The recent attack on the Route 91 Harvest 3-day country music festival in Las Vegas–the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history–has ignited the hotly contested issue of gun control in the United States.
While the efficacy of strengthened gun control laws acting as a panacea for mass shootings is debated, the one thing that is clear is that mass shootings in the U.S. are an epidemic.
There is no concrete data on mass shootings, because of the ambiguity behind the definition of “mass shooting.” According to a 2013 USA Today investigation, even the FBI’s database is only 57 percent accurate. By the widest parameters, a mass shooting is one where the gunman shoots four or more people at the same general time and location; the narrowest parameters, set by the Congressional Research Service, require that a shooter kills four or more people at random in a public place.
Regardless of how it’s defined, the U.S. experiences more mass shootings than any other nation. A 2016 study found that from 1966-2012 the U.S. accounted for 31% (almost a third) of the world’s mass shootings, despite holding only 5% of the world’s population.
Based on the previously stated parameters, the U.S. has had between 9 (narrow) and 273 (wide) mass shootings in 2017 alone, averaging one per month (narrow) or 7.5 per day (wide). Of the five deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, four of them have occurred in the past decade; Orlando and Vegas–the deadliest–occurred only one year apart.
Just as a high frequency of mass shootings is unique to the U.S., so is the use of multiple guns by one shooter. In fact, gun ownership in general is higher in the U.S. than any other country in the world. According to data collected in 2007 by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey, Americans own around 270 million guns–enough for every adult in the U.S. and then some–making it number one in the world in guns per capita.
Source: Small Arms Survey 2007
The demand for guns in the U.S. follows a pattern related to the occurrence of mass shootings. Directly after a mass shooting, when tensions over the gun control issue are the highest and most prominent, the number of background checks for gun ownership that the FBI records rises. Since 2012, the highest recorded number of background checks per month followed the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, the second highest followed Sandy Hook.
Also on the rise are the number of mass shootings themselves. Based on data from the Stanford Geospatial Center, sociologists Tristan Bridges and Tara Leigh Tober assessed that mass shootings have been steadily on the rise since the ‘60s. During the latter part of the ‘80s there were no more than five mass shootings annually; however, between the ‘90s and 2000s the rate wavered and reached as high as 10 per year.
Mass shootings are also followed by a wave of panic, but the one thing that never follows is change.
Due to a mass shooting in 1996, the Prime Minister at the time banned guns in Australia. Before the ban, Australia suffered 13 gun massacres in 18 years; it has suffered none since then. Additionally, Australia has seen a 74 percent decline in gun-related suicides (the leading gun-related death in America) and a significant decline in robberies and burglaries.
Based on analysis by R James Breiding, an author and Fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Development, Australians were similar to Americans in their view of gun ownership as an essential right, but by individuals making a sacrifice for the greater good, the nation experienced significant payback.
As alarming as the mass shooting epidemic currently is, and with the data suggesting that it will only worsen, it seems that the U.S. may benefit from taking a page out of Australia’s book.
