Guns, Guns, Guns

First of all, via InstaPundit, the tweet of the day:


Predictably, the mass shooting in Buffalo has precipitated another round of gun control hysteria. What gun control? Who cares? The specifics are unimportant.

You likely have read in the press that the United States has an unparalleled number of mass shootings due to our “lax” gun control laws. Such assertions are rarely challenged, but in fact they are untrue. I haven’t seen more recent numbers, but I am sure little has changed since this 2019 post. On a per capita basis, our mass shooting rate is quite low. Quoting John Lott and Michael Weisser:

Of the 86 countries where we have identified mass public shootings, the US ranks 56th per capita in its rate of attacks and 61st in mass public shooting murder rate. Norway, Finland, Switzerland and Russia all have at least 45 percent higher rates of murder from mass public shootings than the United States.

As I wrote several years ago:

Why does the U.S. have a relatively low incidence of mass shootings compared with most other countries? One possible answer is our widespread gun ownership, combined with liberal concealed carry laws. Would-be mass shooters in the U.S. tend to gravitate toward “gun-free” zones like schools, where they know they will have the only weapon. In most public places in the U.S., unlike most other countries, a would-be shooter faces the material possibility that he will not be the only one with a firearm. If we did away with the folly of the “gun-free zone,” our numbers would probably be even better.

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