Obama was right when he said 'this type of mass violence does not happen in other developed countries'
At least 10 people are dead and seven more injured after a gunman opened fire at a community college in Oregon on Thursday.
President Barack Obama, forced to react to another mass shooting in the US from the White House briefing room, lamented that the US is the "only advanced country in the world that sees these mass shootings every few months."
A few months ago, incidentally, he made similar statements. In the aftermath of another tragic shooting earlier in the year — at a Charleston, South Carolina, church in which nine were killed — Obama spoke out about a recent scourge of gun violence in the US.
"Once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun," Obama said.
Later, he added a point he has made before: "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 developed countries."
There's data that backs him up on that statement. The UN Office of Drugs and Crime maintains a database containing homicide rates for most of the world's countries. Looking at members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a guide for comparing the US to other developed countries, Business Insider found that the US has a much higher rate of homicides than all but three of the 34 OECD nations:
(Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from UNODC)
(Note: All countries' data from 2013, except for South Korea, Israel, Chile, and Turkey, which are from 2012.)
Obama has spoken at length before about Australia's successes in combating gun violence after instituting stricter gun measures following a 1996 mass shooting. Its rate of homicide per 100,000 people fell below 1.1 in 2013.
"A couple of decades ago Australia had a mass shooting similar to Columbine or Newtown, and Australia just said, 'Well, that's it. We're not doing — we're not seeing that again,' and basically imposed very severe, tough gun laws, and they haven't had a mass shooting since," Obama said last June.
"I mean, our levels of gun violence are off the charts. There's no advanced, developed country on Earth that would put up with this."
Japan and its low homicide rates are also often cited in contrast with those of the US. Japan strictly controls gun ownership, and supporters of stricter gun regulations in the US often hold it up as an example. By contrast, the US has the highest firearm-ownership rate in the world.
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