General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Scientists baffled by Canadians' ability to watch movies, play video games and not shoot each other [View all]exboyfil
(17,862 posts)We have 9 times the population of Canada and 59 times the population of Finland. If the rate of mass shootings were equivalent, then we would expect to see 9 times more shootings in the U.S. than Canada, and 59 times more shootings in the U.S. than Finland.
Using Wikipedia since 1966 (Charles Whitman) the U.S. has had 17 mass shootings in school, Canada has had 3, and Finland has had 2.
U.S. has 4 times the population of Germany. Germany has had 7 shootings since 1964.
Granted the U.S. population has grown much faster than the other countries so the earlier shootings are on much closer population basis. If we only look at shootings since 1999 (Columbine):
U.S. - 9
Canada - 1
Finland - 2
Germany - 4
For workplace shootings since 1967
U.S. - 18
Canada - 0
Finland - 0
Germany - 0
Canada (5 times smaller) -2
If you look at a chart of mass killers excluding above two groups (these are rampage killers so not single events):
U.S. (since 1980) - 44
Canada - 1
European Union (1.6 times larger than U.S.)- 35
These mass killings are one off events, and I don't think you can necessarily conclude anything about these statistics. For overall homicide rates though, the U.S. is much greater (4.2 versus 2.2 for Finland, 1.6 for Canada, 1.2 for U.K, and 1.1 for France (all other large Western countries are at 1 or below).