Fibbing With Gun Data
28 Oct 2015Whenever there’s another mass shooting, people like to compare gun violence in the US to other countries, for example:
NRA and NSSF think 11,208 homicides a year is no big deal. pic.twitter.com/rmcq6JXeaO
— Everytown (@Everytown) October 14, 2015Now, there’s an excellent point to be made that way too many people are getting murdered with guns in the US. I totally agree with that. But the above graphic is obviously cherry-picking countries to make a point rather than selecting countries that are reasonably comparable to the US. I mean, they have Luxembourg up there. Luxembourg has a population of a half-million people, so about 640 times smaller than the US.
What would the graphic look like if it wasn’t cherry-picked? Well, here are some countries off the top of my head that I think are comparable to the US in important ways.
- Russia. The US and USSR were the only two super powers for a long time, seems like that’s a good comparison.
- Canada. Large continent-size country that we border and have a lot in common with.
- Mexico. If we have Canada, makes sense to include the other large country we border.
- Australia. Big English speaking country. Another former British colony.
- Germany. Big industrialized country (Or France, the UK, whatever)
And here’s what that looks like:
So, it’s fine if you want to say the US should strive to be more like Canada and Germany and less like Mexico and Russia, but don’t pretend the US is some bizarre violent outlier.
**I had to fudge to figure out the gun homicide rate in Russia. I just assumed the fraction of total homicides that were gun homicides was the same in the US and Russia. Sources here and here.