The truth about mass public shootings in the US vs. Elsewhere

 Here is a link to a paper by John Lott, "Comparing the Global Rate of Mass Public Shootings to the U.S.'s Rate and Comparing Changes Over Time".

The paper shows that what you have heard from the media, most politicians, and various anti-gun groups are mostly lies.

Here are examples of those lies.

“I say this every time we’ve got one of these mass shootings: This just doesn’t happen in other countries.” –Obama, news conference at COP21 climate conference in Paris, Dec. 1, 2015.

“The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world.” –President Obama, interview that aired on CBS Evening News, Dec. 2, 2015

“You don’t see murder on this kind of scale, with this kind of frequency, in any other advanced nation on Earth.” – President Obama, speech at U.S. Conference of Mayors, June 19, 2015

“This doesn’t happen anywhere else on the planet.” -- California’s Governor-elect Gavin Newson, referring to 12 people killed at the Borderline Bar and Grill, Thousand Oaks, California, November 8, 2018

“We stand alone in the world in the number of mass shootings," Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), November 5, 2018

Here is the paper's Executive Summary.

The U.S. is well below the world average in terms of the number of mass public shootings, and the global increase over time has been much bigger than for the United States.

Over the 20 years from 1998 to 2017, our list contains 2,772 attacks and at least 5,764 shooters outside the United States and 62 attacks and 66 shooters within our country. By our count, the US makes up less than 1.13% of the mass public shooters, 1.77% of their murders, and 2.19% of their attacks. All these are much less than the US’s 4.6% share of the world population. Attacks in the US are not only less frequent than other countries, they are also much less deadly on average.

Out of the 101 countries where we have identified mass public shootings occurring, the United States ranks 66th in the per capita frequency of these attacks and 56th in the murder rate.

Not only have these attacks been much more common outside the US, the US’s share of these attacks has declined over time. There has been a much bigger increase over time in the number of mass shootings in the rest of the world compared to the US.