ♦ ♦

Can't get enough? Visit my blog.

♦ ♦ ♦

Please consider donating to Lemmy and Lemmy.World.

$5 a month is all they ask — an absurdly low price for a Lemmyverse of news, education, entertainment, and silly memes.

 

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS