246
votes
Are violent video games a better explanation of school shootings than access to guns?
This is a very contentious issue, and both sides have numerous studies to cherry-pick to support their side. In a search of academic articles (as opposed to blog posts), I have come across a couple ...
- 9,297
239
votes
Does America not lead the world in mass shootings?
As discussed in this answer and this answer when you use a term like "mass shooting", your results become particularly sensitive to your definition. Additionally, results will be sensitive to search ...
- 3,176
233
votes
Accepted
Did the UK homicide rate go up after handgun ownership was banned?
The numbers are cherry-picked.
When you dig into sites that present this argument, they all appear to be strong advocates against regulating firearms, which makes me suspicious. Is this statistic ...
- 22.6k
195
votes
Accepted
In the American west—the world of cowboys and cowhands—was ammunition traded for alcoholic “shots” of a drink?
The answer seems to be no on all accounts.
In general, Snopes says:
Although the meme is of recent origin, Internet mentions of this alleged historical fact date to at least 2003. Significantly, ...
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149
votes
Accepted
Do the murder statistics of 5 cities bring the USA to the 3rd highest country, from 189th?
This is false no matter what way you try to frame it.
Using the 2019 crime stats:
Murders
US: 15020 [1]
Chicago: 491 [2]
Detroit: 273 [3]
New Orleans: 120 [4]
St. Louis: 194 [5]
Washington DC: 166 [6]...
- 6,930
109
votes
Accepted
On average in the US, is there a mass shooting 9 out of every 10 days?
I've written about the issues with defining a "mass shooting" in another answer previously. I'm going to copy and paste the pertinent parts here.
The main problem with statistics like ...
- 22.4k
109
votes
Accepted
Does America not lead the world in mass shootings?
In a comment, @MikhailGerasimov gave a link to the list of incidents.
By browsing this, it is clear that the claims include acts of terrorism and war. (But being curiously selective about it, I found ...
- 1,556
108
votes
Accepted
Are more people killed with hammers than with guns in the US?
According to the FBI homicide data, there were 15,070 reported murders in the United States in 2016, 11,004 of which were victims of murder by guns: 7,105 handgun victims, 374 rifle victims, 262 ...
- 9,537
101
votes
On average in the US, is there a mass shooting 9 out of every 10 days?
It depends on the definition.
This article in Mother Jones says:
Studies indicate that the rate at which public mass shootings occur has tripled since 2011. Between 1982 and 2011, a mass shooting ...
- 12k
92
votes
Is America “the only nation where this [a mass shooting] regularly happens”?
Ted Cruz's spokesman cited a non-peer-reviewed analysis by John R. Lott. Lott says he is trying to debunk a study by the criminologist Adam Lankford, which the Washington Post's fact checker describes ...
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88
votes
Does America not lead the world in mass shootings?
Snopes explains it as cherry picking:
The first thing to note about the rankings is that Lott has compared
the mass shooting death rate in the United States with that of other
countries where there ...
- 4,703
82
votes
Are more people killed with hammers than with guns in the US?
If you actually read the first OP article, it quotes David Keene as saying (in 2013):
You know, last year and the year before according to [2012] FBI statistics, more people in this country were ...
- 109k
78
votes
Do the murder statistics of 5 cities bring the USA to the 3rd highest country, from 189th?
This is not possible based on the information given. The link you provided has the US at 6th with 16,214 murders and 189th place is a 3 way tie with 9 murders each.
Using this data that would require ...
- 5,337
72
votes
Accepted
Are guns the number one killer of children in the US?
According to NBC News:
Child vehicle deaths, while falling, still topped firearm deaths in 2020
Nearly 2,400 children ages 1-17 died of vehicle-related injuries in 2020, compared with 2,270 firearm ...
- 109k
68
votes
Accepted
Did about 150 die from gun violence in the US during the 4th of July weekend 2021?
Update (7/6/21): Within 12 hours of my writing this answer, CNN has edited their article. The original claim can be seen here. CNN now acknowledges "a 26% drop [presumably in deaths] from last ...
