General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This time the right guy had a gun, and stopped more carnage. [View all]Recursion
(56,582 posts)It talks about absolute numbers of shootings for countries with vastly different populations.
Here's an example: China has about 4 times as many people as we do. But it has essentially no mass shootings. So our rate of mass shootings is much, much higher than China's
In contrast, Australia has about a thirteenth as many people as we do. But it has much, much more than a thirteenth as many mass shootings as we do (it has about an eighth as many).
China has about 4 times as many prostate cancer deaths as we do. That doesn't mean they have a particular prostate cancer problem; it means they have 4 times as many people as we do. But they have 10 times as many lung cancer deaths as we do: that does mean they have a problem (and, in fact, a third of Chinese people smoke compared to a sixth of Americans). Whereas they have half again as many colon cancer deaths. More people die of colon cancer in China than in the US, but you are more likely to die of colon cancer in the US than you are in China.
Similarly, we have more mass shootings than Australia, but you're more likely to die from a mass shooting in Australia than you are in the US. We just aren't some special odds-defier here.