About

British People "Well At Least Our Schools Are Not A Shooting Range" refers to a joking retort used by British and European people to defend various aspects of their countries from criticism, comparing American schools to shooting galleries due to the elevated school-shooting statistics vs. European schools. The joke became the subject of criticism in 2022 due to its overuse by British and European internet users, with people often mocking the cliche, particularly on TikTok where users make skits where an American points out the differences between American and British speech followed by a retort of "well at least our schools are not a shooting gallery" from a British person, represented as a fish with bad teeth.

Origin

One of the earliest viral memes to compare schools to shooting ranges in the context of a British retort is a screenshot of a now-deleted tweet from August 29th, 2015. The poster compares a number of ways British people speak differently than Americans, writing, "It's mom not mum, it's chips not crisps, it's fries not chips, it's color not colour, it's soccer not football, it's football not rugby." The comment underneath reads, "It's school not shooting range." The tweet was posted to the Facebook^[1] page British Memes on February 25th, 2017, gaining over 16,000 reactions and 27,000 shares in five years (shown below). It was also posted to /r/shitAmericansSay^[3] in 2018, gaining over 6,000 upvotes in four years. The joke is based on the fact that America has the highest rate of school shootings.^[2]

Spread

The joke is often the subject of mockery by people who find it overused online, who paint it as the go-to retort by the British to Americans. On October 6th, 2021, Instagram^[8] user vaxxey posted an image macro using an image of Ludwig the Accursed from Bloodborne to represent British people using the joke as the caption, gaining over 16,000 likes in six months. On March 2nd, 2022, TikToker^[4] @vonviddy posted a skit where he, playing an American, mentions a number of differences between the way British and American people speak, resulting in the British person, portrayed by the same disfigured character, using the joke repeatedly, gaining over 5.2 million views in a month (shown below).

Following the video, jokes like this became increasingly popular where memers use images of animals and creatures with bad or big teeth to represent British people using the retort. On March 12th, Twitter^[5] user @SAWARESEVEN posted an image of a capybara using the joke, gaining over 700 likes in a month. On March 31st, TikToker^[6] @owen2 posted a video similar to @vonviddy's using an image of a fish with human-like teeth^[7] as the British person, gaining over 4.9 million views in six days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References