- 14.2k
66
votes
Accepted
Did the 2nd Amendment limit the purchase of cannons from the day it was passed?
Did the 2nd Amendment really limit the purchase of cannons from the day it was passed?
No. The 2nd Amendment protects "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" and does not single out ...
- 14.2k
56
votes
Does America not lead the world in mass shootings?
TL;DR? The USA has so many mass shootings that the average deaths-per-shooting is lower than other places.
Let's break down what he's calculating: The rates of murder from mass public shootings per ...
- 2,155
46
votes
Are violent video games a better explanation of school shootings than access to guns?
First-person shooter games with human targets did not exist before Wolfenstein 3D in 1992. There were some brave attempts (most notably Aliens and Operation Wolf) but nothing which allowed the player ...
- 1,592
42
votes
Has a weapon functionally equivalent to the AR-15 been available for U.S. civilian purchase since 1907?
Has a weapon with the same rate of fire and magazine capacity as the modern AR-15 been widely available for civilian purchase in the U.S. since 1907?
The Winchester 1907 were sold in the US with ...
- 2,456
40
votes
Accepted
Are most US mass shooters Democrats?
There is little evidence upon which this list is based, even after
extensive searches, and many of those records seem to be inaccurate, or
later corrected.
To quote Snopes:
We searched contemporary ...
- 5,542
35
votes
Are guns the number one killer of children in the US?
A letter (dated mid April 2022) in the New England Journal of Medicine states that "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released updated official mortality data..." ...
- 467
35
votes
Has a weapon functionally equivalent to the AR-15 been available for U.S. civilian purchase since 1907?
The Winchester Model 1907 differs from an assault rifle in using a much heavier and more powerful round: the .351 Winchester Self-Loading bullet alone weighs 12 g, about the same as the weight of an ...
- 518
31
votes
Do the murder statistics of 5 cities bring the USA to the 3rd highest country, from 189th?
The meme is unclear
It is not clear whether the meme is talking about absolute numbers or per capita murder rates. I'll talk about both.
The meme does not distinguish murder vs homicide
The first ...
- 513
30
votes
Has a weapon functionally equivalent to the AR-15 been available for U.S. civilian purchase since 1907?
The Winchester Model 1907 did not have a "high capacity" magazine in the form available to consumers in 1907. The capacity was six.
The following is an ad in the January 1907 Hardware ...
- 109k
29
votes
In the American west—the world of cowboys and cowhands—was ammunition traded for alcoholic “shots” of a drink?
The word "Shot", a corruption of the Late Old-Engish "Scot" or "Secot", itself a corruption of the old Norse "skot", was a word meaning a Tax or measure. This means it pre-dates not just the "Wild ...
- 406
29
votes
Did the 2nd Amendment limit the purchase of cannons from the day it was passed?
Muzzle-loading, black-powder firearms firing solid shot, including cannons, such as the ones used in the US War of Independence and Civil war have never really been subjected to any regulations.
You ...
- 988
25
votes
Do gun homicides and suicides kill more Americans than war?
Yes.
According to Politifact who examined the claim by Mark Shields:
You know, Judy, the reality is -- and it's a terrible reality -- since Robert Kennedy died in the Ambassador Hotel on June 4, ...
- 33.4k
25
votes
Are fully automatic firearms very hard for civilians to obtain in the USA?
A "machinegun" is defined in 26 U.S. Code § 5845(b) as:
The term “machinegun” means any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one ...
- 109k
25
votes
Accepted
Did a homeowner fend-off three armed intruders with a high capacity magazine?
This sounds like Chen Fengzhu. In 2016, she awoke to three armed men invading her home, and scared them off after shooting at them, one dying from a gunshot wound in the driveway. The other two ...
- 34.1k
23
votes
Are fully automatic firearms very hard for civilians to obtain in the USA?
Is it very hard for an American to obtain an automatic weapon?
Yes, it is very hard for an American to obtain a true fully automatic weapon.
It is not, however, difficult for an American to obtain (...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible