LA Times: Why the U.S. is No. 1 -- in mass shootings
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-united-states-mass-shooting-20150824-story.html
The United States is, by a long shot, the global leader in mass shootings, claiming just
5% of the global population but an outsized share -- 31% -- of the world's mass shooters since 1966, a new study finds.
The Philippines, Russia, Yemen and France -- all countries that can claim a substantial share of the 291 documented mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 -- collectively didn't even come close to the United States.
And what makes the United States such a fertile incubator for mass shooters? A comprehensive analysis of the perpetrators, their motives and the national contexts for their actions suggests that several factors have conspired to create in the United States a potent medium for fostering large-scale murder. Those factors include a chronic and widespread gap between Americans' expectations for themselves and their actual achievement, Americans' adulation of fame, and the extent of gun ownership in the United States.
Set those features against a circumstance the United States shares with many other countries -- a backdrop of poorly managed mental illness -- and you have a uniquely volatile brew, the new study says.
Perhaps no single factor sets the United States apart as sharply as does gun ownership, wrote Lankford. Of 178 countries included in Lankford's analysis, the
United States ranked first in per-capita gun ownership. A 2007 survey found 270 million firearms in U.S. civilian households -- an ownership rate of 88.8 firearms per 100 people. Yemen followed, with 54.8 firearms per 100 people.
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