You may think that my question itself is loaded. Like the gun used in the latest mass shooting in a Texas mall last Saturday. The US ranks No. 1 in the country list of deaths by ‘mass shootings‘ – loosely described as incidents where deaths of four or more persons occur by the use of firearms that aren’t gang killings, domestic violence, or terrorist acts conducted by an organisation. According to a 2022 study published in the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, between 1998 and 2019, there were 101 attacks in the US leading to 816 deaths. (France was No. 2 with eight incidents and 179 deaths.)
Going by that fact alone, you’d be re-evaluating Disneyland. Add to that the qualitative shock and horror by which each mass shooting in the US of A – and not in, say, Guatemala – is covered and consumed, and we get sporadic pictures, in between what we see in all those romcoms, of America as a First World Afghanistan.
But then, comes the unlathering of the data. Mass shootings made up for 0.2% of gun deaths in the US during 2000-16 – and less than 0.5% of all homicides during 1976-2018. That should give Americans a sense of ‘phew’.
Then there’s the fact that Norway – of fjords and Erling Haaland fame – leads the world’s average annual death rate per million people from mass shootings in 2009-15 at 1.888 – with the US ‘languishing’ in No. 11 spot at 0.089. But what these numbers don’t tell you, unless you’re asking, is that the Norwegian figure is ‘spiked’ by one 2011 incident when a far-right extremist gunned down 69 people in a summer camp.
But does that mean gun deaths in the US are a concoction of a lily-livered American ‘liberal’ lobby that wants skateboards to replace dangerous cars? No. That schools and malls should even be targets of firearms is scandalous the way a communal riot in India being rare doesn’t make communal riots kosher. 54% of gun-related US deaths in 2021 were, however, suicides – 43% murders, the rest accidental, or involved law enforcement. There were more gun-related deaths in 34 states in that country than motor vehicle fatalities in 2020.
Speaking of death by cars, India posted the highest number of road fatalities in the world (followed by China) in 2021, a statistic that India’s ministry of road transport and highways actually cites in a 2022 report, instead of fobbing it off as ‘western conspiracy’ like some other ministries. But going by road deaths per 1 lakh people a year, India’s 16.6 is far less severe than most African countries (Liberia tops this chart at 35.9) and significantly better than rich UAE (18.1). So, does that mean India’s road death stats are ‘acceptable’? That we drive badly? Or that less Indians have cars to crash? One can certainly form a very valid picture of the US (road deaths per 1 lakh persons being 12.9) being a far more dangerous place to live in than India measured by gun deaths, and a safer place going by car deaths. It’s up to you to decide which possible form of death worries you more.
What applies to mass shoot-outs, gun deaths, car deaths, heart attack deaths etc also applies to population figures (‘Go India Go! vs ‘Groan India Groan!’), number of published research papers, universities, divorce rates – pretty much anything. Even the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year – 1 in 1 million – has its spin and slant. One in a million strikes shouldn’t sound too good in a place barraged constantly by lightning, or a place crowded with current-carrying conductive material.
It’s really like that old trick countless kids play with their parents when exam results are out. You don’t say you came third in a subject in a class of four students. You say you came third in class. You see, quality also has a quantity of its own.
