Facts Worth Spreading: It Doesn’t Happen in Other Countries Edition

France has suffered more casualties from mass public shootings in 2015 than the US has suffered during Obama’s entire presidency (508 to 424).

Most of that is because of the Paris attacks, and the previous Charlie Hebdo attacks.

Also the death rate from public mass shootings between the US and Europe puts the US in the middle of those figures.

Remember, the United States has a population nearly the size of Europe, and because the US is a single huge media market (because we all speak the same language) it seems like it happens here more often. Once you run the numbers, it’s just not true that we’re exceptional in this regard.

14 thoughts on “Facts Worth Spreading: It Doesn’t Happen in Other Countries Edition”

  1. Some of that is _very_ dodgy. I’ll run it by some stats guys who love picking this kind of thing apart before posting it anywhere.

    1. Feel free. There’s been tremendous efforts to discredit John Lott, but so far no one has really been able to discredit his research. What in particular is dodgy?

      1. What definitions they picked, how they counted wounds, etc. etc.
        It just smelled a little. Not nearly as bad as the Reddit propaganda the media jumped on, but still worth the “trust, but verify” treatment.

  2. The lefty media, and anti-gun groups (sorry for being redundant) are touting 350+ “mass shootings” this year. Lott seems to be showing many fewer shootings. What is the disconnect?

    1. Lott’s definition:
      – 4 or more *killed*
      Reddit’s list (whith 350+)
      – 4 or more *shot* (wounded or killed)

      Another difference is that Lott does not count shootings involving other criminal activities, ie: rival gangs shooting it out.

      This may be closer to the general public’s definition which associates “mass shooting” with pseudo-random acts like Sandy Hook or people going postal.

      In short, there’s no definition of “mass shooting” …

      1. They also include thing like a police shooting, where 1 BG was killed and multiple bystanders were injured by the police, and an incident involving 2 kids and a BB gun: multiple ‘shootings’ with no injury. The so called study is nothing more than a way to twist words, gain attention, and try to sway the low information fence sitters.

        I like the suggestion of 1 PAFOA member: let’s count ‘mass shootings prevented by guns’. Anytime a bad guy is shot and has more than four bullets left in the gun we’ve just prevented a mass shooting (or leftover bullets + victims adds up to four or more). Wordplay and skewed statistics work both ways, but unfortunately our side is just too intellectually honest.

        1. I would say, fortunately–not unfortunately. When their side has to resort to such lies, they are losing, and losing badly. And they know it.

          BTW, it’s much worse than 1 or 2 instances of them using a kid who shot someone with a BB gun. There are multiple BB gun uses, airsoft guns, etc.

          Their numbers are pure BS. It’s not even close.

        2. I wouldn’t go so far as we should do that (except rhetorically, of course, when responding to such “studies”), but I *will* observe this: when someone is obviously intending to kill lots of random people, but is stopped with someone with a gun, then in those instances, it’s not uncommon that only one or two people are killed.

          Since the FBI definition of mass murder is “four or more people dead” (and I think there has to be a randomness aspect to it as well), this means that, statistically, a mass murder didn’t occur, so no mass murder was prevented.

          Thus, if we can carefully identify events where it’s pretty clear that the perpetrator was planning on killing lots of random people, and is stopped by someone with a gun, we should count these as “attempted mass murders”, and lump them in with the rest, when it comes to trying to determine how successful someone with a gun can be in stopping such events….

      2. Tam brought up that they are apparently not distinguishing between the shooter and victims and who shot whom in the “number shot per incident” count.

        Given how many shooters in (what the general public would likely define as) a “mass shooting” either deliberately kill themselves, or end up shot and wounded/killed by police, the potential inflation is enormous.

  3. See one of my earlier posts today. They are counting gang violence as public mass shootings and hoping no one notices.

      1. Confound it! I really wish I had the time to compile a “Gun Study Hall of Shame”, that lists all the gun studies that are fatally flawed from a statistical standpoint.

        It’s somewhat surprising how many of these studies are done, that have glaring holes anyone with even a modicum of understanding of basic statistics, can blast apart.

        (I remember one person explicitly stating–and this was several years ago–that these things are so common, it illustrates that they aren’t making rookie mistakes, so much as they are deliberately lying, in efforts to make gun control look good.)

      2. Random pet peeve: From that article:

        One thing we all need is better data. Since 1996, Congress and the gun lobby have prevented the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting comprehensive research into gun violence. In the wake of the latest horror, and the confusion that followed, will that finally change?

        You know, if you’re so determined to get to the bottom of this, why do you need government to get involved? Why not petition the Joyce Foundation, or Bloomberg’s EveryTown, or even crowd-source your research? Granted, money from the Joyce Foundation or Bloomberg should probably be considered tainted…but then, that’s precisely why the CDC is forbidden from studying these issues as well.

  4. In other words, if some guy fires a few rounds at a police car parked across the street, and those cops return fire injuring the shooter and a few bystanders, it’s a “mass shooting”. Got it.

    For a group of people who love to scream SCIENCE at every turn, liberals sure do throw empirical data in the trash and run on emotions when it comes to guns. Maybe we need to start citing research and labeling them as “deniers”.

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