Are there really more "mass shootings" in the U.S.?

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I worked with several command-level law-enforcement officers over decades. They admitted that they shot their weapons just exactly five times a year ... when they were being recertified annually. They said that most officers do the same, except some who are firearm hobbyists. It appears to be a mundane career.

Still it must be hard knowing that you could potentially get shot or that you might end up having to shoot somebody yourself everytime you go to work. Not to mention dealing with the people who openly hate police officers.

Yep. And only "some" agencies assign mandatory time off for officers who work injurious or deadly calls. So, they are expected to bounce back by "tomorrow morning."

Man that is terrible. It really is a thankless job.

What is made even worse is the fact that many of them who get hired for these positions aren't exactly psychologically nor emotionally stable to begin with, and often result in «I feared for my life» or «I thought he was dangerous» or «I thought he was reaching for a gun» as a «justification» for why innocent/unarmed people were shot and is apparently a common reason cited by constables who've essentially «executed» peaceful civilians.

This is not an isolated incident but an epidemic across the policing culture. A man reaches for his walking cane and gets shot several times. All of this «trigger-happiness» does naught but to simply contribute more towards inciting civil unrest and teaches the general public: «We'd better arm ourselves with guns and be prepared to shoot first before being shot since the cops are very likely to kill us anyway»

This is obviously not a good message to be sending into society. The «karmic» consequences are DEADLY.

Cops also have to work horrible accident scenes.Not something most people would want to do.
A deputy I know had to walk down the road looking for a severed arm,not the job I would want.He also had an interesting experience searching a vehicle and found a box full of tarantulas,I can only imagine his shock opening the box.
Some cops are bad apples,and then there are those that go out of their way to help.

Yeah cops really do see horrific things on the job every day and I think what's even worst for a cop is when you arrest a dangerous criminal and you later find out that they were released without serving any time when you know for a fact that they were guilty. It happens all the time because our legal system is flawed and criminals get away with their crimes all the time.

Alternate title: "How the media and politicians spread left-wing lies"

How gun-free zones invite mass shootings

People have been acting for a long time like the United States is the world’s hotbed of mass public shootings. Following a 2015 mass shooting during his administration, President Barack Obama declared: “The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world.”

This belief is constantly used to push for more gun control. If we can only get rid of guns in the United States, we will get rid of these mass public shootings and be more like the rest of the world, gun-control supporters preach.

But America doesn’t lead the world in mass public shootings. We’re not even close. Just last month, a school shooting in Crimea, Russia, claimed 20 lives and wounded 65 others. But Americans usually don’t hear about such events....

Over the course of 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 this country. By our count, the U.S. makes up 1.49 percent of the murders worldwide, 2.20 percent of the attacks, and less than 1.15 percent of the mass public shooters. All these are much less than America’s 4.6 percent share of the world population.

Of the 97 countries where we identified mass public shootings, the U.S. ranks 64th per capita in its rate of attacks and 65th in fatalities. Major European countries, such as Norway, Finland, France, Switzerland and Russia, all have at least 25 percent higher per capita murder rates from mass public shootings.

While Americans are rightly concerned by the increased frequency and severity of mass public shootings, the rest of the world is experiencing much larger increases in per capita rates of attack. The frequency of foreign mass public shootings since 1998 has grown 291 percent faster than in the U.S.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opi ... story.html

Gun control isn't a left-right issue. It happens to be divided roughly along political lines in the US but it isn't a disagreement about which services should be provided by government or the market, and how high taxes should be.

Besides which, this article rather misrepresents the true picture - it would seem to be much closer to "spreading lies" than the mainstream press (I note in particular the use of "Crimea, Russia"...). Remember, I don't have a horse in the gun control argument, it's really not something I care about either way although as a liberal I'm naturally inclined to favour gun rights.

I don't think anybody seriously claims that the US has fewer mass shootings per capita than Pakistan or Russia or Mexico or Nigeria (these countries are illustrative; if I'm wrong and the US does have fewer mass shootings per capita then fine). The issue is that no country comparable to the US has as much of a problem with mass shootings.

So which countries can fairly be compared to the US? In this context, probably most of Western Europe (except the microstates), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and maybe Taiwan (I'd include Singapore, but it's clearly too small). Developed nations with liberal democracies. Russia is not a liberal democracy, is full of state-sanctioned ethnic violence, has less gun control than the US, and if you include Crimea (again, "!") then it's recovering from a civil war. If you want America to be the best country in the world, then compare it to the best countries in the world.

Rather than pushing an agenda, let's see what these statistics can tell us. Here's the raw data that this report is based upon: https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2018/03/ ... png?w=1394

Note, first of all, that it incorrectly lists Switzerland as an EU country.

From this, we see that the reason Norway has a "higher rate of mass shooting fatalities" than the US is because it had one shooting, and that shooting was particularly bad - a Nazi shot a load of youth activists on a remote island where emergency responders couldn't get there in time. It seems disingenuous to include this - it's rather like saying that murder in New York City dropped in 2002 without factoring in the lack of 9/11. Outlier events happen.

Similarly, let's look at France. Their numbers include both the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the Paris attacks. Take these out, and the number drops below the US. Likewise the attack on Liege, which resulted in lots of injuries but very few fatalities.

In fact, the US is the only country where you get mass shootings every year. The only countries on the list provided with more than one attack are Belgium (if you keep Liege in), France, and Serbia - and again, Serbia is hardly the sort of country that Americans can feel proud about being better than, it is very poor, landlocked, huge amounts of ethnic violence, not in the EU, and a Freedom Report that looks like this.

Like I say, as a liberal I'm naturally inclined to favour gun rights. But I do think it's important to look seriously at the mass shooting problem in the US. Maybe it isn't caused by a lack of gun control, who knows? Maybe the real solution is planting more trees in city centres. But it is a real problem.

Themessage is that our current leaders are doing nothing about it, so either we need to change our leadership or just learn to live with it. (if you are one of the survivors, obviously).

horses**t.
The "Crime Prevention Research Center" is an extreme right-wing gun advocacy group, and it's founder and the author of this propaganda has been accused of "junk science" and is funded by the NRA.
In other words; he's full of s**t.

There have been 317 mass shootings in the US as of today; the 329th day of the year.

Surviving an Active Shooter Situation

The mere fact that guns are often associated with rednecks and hillbillies is enough for me to support a total gun ban, not just mere restrictions.

While there are reasons to support a gun ban, guilt by association should not be.

Rant:
Going to a topic discussed on other threads yet another example of groups deemed acceptable to negatively stereotype on WP. I should stop complaining and leave if I don't like it because resistance seems futile.

That association is purposely done by the left. Reality is gun owners come from everywhere. Democrats own guns, liberals own guns, gays own guns, disabled own guns, blacks own guns, Hispanics own guns. Rich, poor, etc

But hey it’s eaiser to make fun of and push gun control if you make it like only people who f**k their sisters and are born from incest own guns.

Quite a free of the ban all guns politicians own guns and invest in gun companies. Their laws exempt them and police. So if they ban all guns the rich and police will still have all the guns they want, after al their different more important then the rest of better then us. We are just peasants they are ruling class royalty.

I'm thinking that this is mostly happening because of gangs/thugs/wannabees/irresponsible, immature, angry young males.

The good people of the country shouldn't lose their rights because of these numbskulls.

Way it’s looking in my state is we’ll only be able to own bolt action rifles and single shot handguns soo.
They plan to ban any gun that holds 5 or more rounds so all revolvers and pistols will be banned