753
US breaks record for most mass shootings in single year after weekend murders
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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I don't disagree that gun violence is a huge problem in the US, and we can all agree that we need to have serious discussion about realistic solutions.
But there are SO many more people in the US than in Denmark. It's not even close. It has roughly the population as Colarado for the entire country.
That's not to say there aren't many, many more mass shooting instances in Colarado (I'm using the term mass shooting to mean a person shooting strangers on purpose in a planned attack in a place unlikely to have armed victims like a school, movie theater or gay night club) than Denmark, so I feel it's a bit disingenuous to compare the whole US to Denmark.
Denmark also has a lot less poverty and better access to healthcare and mental health services as compared to the US.
So I know it feels good to try and make your point this way, but it's not really the same at all. There's more to this than guns and "Americans dumb".
It's easier to veiw these gun statistics less by a side by side comparison of total population and more by gun related deaths per every 10, 000 people. That allows an adjustment for population.
The US in 2023 had 10.89 gun deaths per every 10k people. Denmark had 1.08 per 10k. So roughly Denmark would have had to have roughly 10x the number of gun deaths to draw parallel with the US.
This metric does cover all homicides and suicides. For a better picture homicides only made up 7% of all gun related fatalities in Denmark in the US 43% of gun deaths were homicides. One interesting difference is that Denmark accidental gun deaths is a much bigger slice of their piechart than the US.
Strong social welfare programs and measures to check extreme wealth aggregation are also things the US would have money to manage. Technically speaking the ratio of Government wealth per adult in the US is greater than Denmark's meaning Denmark is doing more with less.
Also poverty crime is still pretty high in Denmark. The social safety net means you don't starve so much and have a place to come home to but it's a very lean existance. A lot of people there are barely making ends meet. Technically speaking the poverty rates between the two countries are actually very comparable.
Thank you. I was about to look for such a per population representation as well. Bonus points to you if you could also provide the sources of your numbers. :>
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0300943274901137
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/guns/
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/young-people-in-denmark-at-highest-risk-of-facing-poverty-among-eu-countries/2865213
Sorry about that. Copy pasting anything on my cell is a nightmare on Lemmy. Here's my main sources.
No, there's nothing more to this than guns and Americans dumb. You have to remember, we have functioning education in most other places in the world, so the kind of imbecile propaganda you all fall victim to has no effect on us, you only come across as a moron trying to regurgitate it.
[looks around NL nervously....]
Ok, but controlling for population doesn't actually make it better for you guys. You're still far and away the number one in number of mass shootings. By orders of magnitude.
Note that there is a really bad outdated study that puts US in the number 11 (and it's not relevant, because it's really outdated by now. I suspect that because of these frequent record breaks, it would look bad even with the fuckery), because they did a lot statistical fuckery to make it so. It's too long of an explanation to write out what they did.
However, you can just use the average for number of mass shootings per year/month/week and you propel to the top like a rocket.
So, yes it's more than just "Americans dumb", but everything points to the fact that US is rotten to the core, and lack of gun control is definitely part of the problem. Poverty, inequality, police violence, lack of social programs (because fuck commies, fam) and so forth... But while it's not unique to US, it's definitely typical US problem.
https://www.desifacts.org/policy-law/gun-laws-and-denmark
Nah, y'all dumb.
Ok let's compare the entirety of Europe to the US (Europe has about 750 000 000 inhabitants, so double the US)
Amount of school shootings happened in the US last year: 52
Amount of school shooting happened in Europe: 31 since the year 1900
I mean it's still an entire country. The comparisons are the same for Australia and England as well. Sure they have violence. It's mitigating the tools to create violence. They have the easiest access in a country that breeds toxicity. Take some of those things away and maybe keeping the guns as they are a worthy discussion. But because they aren't, it's the most common sense way to handle the problem.