Great piece, @alwaysamom .
“You see fewer in these countries because Switzerland has a population less than Virginia. Finland less than Minnesota. Canada less than California.”
It has nothing to do with the size of their populations. They don’t idolize guns and the gun culture - nor do the carry them around like some accessory to show how “tough” they are.
http://www.npr.org/2014/06/13/321668585/could-finland-teach-the-u-s-a-lesson-on-guns
I don’t mind comparing what certain jurisdictions do to reduce gun deaths, but lets start with an even advantage, otherwise its a pointless exercise. So instead of comparing the US to Finland or Canada, let’s look at our own states with the lowest gun deaths and figure out what they did to reduce or prevent them. Why is New Hampshire’s lower than Louisiana’s (and Finland’s)?
I don’t even understand what your point is… Mass shootings happen in other countries. They just do. So, what exactly is it that you’re trying to say?
I stopped having conversations about the rates long ago because I realized the other side is math-challenged (in some cases, I suspect purposely so) and do not adjust for population size and for ghetto and drug / gang violence in the US, both of which account for the majority of homicides in this country, but are relatively absent in the other countries oft mentioned.
Adjust for population size and also adjust for the segregated ghetto and gang violence, both which do not involve law-abiding gun owners, then it turns out that the US can actually look better than some of the countries mentioned, However, even with the gang violence etc., the US is not worse. However, people think if they keep repeating it makes it true.
But, as this thread and others show, posters use statistically incomparable gross numbers, make sweeping general statements, and the low information statistically-challenged, non-thinker just accepts the number. Then when caught in the numbers problem, the posters revert back to the weak argument that “Even one is too much.” Yeah, as if a logical thinking people think they can stop everything without seriously infringing liberties.
There is no point reference your posts. The only point is the poster does not like guns, so it does not matter what the true numbers are or what the real incidence rates are.
“Mass shootings happen in other countries. They just do. So, what exactly is it that you’re trying to say?”
Out of the top 32 mass shootings in the world - 14 happened in the US. It is a fact that there are not the number or frequency of mass shootings in any other western country.
Per capita numbers are more useful.
And it would be more useful to include all mass killings, since this topic is about gun control.
From that article:
“Still, the U.S. doesn’t rank No. 1. At 0.15 mass shooting fatalities per 100,000 people, the U.S. had a lower rate than Norway (1.3 per 100,000), Finland (0.34 per 100,000) and Switzerland (1.7 per 100,000).”
For some context, this would take some real serious math massaging and might be impossible to adjust for to make any useful sense.
This is because the populations and cultures of said populations in each US state and in each foreign country are different - trying to adjust for the sheer number of permutations of laws and populations may be the first insurmountable task.
Simply, one population does not react to laws the same as another population. The same laws in parts of England may work because of a more aging population and emigration of youth, but not so in an American state with reverse population dynamics. It would be comparing apples and oranges, using the same laws. Same for trying to compare different US states and cities.
However, the even larger issue in trying to adjust for population dynamics is this fact - violent crime in the US has dropped some 40% in the last 20 years, even as gun ownership and CCPs have more than doubled - I think it actually tripled in the last 30 years. Murder rates are at all-time lows.
Gun control advocates cannot logically explain this because their current argument is more guns equal more violent crime and deaths that is why they (guns) should be reduced. Yet, we have hard current data that is not true in this country, and more guns (lots more guns and lots more people carrying) did not increase violent crimes or deaths. The $64,000 sociological question is “Why the decrease?,” but this decrease is clearly opposite the prophesies of the gun control advocates, where the increase in guns should increase crime.
I am not implying there is a correlation between increased guns and decreased crime (even though there might be), just saying that the main gun control argument that more guns equal more violent crime and mass shootings per capita (EDIT: Post #246 provides some specific data) can be proved statistically rather easily to be not true.
Therefore, the sociological and demographic issues, which effect how people use guns, are far more complex than any law or set of laws. And that is the main silliness of the “another” gun control law argument - it is trying to make something, which is very dynamic into a straight line equation. The last 20 years of data has already negated that straight line construct.
"So instead of comparing the US to Finland or Canada, let’s look at our own states with the lowest gun deaths and figure out what they did to reduce or prevent them. Why is New Hampshire’s lower than Louisiana’s (and Finland’s)?
Here is a list of states and gun deaths.
http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-per-100000/
Overview of New Hampshire law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_New_Hampshire
Why does CT, HI, MA, NJ and NY have lower rates of gun deaths than every other state - including New Hampshire?
Those maps are very telling, @emilybee. They look very similar to some other maps out there but with different coloring.
If CT, MA, NY, NJ and HI are lower than NH, then they all must be lower than Finland, too. Suddenly Finland isn’t looking so good.
Finland has a lot of guns.
@emilybee,
According to the Brady Campaign, those are the states with the strictest gun control laws.
http://www.bradycampaign.org/sites/default/files/SCGLM-Final10-spreads-points.pdf
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-hom
I think Finland is looking just fine.
“According to the Brady Campaign, those are the states with the strictest gun control laws.”
Now who would have thunk that! 
Trying to compare injury by firearms is silly. Deaths by firearms isn’t a bad thing. If someone is coming at you with a knife and you shoot them with a gun and they die are we considering that a bad thing? And many of those are suicides, they have nothing to do with crime.
Here’s a link for gun murder rates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state
I read recently that one-third of the deaths by firearms are suicides.
There are also defintion complications with the term ‘mass killings’. A mass killing used to be 4, now it’s three here in the U. S. The statistics also don’t count (for some bizarre reason) as a mass killing, the killing of one’s own family no matter the numbers. They also have to take place during a certain time period. For example, the sniper killings in DC which took place over a couple of weeks, aren’t counted.
We can spin the numbers all we want…the United States is the leader of deaths by guns in the first world.
“Deaths by firearms isn’t a bad thing.” >:)
I can’t read your link, but if Finland is doing just fine, then at least 6 of our states are doing even better.