America Has the Proud Distinction Of Leading The World In Mass Shootings
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From The Millenial Feed:
Mass shootings in America has very much become a hot topic in recent years. Whether it be racially fueled or by someone with a mental illness, its prevalence within American culture has become well established, even more so in comparison to the rest of the world.
Specifically, between 1966 and 2012, the United States, which counts for only 5 percent of the world’s population, has managed to become the number one country for mass public shootings, totaling 31 percent worldwide. In fact, within the 46-year time span, there has been a total of 292 mass shootings that resulted in a minimum of four people killed.
The data examined within the study, presented at the American Sociological Association by Criminal Justice Professor Adam Lankford, was collected by various institutions including the NYPD, FBI and other international sources.
Read More: Why Does the US Have So Many Mass Shootings?
When examining the variety of factors in connection to these mass shootings, the data may not be surprising to some. Altogether, several of these factors include “chronic and widespread gap between Americans’ expectations for themselves and their actual achievement, Americans’ adulation of fame, and the extent of gun ownership in the United States,” as according to LA Times.
In terms of gun ownership, Lankford found a strong correlation between that and violence. This may be so since the U.S. ranked first in gun ownership, 88.8 firearms per 100 Americans as suggested by the survey, with Yemen in a “not so close” second place having 54.8 firearms per 100. What’s even more alarming is where many of these incidences occur. An unprecedented amount of these mass shootings, 62 percent to be exact, happened within commercial places or schools.
For More Information, Read: Why the U.S. Has 31% of the World’s Mass Shootings
With that being said, the need for better gun control has been discussed in relation to Americans’ right to bear arms, which 65 percent discussed in the survey. Still, with a total of 270 million firearms circling within the borders of the U.S., a need for regulating guns may be necessary given the information presented within the study.
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Sadly none of this differs from any of the other reactions to any of the other rampage shootings. There is so much sophistry, so many evasive statements and everything is framed as either being meaningless or being terrifying. So little in the way of practical solution, or statistics not gerrymandered to persuade one of the predetermined opinion.
During the last Gulf war, the Right outdid themselves to convince us that ordinary life in US cities was more dangerous than in Baghdad and somehow that our cities were not dangerous at all. Which is it? Depends on what you’re selling. Maybe this is more of that.
Still, to say that life in “safe” communities isn’t safe is going to get you thrown off the 6th grade debating team. We’re tailoring the word “safe” or better, putting it in a Halloween costume.
Much of the world is at war and filling up with refugees. Oregon is safer. You’re not using a representative sample, but if it’s about guns you’ll never ever get an argument that isn’t rigged or mere conjecture. I still maintain that Regression to the Mean makes most trends temporary if not Illusory and that there were periods in my memory that were more dangerous.
The idea that something has to be done and would be if it weren’t for the bogeyman is rather facile without concrete, workable and legal proposals – and nobody is offering any that I can see and many are demanding things long since put in place — like background checks.
Does anyone know what they’re talking about or is this an exercise in justifying prejudice?
Obama just said that we need to implement “sensible” and “sane” gun laws yet had nothing to suggest but background checks, which as far as I can read, are already required. He then said that you can’t predict who will go nuts and go on a shooting spree and implying that background checks won’t help. No one talks about gang related crime. Why is that?
There are so many statistics on what works and what does not and so many sophistical arguments about why such arguments never apply. We never hear about correlations, we hear only about principles and this being America, prejudice and principle look like identical twins.
Why do we bother to suggest things that would require martial law and the forced confiscation of hundreds of millions of firearms by house to house search by a veritable police state and still wouldn’t work even if were legal and practical and wouldn’t cause a revolution? Is that any more worth talking about than the NRA idea of arming everyone and making the whole country like Deadwood in the 1870’s. It didn’t work in Deadwood. It won’t work in Detroit.
I’m not trying to sell anything but objectivity. Sure we have more guns and we have more TV’s and refrigerators and cars because we’re richer than other countries and for more of the US is wilderness than Singapore. Guns are expensive. Weak argument. Yes there are more collectors.
