It isn’t too surprising that many Americans think that the United States is unique in terms of mass public shootings simply because the US media either completely ignore or barely covers attacks outside the US. Both Brazil and France have extremely strict gun control.
São Paulo, Brazil, December 11, 2018
…A gunman opened fire in a Catholic cathedral near Brazil’s most populous city, São Paulo, killing five people and wounding several others.
From Stossel TV:
Dozens of news outlets reported that America has the most mass shooters in the world. Many say that shows America needs more gun control.CNN claimed that “the U.S. has the most mass shootings”. The WSJ reported that “U.S. leads the world in mass shootings.” Nearly every major media outlet, and Former President Obama, said the same.
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 18 years from 1998 to 2015, our list contains 2,354 attacks and at least 4,880 shooters outside the United States and 53 attacks and 57 shooters within our country.
CPRC original research, International Comparisons, Lankford, mass public shootings
A police officer and two others were murdered at Chicago’s Mercy Hospital today. One person was killed outside the hospital and the other two were killed inside it. The killer, Juan Lopez, was himself killed, though it isn’t yet clear if he took his own life or was killed by police.…
This graph shows the number of mass public shootings per year from the beginning of 1998 through today, November 8, 2018. Our data set is available here. 2018 has the second highest number of mass public shootings over those 21 years, with 2012 having the highest number. The third highest number was in 1999.…
At least twelve people were murdered and 18 injured at a bar in Ventura County last night. Our hearts go out to those who lost loved family members or friends in the attack. We can’t imagine what is going through the minds on parents.
California issues very few concealed handgun permits and Ventura County is below the state per capita average rate, but permitted concealed handguns are banned in bars and other places where the primary source of revenue is from serving alcohol.…
With at least 8 people killed at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue, Americans want something done that would actually make a difference. President Trump is actually offering useful advice.
…President Donald Trump: “If they had protection inside, the results would have been far better . . . If they had some kind of protection inside the temple, maybe it could have been a very much different situation.
Unless you watch the news closely you likely missed the news that a day ago there was a very deadly mass public school shooting in Crimea. It will probably be another day or so until there is a good idea how many people were killed by eighteen-year-old Vladislav Roslyakov. This case will quickly be forgotten in the news coverage.…
International Comparisons, mass public shootings, School Shootings
Dr. John Lott has an op-ed at the Daily Caller about the social media bias that we have faced at Facebook.
…There are lots of ways that social media outlets can bias political debates. We have heard of everything from accounts being closed down to deciding what stories are listed as trending.
Dr. John Lott was on the Michael Smerconish Show on SiriusXM radio to discuss our new research on mass public shooting rates in countries around the world. This segment was originally supposed to go for “10-12 min – tops 14,” but clearly Dr. Lott remained on the show much longer than that and there were no commercial breaks.…
