In December 2018, an attack took place in Strasbourg that left four dead and eleven injured. The US accounts for almost half of all of the worlds mass shootings over this timeframe. The majority of mass shooting incidents in Europe occur in France and Germany, but other European countries with high rates of violent crime include Norway, Belgium, and Finland. The shootings have claimed 702 lives and injured 2,844 people. "There are more guns in this country than people, and more per capita than any other country in the world. The average for Europe is roughly 1.6 deaths per million inhabitants, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention. If you ask most Americans today which country leads the world in mass shootings, I suspect a vast majority would say the US. Despite years of financial woes and internal strife, the National Rifle Association (NRA) remains the most powerful gun lobby in the United States, with a substantial budget to influence members of Congress on gun policy. Lankford's findings show that there were 90 mass public shooters in America since 1966, the most in the world, which had a total of 202. Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. This table shows all countries, in descending order, by estimated risk for onset of mass killing in 2022-23. All rights reserved. OutdoorHub // TheFirearmBlog // AllOutdoor // ActionHub // AgDaily, AllOutdoor All Rights Reserved Carbon Media Group Outdoors. Southeast Asia has strict gun controls though it is a hub for cross-border arms smuggling and trafficking. That said, mass shootings actually comprise only a fraction of the overall gun deaths in the United States. While the number of mass shootings remains low compared to other countries, the UK continues to raise awareness on gun violence through different programs which work to reduce gun-related injuries and fatalities through research and advocacy. Their figure includes shootings that happen both in homes and in public places. For example, Norways world-leading annual rate was due to a single devastating 2011 event, in which far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik gunned down 69 people at a summer camp on the island of Utya. The US trails many other advanced nations in mass shooting frequency and death rate. The two deadliest mass shooting incidents include a mass shooting that occurred in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2017, leaving sixty persons dead and more than eight-hundred injured, and in Orlando, Florida in 2016, leaving forty-nine dead and fifty-eight injured. In response to these events, stricter legislation was put into place which saw nationwide bans on handgun ownership and greater restrictions on gun sales. ", Sen. Harry Reid echoed this sentiment. According to the fact-checkers' analysis, one of those inappropriate methods was the leaving out of the many European countries that had not experienced a single mass shooting between 2009-2015. In 2019, the murder rate in . Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation. Three of the top five countries with the most gun deaths overall are in South America, one is in North America, and one is in Asia. The New Republic/Michael Christopher Brown, 2014. Of countries with at least 10 million people, there are more mass shootings per capita in only Yemen, which has the second-highest per-capita rate of gun ownership (the US has the highest). We've received your submission. The figure represents a 34% increase from 2019, and a 75% increase over the course of the previous decade. There have been three mass shootings in Finland, ranking the country sixth in the world in terms of the number of mass shootings. Please, enable JavaScript and reload the page to enjoy our modern features. from the Early Warning Project and the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide. All these are much less than the USs 4.6% share of the world population. Lotts team opted for the useful distinction of mass murder attacks per 100,000 people, versus deaths per million. Within the homicides, 71 were classified as the result of a mass shooting. Which continent has the most mass shootings ? In 2016, at least seven people were killed when a gunman opened fire on shoppers at Munichs Olympia shopping mall, while in 2015 a gunman killed six people in an attack near Liege in Belgium. There have been four mass shootings in Canada, ranking the country fifth in the world in terms of the number of mass shootings. This number is significantly higher than the second country with the highest number of mass shootings, Russia, which has 21 mass shooting incidents in comparison. A new report from the Crime Prevention Research Center, which one of us heads, has just finished collecting cases using the same definition of mass public shootings used by Lankford. Lott said that he found 1,491 mass public shootings worldwide in a shorter time period between 1998 and 2012 and that fewer than 3 percent were in the United States. This is due to the fact that there can be different interpretations of what constitutes a mass shooting in different cultures, resulting in varying definitions that can mask the true number of incidents. It has 120 firearms per 100 people more than twice as many. The US ratio of 120.5 firearms per 100 residents, up from 88 per 100 in 2011, far surpasses that of other countries around the world. From 1966 to 2012, Americans accounted for 31 percent of the gunmen in mass shootings worldwide, according to a 2016 study by Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama. Looking at just a third of the time Lankford studied, we still found 15 times as many shooters. There has been one mass shooting in Australia, ranking the country twelfth in the world in terms of the number of mass shootings. During this time, 62% of all 1,318 fatalities from the atta One of the most recent shootings happened in 2016, when a man opened fire in the Olympia shopping mall in Munich, killing nine people and injuring thirty-six others. But our nations relatively obscure ranking on this chart is proof that so-called gun violence has little relationship to the presence of guns in citizens homes and hands. 