Pirate's Cove

Does America have more mass killings than other countries, per Obama?

(Politifact) In his June 18, 2015, remarks from the White House, Obama said, “Now is the time for mourning and for healing. But let’s be clear: At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.”

A flurry of PolitiFact readers — some of them prompted by articles objecting to Obama’s claim — wrote to us to ask us to check it, so we did.

An important point to make right off the bat is that many of the critics have pointed to the first part of Obama’s claim — that “this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries.” As we’ll explain, the critics have a point here — mass violence, including mass shootings, happen in a wide variety of countries.

However, the critics have truncated the quotation, leaving off the next sentence — that “it doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency.” That’s also not fully correct, but it’s not quite as wrong as the first claim.

They go through some statistics and incidents, and move to

In sum, then, Obama is wrong to say that “this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries.” Clearly it does happen elsewhere, and not in trivial numbers. Seven of the countries saw double-digit numbers of people killed in mass shootings during that period.

By contrast, the second part of Obama’s claim — that “it doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency” — isn’t entirely off-base.

And the verdict?

The data shows that it clearly happens in other countries, and in at least three of them, there’s evidence that the rate of killings in mass-shooting events occurred at a higher per-capita rate than in the United States between 2000 and 2014. The only partial support for Obama’s claim is that the per-capita gun-incident fatality rate in the United States does rank in the top one-third of the list of 11 countries studied. On balance, we rate the claim Mostly False.

Of course, Obama was also alluding to gun violence overall, and, it’s certain that the U.S. has a good bit. And a goodly bit of it occurs in deep Democrat cities. Obama’s hometown of Chicago sure has a lot, which Obama doesn’t like to talk about, especially the population that is involved with the majority of gun violence.

Of course, this is the same administration that ran guns to Mexico, which has resulted in hundreds dead, and thousands injured, including children. Crime in Mexico spiked after Operation Fast and Furious was implemented.

Of course, it doesn’t seem like these same anti-gun zealots care much about the threat from Islamic terrorists. In Nigeria, 30 are dead after a suicide bombing in Nigeria, the fourth such bombing this month in Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram. A North Carolina teen is the latest arrested in a plot to kill hundreds for ISIS.

Of course, the Ramadan Score Card has 44 attacks, 9 suicide bombings, and 359 dead, all in the name of the Religion of Peace.

And, finally, of course, none of that matters to the anti-gun zealots, who wish to disarm law abiding citizens.

Crossed at Right Wing News.