How long must we sing this song
The
American Sociological Association will be unveiling new research that shows that the United States, while representing about five percent of the total world population, is also number one in mass shootings—making up about
31 percent of the global number.
"The United States, Yemen, Switzerland, Finland, and Serbia are ranked as the Top 5 countries in firearms owned per capita, according to the 2007 Small Arms Survey, and my study found that all five are ranked in the Top 15 countries in public mass shooters per capita," said study author Adam Lankford, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama. "That is not a coincidence."
Lankford's study, which examines the period from 1966-2012, relies on data from the New York City Police Department's 2012 active shooter report, the FBI's 2014 active shooter report, and multiple international sources. It is the first quantitative analysis of all reported public mass shootings around the world that resulted in the deaths of four or more people. By definition, these shootings do not include incidents that occurred solely in domestic settings or were primarily gang-related, drive-by shootings, hostage taking incidents, or robberies.
The study used data from 171 countries. Lankford believes it shows that a country's civilian ownership rate is the best predictor of the number of mass shooters that country will produce. There are a
little more than 300,000,000 people in the U.S. That's a lot of people, some conservatives will stress. Of course there's going to be the messiness associated with people losing control of their senses and planning a mass murder of innocent people. There are
more than 7,350,000,000 people on the planet Earth. Lankford admits that guns are not
necessarily the singular issue.
"In the United States, where many individuals are socialized to assume that they will reach great levels of success and achieve 'the American Dream,' there may be particularly high levels of strain among those who encounter blocked goals or have negative social interactions with their peers, coworkers, or bosses," Lankford explained. "When we add depression, schizophrenia, paranoia, or narcissism into the mix, this could explain why the U.S. has such a disproportionate number of public mass shooters. Other countries certainly have their share of people who struggle with these problems, but they may be less likely to indulge in the delusions of grandeur that are common among these offenders in the U.S., and, of course, less likely to get their hands on the guns necessary for such attacks."
Unfortunately, Lankford still loses his NRA barbecue invitation:
In terms of the study's policy implications, Lankford said, "The most obvious implication is that the United States could likely reduce its number of school shootings, workplace shootings, and public mass shootings in other places if it reduced the number of guns in circulation."
The NRA's reply to this will be something like
"Second Amendment, I'll shoot you if you take my gun, stop trying to steal my kids. Eh...black people?"
