edwardspoonhands:

In which country are you most likely to be killed in a mass shooting…Norway? or The United States?

Turns out this isn’t a simple answer. If you go by the last ten years, the answer is Norway..by a LOT, a statistic that opponents of gun control will happily share when the President (or someone else) says “These kinds of incidents do not happen with this regularity in other countries.”

Let’s examine that.

In the last ten years there has been one mass shooting in Norway (a country with 5 million people) in which 67 people were killed. To date, this is the worst mass shooting in the history of the world, though there is some question as to whether it should be considered a terrorist attack, not a mass shooting.

In any case, because of this one mass shooting, the mass shooting fatality rate in Norway is about quadruple that of the US. 

Here’s why it doesn’t matter:

1. Norway doesn’t have particularly strong gun laws (though they have become stronger)
2. Statistical outliers happen. When comparing a trend with numerous yearly incidents to a country that has had once such incident.
3. Statistical outliers will be more common in countries with smaller populations. If you divide the US up into a bunch of 5 million person countries you’ll see many with higher than average and lower than average rates of mass shootings.
4. Gun violence isn’t really a mass shooting problem. 60% of people killed by guns are suicides. After that is people killing people they know. Mass shootings account for a small amount of gun violence, and yet a terrific majority of our discussions of gun violence. 

So what we find at the bottom of this is that we aren’t really having a conversation about mass shootings, we are having and ideological conversation about which of the following worlds we would like to live in.

An America where there are no regulations on guns, which allows for the perceived safety, freedom, and enjoyment of those to whom guns provide those feelings in exchange for occasional mass shootings and higher rates of suicide and murder.

OR

An America where guns are outlawed, decreasing rates of suicide, murder, and mass killings, but making it impossible for people who get those feelings of freedom, security, and enjoyment from guns to get those feelings in that way.

OR

Some compromise between those two things (which is, of course, what we have, and what we will continue to have despite all our bickering.)

That is really what this debate comes down to every single time. But this final world is one that fewer and fewer people are advocating for because the polarization between the other two sides is becoming so ideologically charged.

Some will argue that guns don’t actually provide freedom and safety, but that doesn’t matter because the feeling of freedom and safety is what we’re all after, not the actual having of it.

And others will argue that guns don’t increase rates of murder and suicide (which they demonstrably do). Because, of course, with enough messing around you can make statistics say whatever you’d like.