"I say this every time we've got one of these mass shootings. This just doesn't happen in other countries," the president claimed recently in Paris.
He just says these thing, you know.
John Lott has done a lot of research on gun violence and his conclusions are that these incidents are very complicated and do not analyze easily. People with easy solutions are either mistaken or insincere. He has written a response to the President's statement--a statement on a national stage that puts the Americans in a most unflattering light. These are some of his observations.
The French have witnessed three mass public shootings this year. January saw two attacks, one on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and another on a Paris supermarket. In the November attacks, 129 people were killed and 352 were injured. In 2015, France suffered more casualties than the U.S. has suffered during Obama's entire presidency (508 to 394).
Obama also overlooks Norway, where Anders Behring Breivik used a gun to kill 67 people and wound 110 others. Still others were killed by bombs that Breivik detonated. Of the four worst K-12 school shootings, three have occurred in Europe. Germany had two of these — one in 2002 at Erfut and another in 2009 at Winnenden, with a total death toll of 34.
Obama isn't correct even if he meant the frequency of fatalities or attacks. Many European countries actually have higher rates of death from public shootings that resulted in four or more murders. It's simply a matter of adjusting for America's much larger population. (The larger population is a very important element, again requiring care in analysis.)
Norway had the highest annual death rate, with two mass public shooting fatalities per million people. Macedonia had a rate of 0.38, Serbia 0.28, Slovakia 0.20, Finland 0.14, Belgium 0.14 and the Czech Republic 0.13. The U.S. comes in eighth with 0.095 mass public shooting fatalities per million people. Austria and Switzerland are close behind.
In terms of the frequency of attacks, the U.S. ranks ninth, with 0.09 attacks per million people. Macedonia, Serbia, Switzerland, Norway, Slovakia, Finland, Belgium and the Czech Republic all had higher rates.
Underlying all this misinformation--and Obama's willingness to embarrass the U.S.--is the administration's diagnosis and proposed solutions. Gun control. I have no problem with a careful look at gun accessibility. But the problem, found over and over, is that gun control does not correlate with violence. It is a placebo for administrators. The background checks ubiquitous in Europe and the U.S. always failed. So too did France and Belgium's complete bans on the weapons used in those attacks. The terrorists who attacked those countries still got the weapons that they wanted.
There is information out there, much of it the government's. And it is interesting stuff:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/01/fun-with-numbers.html
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2015/10/guns.html
The question should be, why do these people insist on this mythology?
He just says these thing, you know.
John Lott has done a lot of research on gun violence and his conclusions are that these incidents are very complicated and do not analyze easily. People with easy solutions are either mistaken or insincere. He has written a response to the President's statement--a statement on a national stage that puts the Americans in a most unflattering light. These are some of his observations.
The French have witnessed three mass public shootings this year. January saw two attacks, one on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and another on a Paris supermarket. In the November attacks, 129 people were killed and 352 were injured. In 2015, France suffered more casualties than the U.S. has suffered during Obama's entire presidency (508 to 394).
Obama also overlooks Norway, where Anders Behring Breivik used a gun to kill 67 people and wound 110 others. Still others were killed by bombs that Breivik detonated. Of the four worst K-12 school shootings, three have occurred in Europe. Germany had two of these — one in 2002 at Erfut and another in 2009 at Winnenden, with a total death toll of 34.
Obama isn't correct even if he meant the frequency of fatalities or attacks. Many European countries actually have higher rates of death from public shootings that resulted in four or more murders. It's simply a matter of adjusting for America's much larger population. (The larger population is a very important element, again requiring care in analysis.)
Norway had the highest annual death rate, with two mass public shooting fatalities per million people. Macedonia had a rate of 0.38, Serbia 0.28, Slovakia 0.20, Finland 0.14, Belgium 0.14 and the Czech Republic 0.13. The U.S. comes in eighth with 0.095 mass public shooting fatalities per million people. Austria and Switzerland are close behind.
In terms of the frequency of attacks, the U.S. ranks ninth, with 0.09 attacks per million people. Macedonia, Serbia, Switzerland, Norway, Slovakia, Finland, Belgium and the Czech Republic all had higher rates.
Underlying all this misinformation--and Obama's willingness to embarrass the U.S.--is the administration's diagnosis and proposed solutions. Gun control. I have no problem with a careful look at gun accessibility. But the problem, found over and over, is that gun control does not correlate with violence. It is a placebo for administrators. The background checks ubiquitous in Europe and the U.S. always failed. So too did France and Belgium's complete bans on the weapons used in those attacks. The terrorists who attacked those countries still got the weapons that they wanted.
There is information out there, much of it the government's. And it is interesting stuff:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/01/fun-with-numbers.html
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2015/10/guns.html
The question should be, why do these people insist on this mythology?
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