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 ...
- 9,247
241
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
204
votes
Accepted
Is the USA murder rate at a high? Specifically is it at a 45 year high?
NO! The EXACT OPPOSITE is true.
According to this comprehensive listing showing data from 1960 to 2015 shows the highest absolute number of murders (24,700) occurred in 1991. The highest per capita ...
- 9,247
160
votes
Accepted
Have more Americans been killed in schools than in military service this year?
Yes, the statement that more Americans have been killed in schools than military service thus far in 2018 appears to be accurate. The exact numbers in the tweet are inaccurate, and the comparison isn'...
- 1,744
143
votes
Was there violence on both sides in Charlottesville?
The New York Times has a photograph of a counter-protester lifting a newspaper box and the following witness explanation from a fellow counter-protestor:
I was on Market Street around 11:30 a.m. ...
- 104k
131
votes
Accepted
Was there violence on both sides in Charlottesville?
In the literal sense, yes.
There's no question that both sides were mutually combative, engaging in fistfights and small-scale skirmishes with improvised melee weapons.
There are many accounts of ...
- 2,529
116
votes
Accepted
Is there currently riots/looting *ONLY* in Democrat cities in the USA?
No.
Cities are generally democrat-leaning - 35 with democratic mayors vs 13 republican in the 50 largest cities.
But cities with republican mayors also had protests which resulted in property damage....
tim♦
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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 ...
- 1,516
104
votes
Is the USA murder rate at a high? Specifically is it at a 45 year high?
No, 2015 was the highest since 2009, but it was much higher previously, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, via Politifact, the increase in ...
- 104k
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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87
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 ...
- 4,673
72
votes
Accepted
In the US, are three women killed each day by their male partners?
This appears to be mostly correct and derived from a report published by the CDC:
Racial and Ethnic Differences in Homicides of Adult Women and the Role of Intimate Partner Violence — United States, ...
- 1,193
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 ...
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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 ...
- 2,096
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
43
votes
Is the USA murder rate at a high? Specifically is it at a 45 year high?
No, the US Murder Rate is not the highest it's been in the past 45 years.
According to this page from fbi.gov, the murder rate and the total number of murders for the year 2015 is lower than every ...
- 22.3k
38
votes
Is this "whites killed by whites" diagram wrong?
TL;DR: not exactly.
Black Lives Matter
As others have said, this image misrepresents what the Black Lives Matter movement protests. As a general rule, police shootings don't appear in crime ...
- 10.2k
36
votes
Accepted
Was the wild west less violent than the current west?
Apparently not
In The American West: A New Interpretive History by Robert V. Hine, John Mack Faragher, they quote the annual homicide rate of Dodge City (one of the towns mentioned by Ridley) as 50 ...
- 57.4k
23
votes
Does America not lead the world in mass shootings?
There is another issue with this study. It states: "Of the 86 countries where we have identified mass public shootings, the US ranks 56th per capita in its rate of attacks and 61st in mass public ...
- 331
20
votes
Accepted
Did a school or college in the United States ban backpacks after a shooting?
Not a college.
In response to an incident in a middle school (13 year old kids,) a school district in Idaho banned backpacks in the local schools. It affected middle schools (grade 7 and 8, kids 13 ...
- 5,088
19
votes
Accepted
Is this Donald Trump and did he slap the governor of Mexico City?
The image appears to be from Wrestlemania 23. The gentleman(?) on the right is apparently WWE chairman Vince McMahon.
https://www.gettyimages.com/event/battle-of-the-billionaires-announce-details-of-...
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18
votes
Is America “the only nation where this [a mass shooting] regularly happens”?
Snopes.com had an article on this subject in 2018, talking in particular about Lott's CRPC study mentioned in the OP. Besides talking about the issues in defining mass-shooting and the corresponding ...
- 3,816
17
votes
Was there violence on both sides in Charlottesville?
From the New Yorker:
In a photograph from Charlottesville, two men extend weapons: one is the Confederate flag, furled, and the other is an aerosol can, modified to eject fire.
...
- 1,547
17
votes
Was there violence on both sides in Charlottesville?
In a meaningful way, no.
There were not two sides present. The core event was a planned "Unite the Right" rally attended by militant white nationalists and others who had chosen to stand with them, "...
- 5,413
15
votes
Was there violence on both sides in Charlottesville?
One specific part of the claim which has not been addressed:
The president said:
You had a group, you had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit ...
The president's ...
- 4,350
15
votes
Did the Pulse nightclub shooter target the LGBTQ community?
Links from NBC News and HuffPost describing the outcome of the trial of Mateen's wife indeed suggest not, or at least that there was no evidence that the attack was targeted.
HuffPost:
As far as ...
- 1,038
14
votes
Is there currently riots/looting *ONLY* in Democrat cities in the USA?
As tim's answer says, the direct answer is No, rioting is occurring in some non-democrat cities in the US. I wanted to expand on that with how much is occurring in democrat versus republican cities.
...
- 489
12
votes
Does America not lead the world in mass shootings?
Note the subtle but important discrepancy between the headline and the detail:
"America doesn’t actually lead the world in mass shootings"
...
A new report from the Crime Prevention Research ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible