Stop undermining the narrative!

It appears that France suffered more deaths from mass shootings in 2015 alone – 508 – than the United States has suffered during the entire Obama administration – 424. According to John R. Lott, that is.

Lott is a noted gun-rights advocate and a contributor to the Crime Prevention Research Center. The raw data to back up his claim can be found here.

Nor is that all. When you factor in the size of the United States population to that of Europe, the US is about in the middle of the pack when it comes to frequency of mass shootings, and death rate from mass shootings.

Where the U.S. is way ahead of Europe is in its homicide rate of 5.2 people per 100,000 – tied with Chile. However, that’s only fourth-highest in the industrialized world, behind Brasil (25.5), Mexico (23.4), and Russia (12.8). We’re slightly above the average for the 34 countries measured, which is 4.1.

It should be kept in mind that the U.S. gun homicide rate has dropped precipitously over the last 20 years, even as its firearm ownership rate has risen by almost the same percentage. And by “almost”, I mean “more than.”

Signal and noise, people, signal and noise.