We have more car collectors and even Art collectors. Weak argument. Face it the constitution stands in the way of doing so many proposals. It’s changeable if enough minds can be changed and they cannot with the type of arguments being used, no matter how passionate they are.
My mother wanted every single gun thrown to the bottom of the ocean. This is the only law that would work. Ban all guns, all the time, from everybody, forever.
Short of that ultimate solution, the Conservatives have exactly the correct approach. Place armed guards in every school of any size, pass intelligent concealed carry laws, virtually eliminate any “gun free” zones and pray.
Sadly Mike, I am not joking.
Putting all males from 15 to 45 in jail would work as well and would be more practical and legally feasible as long as we’re into prior restraints and police states. Same for Bans. They work even less well than prayers.
But think of the millions of lives we could save by banning war and disease and while we’re at it — ban death!
Why do we make it so easy for the NRA to get people to fear us and laugh at us and ignore us?
Let me frame this a bit differently. If one looks at the statistics of death by violence America is likely one of the most dangerous places on earth to live. This is especially true if one is a person of poverty and/or a person of color. During the years of the Iraq war there were more people murdered in the City of Chicago and the City of Detroit than Americans killed in combat. When we toss in the rest of the country there almost as many murder victims in America as there were casualties in Vietnam. Yes, we have more mass killings per capita than any other country but that number pales in the light of how many people are victims of just plain old murder for whatever reason. I am not sure whether this is part of just thinning of the herd or Americans are just plain stupid.
Really bad use of statistics, I think. More deaths among a group of 325 million people than in a group of a few hundred thousand? I should think so. Likely one of the most dangerous places yes, but likely and actually are an odd couple, aren’t they. We killed 2 million Vietnamese. Those don’t figure into your count. Why is that?
Statistics and narrative are not the same thing. In my 70 years, I know two people who were murdered and both with the same kitchen knife. Now shall I proose that since we have more kitchen knives than in Andorra, limiting every household to one while banning “military style” Swiss Army knives is going to make Detroit as safe as Andorra?
Asu usual correlation and causation are given as equal, stupid is another word for someone who disagrees and around and around we go marshalling facts to shore up the conclusion. Too many guns or too many in the hands of gang bangers? Talk about school shootings and don’t ask why nut jobs are picking schools this year because we need to stress one correlation, sell it as causation and ignore another correlation that has a stronger causal factor. I give up.
Glenn, I admit to being out of sync in the proportionality of my presenting of the seemingly unending deaths that occur each year by guns. However, it seems that we, the American society, have simply come to accept the garden variety, every day murders by gun and only get upset when there is some sort of mass killing or one with special circumstances, i.e., a famous person. Just as it occurred on 9/11 with that tragedy. 3,000 people died at the hands of those few terrorists and while that was horrific, the survivors and/or the victims families received much needed compensation. That same year more than 10,000 other Americans died from murder and their families received nothing more than a few lines in a local newspaper. This became a little more personal to me when I worked on a bank robbery case in Greensboro, Alabama where a teller was murdered with a shotgun leaving her husband with two small children to raise alone. The shooter who I was helping to represent was overheard saying, “The bitch got blood on my gun.” But, seeing as how she was just another murder there wasn’t anyone calling for compensation to help her husband and children, they got nothing. The shooter, a young black female, received life in prison in the federal system and life without parole in the state system.
While I will grant you the circumstances are different in total, they are, in many ways similar. First, both victims are dead; secondly, many of the victims of 9/11 worked for financial firms as did the young woman in Greensboro. Thirdly, The victims in the 9/11 attack were killed by terrorists while depending on how you want to perceive terror, the woman in Greensboro was certainly terrorize by the three people holding up the the bank and, in particularly Ms. F.Y. Jackson, the shooter.
My point for these ramblings is that America has gotten numb to steady stream of ordinary violent gun deaths. They raised not an eyebrow except for those in the immediate area of the murder, suicide, accident, or whatever. At some point the mass killings will become ordinary killings as well.
Well old bean. The right to bear arms is enshrined in your constitooshun so what can you do?
Change it? Oh…er…yeah!! 🙂
Democracy is in our constitution too — sorry about that.