1. Sweden stands out for a high level of gun homicide compared with other European countries, at about 4 deaths per million inhabitants per year. In 2013, another mass shooting occurred near the city of Menznau, where a man killed four people and injured five others. In addition, a 2018 CRPC study ranked the U.S. at number sixty-four in the world in terms of mass shooting rates per capita. Photo above: A patrol and Anti-Balaka roadblock takedown with Rwandan African Union soldiers, in Bangui, CAR. The law means any citizen of that state has the right to carry a firearm without a licence or a permit. In that time, 952 people . Finally, in 1999, another mass shooting took place in Bad Reichenhall; four people died. The gun homicide rate is high in Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2015, first the Charlie Hebdo shooting left twelve people dead and eleven injured. Compared to Lankford's. All these are much less than the United States 4.6 percent share of the population. On June 2nd of that year, a man opened fire randomly on people killing twelve people and injuring eleven others before turning the gun on himself. A 2015 Politifact article correcting then-President Barack Obamas statement that no other advanced country experiences mass shootings like the U.S. cited data from 2000 to 2014 to prove that mass shootings do indeed happen in other advanced countries. CPRC has questioned the legitimacy of this report's data. This is how countries compare on gun deaths The highest on record is 18 mass shootings in one week (July 13, 2015). In Bangladesh, it's 0.07 deaths per 100,000. Not only have these attacks been much more common outside the USA, the USAs share of these attacks has declined over time. We know of no way to discover most of the cases where four people have been shot to death in an incident in Africa or many other parts of the world during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s or even 1990s, and that is the reason the new study just looked at the last 15 years from 1998 to 2012 of the 47 years he examined. There have been 214 mass shootingsdefined by Gun Violence Archive as one in which at least 4 people were shotin the US within the first 145 days of the year. Based on the leadership principles of George Washington, we provide citizens, voters, and elected officials with the information, insights, and tools that amplify democracy in the modern age. Mississippi: 1.69 per million. Firearm-related crime is the leading cause of murders in South Africa. Thats academic malpractice, Lott tells Stossel. Further down the list are Belgium, the Czech Republic, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland all tied at 2 mass shooting incidents in that time period with four or more victims. In 2020, more than 19,000 of the deaths were homicides, according to the CDC. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. Another is that culture not gun ownership is a bigger factor in shootings. The perpetrator killed seventy-seven people and injured more than three hundred individuals. Critics argue this further warps the data, because Norways population is a fraction of the U.S. population. The U.S. endures the most mass shootings in the world, withdepending upon one's definition of a mass shooting (see next section)somewhere between 21 and more than 600 in 2020. If this is true, how did the narrative that the US leads the world in mass shootings become the conventional wisdom? Beginning with the infamous Texas bell tower massacre in 1966 and ending on May 12, 2021, The Washington Post logged a total of 189 mass murders in the United Statesan average of just 3.4 per year. In reality, gun violence is a huge issue in many other countriesjust none that the US would consider a peer. Others do not. Homicide figures may include justifiable homicides along with criminal homicides, depending upon jurisdiction and reporting standards. 3. Michael Weisser was a professor of history at Columbia University. But after a long period of decline, deadly shootings began to increase in the mid-2000s and. Those 189 incidents killed a total of 1,322 peoplean average of 24 per year. The Early Warning Project is a joint initiative of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. The study. There have been two mass shootings in the Netherlands, ranking the country ninth in the world in terms of the number of mass shootings. 57% of Americans surveyed said they wanted stricter gun laws, while 32% said they should remain the same. In some instances such as with the 2015 Paris attacks or 2019 Utya massacre in Norway, mass shootings have been perpetrated by extremists who used firearms as part of terrorist attacks targeting innocent civilians. Norway had zero mass shootings in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. The following is an alphabetized list of just some of the [developed countries] other than the United States that have experienced one or more mass shootings in the past few decades: Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Nigeria, Norway, the Philippines, Russia, Serbia, Spain, and Switzerland. Rather, nearly two-thirds (63%) of gun deaths in the US in 2019 were suicides. How to Use Our Statistical Risk Assessments. However, the article conceded that the U.S. experienced 133 shootings during that period, while the next-highest total was Germany with six. This is an unsettling and ill omen for liberty. The media should be wary of any researchers who fail to let others look at their data. 11th place. There has been one mass shooting in the United Kingdom, ranking the country twentieth in the world in terms of the number of mass shootings. After France comes Germany, as the fourth country with