Young Turks attacks Ben Shapiro for quoting the Crime Prevention Research Center’s research on Mass Public Shootings

The Young Turk’s Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur spent a recent show attacking Ben Shapiro for referencing the Crime Prevention Research Center‘s research on Mass Public Shootings around the world (156,000 views as of March 21, 2019). Following an earlier attack by Snopes.com, Kasparian and Uygur argue that it is misleading to make comparisons across countries using per capita rates. But that is like saying you should compare how dangerous California is compared to Rhode Island by simply looking at the number of murders in the two states. Hopefully, most people would realize that would be pretty silly because California’s population is more than 37 times larger. It would have to have more than 37 times the total number of murders to be more dangerous. There is a reason why the FBI crime data compares murder rates across states or cities and not just the total number of murders. Similarly, when you are talking about mass public shootings, you don’t expect Norway with 5.26 million people to have as many attacks as the United States with 327.2 million people. Using the FBI’s definition of mass public shootings, the United States as a whole may have averaged 3.2 mass public shootings per year.  A detailed response to the Snopes.com article that Kasparian and Uygur are citing is available here.