Myths the Media Perpetuate About Gun Control | RealClearPolitics
"The push to disarm Americans, such as Pamela and Mark McCloskey of St. Louis, stems from the belief that disarming the public will make us safer.
But those beliefs arise from
myths perpetrated by the media.
...They do this not only by
choosing what crimes to cover (or not cover), but also by the statistics and research that they choose to relay.
...Here are just five of the three dozen myths that I discuss in my new book, “Gun Control Myths.”
- Myth 1: Los Angeles Times: “Why the U.S. is No. 1 — in mass shootings”
This claim is
based on one study by Adam Lankford at the University of Alabama. Lankford asserted that the U.S. accounted for 31% of mass public shooters from 1966 to 2012, despite having less than 5% of the world population.
But for over four years, he refused requests from both academics and media outlets, including Real Clear Politics, Fox News, and the Washington Post, to release his data.
When he finally released his list of cases after I had published an academic paper going through the data, it was clear why he had waited so long.
He had over-counted cases in the U.S. and missed thousands of others in the rest of the world.
The United States accounted for just
1% of the shooters — far less than its share of the world population.
France, Switzerland, Russia, Finland, and Norway all have substantially higher per capita fatality rates than does the U.S.
Indeed, France’s rate is 111% higher than ours.
By far, the worst mass public shootings have occurred in Europe...
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