the most mass shootings, with 5 mass shootings, followed by Canada and Finland both with 4 mass shootings each. Most crime in Lesotho occurs in the country's urban areas. And India in third with 26,500. We consider countries ranked in the top 30 to be at high risk. Some databases include occurrences in which the shooter killed only family members (but still in a public place, such as a restaurant). Netherlands 2 11. One of the more detailed analyses appeared on the fact-checking website snopes.com and concluded that the CRPC report used inappropriate statistical methods which led to misleading results. In each of the last three years there have been more than 600 mass shootings, almost two a day on average. All of those are pretty nice countries which MUCH stricter gun control laws than the USand all have higher per capita deaths from mass shootings than the US. Clearly, a significant error margin exists, particularly when creating country-to-country comparisons. 1. 90% of suspects in homicide incidents were male. 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. Russia 21 3. In Kuwait, even the bullets need to be licensed. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. While the United States has consistently been the country with the most mass shootings in the world, the devastating impact of these events has been felt around the world as well, with other notable mass shooting incidents including an attack on two mosques in New Zealand that killed 51 people, an Easter Sunday bombing in Sri Lanka that left more than 250 dead and 500 injured, and an attack on a popular nightclub in Istanbul that resulted in 39 deaths. Lankfords name pops up in a montage of media reports which cite his research as evidence that America leads the world in mass shootings. 1 weather alerts 1 closings . When findings do not mesh, scholars, in pursuit of truth, generally compare notes, data, and methodology to find out how they reached their conclusions. How could that be? Though mass public shootings like the Boulder, Colorado, supermarket shooting; the metro Atlanta spa shootings; and the San . There have been two mass shootings in Switzerland, ranking the country eleventh in the world in terms of the number of mass shootings. Another mass shooting occurred at a secondary school in Winnenden in 2009 when fifteen people were killed and several injured by the perpetrator. Using the CPRCs own data and more precise per-year population data from World Bank (the original study used only 2015 population data) to solve for the median, the more statistically sound analysis results in a notably different list: Using the median analysis, the United States is the only country examined that shows a propensity for mass shootings. The weeks with an average of one shooting per day are highlighted in red. Sadly, these are only a few examples out of the many other mass shootings to occur in Europe over the past few years that have resulted in numerous fatalities and victims injured. There are approximately 55 guns for every 100 people in Yemen compared to about 89 for every 100 in the US, according to the survey. While the US does not have a single definition for "mass shootings", the Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are injured or killed. This, in turn, exposed 11 million people to firearms in their homes, including 5 million children. A mass shooting is defined as one in which four or more people are shot in a single event, not including the perpetrator. A May 24 massacre at a Texas elementary school that left 19 children and two teachers dead has reignited the debate over guns and focused attention on the uniquely high rate of school shootings. The United States of America tops the list of the countries with the most mass shootings, with 101 mass shootings with four or more victims between 1998 and 2019. Latin America and Caribbean countries have nine of 10 highest homicide rates in the world. Attacks in the US are not only less frequent than other countries, they are also much less deadly on average. In the United States alone, whether one counts the total number of mass shootings, regardless of the number of deaths, or the number of mass shootings with 3 or more deaths changes the number of mass shootings counted drastically. These omissions are important because Lankfords entire conclusion would fall apart if he undercounted foreign cases due to lack of news coverage and language barriers. While calculating the number of guns in private hands around the world is difficult, the latest figures from the Small Arms Survey - a Swiss-based leading research project - estimate that there were 390 million guns in circulation in 2018. Which country has the most mass shootings? Another mass shooting to occur in Europe took place on October 9th 2019 at a synagogue in Halle, Germany. And while mass shooting and gun murders generally garner more media attention, of the total, more than half were suicides. For example, some countries may not include shootings if there are fewer than four fatalities. Although events in the U.S. tend to get the lion's share of media exposure, mass shootings are clearly a worldwide issue. There has been one mass shooting in China, ranking the country eighteenth in the world in terms of the number of mass shootings. Image Credit: Flickr-Fibonacci Blue | CC BY 2.0, The Assemblywomen: The Ancient Greek Play That Mercilessly (and Hilariously) Mocked Socialism and Democracy, Legendary Journalist Says He Knows What the Mystery Object Was the US Military Shot Down Over Alaska, The 2 Most Important Words in Jurassic World: Dominion, Proof That Western Progressives Loved Stalinism and Maoism, Despite Their Horrors. Countries with ongoing mass killing episodes are indicated with this icon . The U.S. is not like other countries when it comes to school shootings or even gun laws. What country has the most mass shootings ? 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