Gun Control Doesn’t Stop Shootings Outside The United States, So It Won’t Here Either
School shootings are once again in the news. There were two last week. When the pundits in the media and online talk about school attacks, a false narrative often emerges that it is a uniquely domestic “American epidemic,” fostered by widespread firearms ownership and insufficient firearms regulation.
Gun control activist Shannon Watts tweeted, “America is the only high-income country to have constant shootings on school grounds, and to do absolutely nothing to stop it.” Everytown for Gun Safety tweeted, incorrectly, “This is the 81st mass shooting of 2025 and the 18th shooting on a college campus in 2025. It’s not a coincidence that we have a gun homicide rate 26x that of peer nations.”
Then-President Barack Obama uttered a similar sentiment in 2015 when he said, “The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world.” Corporate media and anti-gun advocacy groups reinforce this narrative constantly, shaping public perception and driving political agendas.
But here’s the sleight of hand: When attempting to make a point about targeted school attacks, activists change the terminology to the more generic “gun homicide,” or “mass shooting.” Gun homicide is any murder committed with a firearm. The causes and solutions to each of these problems is unique. The point of claiming America suffers from exponentially more gun violence serves one purpose: pressuring lawmakers to enact stringent gun control measures.
Further, gun control activists rely on disreputable sources such as the Gun Violence Archive and the K-12 School Shooting Database, which use an overly broad definition of school attacks, including incidents after school hours, unrelated local gang violence, and even shootings that take place off campus. Both source online news reports rather than law enforcement data and rarely revise their figures after more reliable reporting is available. With each passing year, law enforcement data for 2025 will undoubtedly tell a different story than the one promoted by activists, but accurate data requires time to compile, and they choose not to wait.
The truth is that targeted attacks on schools — and similarly vulnerable locations — are not uniquely American. They are global phenomena driven by evil, not geography or firearms laws.
Recent Attacks
Last week at Florida State University, a 20-year-old gunman, the son of a sheriff’s deputy, killed two and injured several others. Like almost every attack on a school in the United States, basic security measures failed to protect the innocent lives from a determined attacker.
Also last week, a student at Wilmer-Hutchins High School in Dallas, Texas, shot several students in a hallway. An investigation is underway. Fortunately no one was killed, but four sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
Global Problem
John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, has extensively studied the global phenomenon of mass violence. Lott’s research debunks the common misconception that America leads the world in mass shootings or school violence. “While the U.S. had about 4.5 percent of the world’s population during this period, it had just 2.9 percent of the public mass shootings — or even less, since our non-U.S. data is surely missing many cases,” according to Lott and his co-author Carlisle E. Moody, a professor at the College of William & Mary who researches the economics of crime.
According to their extensive data analysis, many countries have a higher per capita rates of mass shootings. However, media bias obscures these facts, propagating a skewed and politically expedient narrative that singles out America and guns as uniquely culpable.
Are there countries in Europe with less gun violence than the United States? Yes, but according to Lott’s analysis, when Lott and team looked at data from 89 countries, the United States ranked 58th, and even lower for its murder rate (62nd). In fact, many so-called peer countries — including Finland, Norway, and Switzerland — have higher per capita rates of murder from mass public shootings, a rate up to 45 percent higher than the United States, in direct contradiction to the assertions made by Watts and Everytown. Because these countries have more stringent firearm regulations than the United States, Lott’s analysis calls into question the efficacy of more stringent firearms regulations in reducing mass public shootings.
Recent Examples from Around the Globe
Weeks ago, in Örebro, Sweden, a gunman killed 10 at the Risbergska School, an adult education center, 125 miles west of Stockholm. In April of 2024, in Vantaa, Finland, a 12-year-old student opened fire at Viertola School, resulting in the death of one student and serious injuries to two others. In Suzano, São Paulo, Brazil, on March 13, 2019, two young assailants — aged 17 and 25 — entered the Professor Raul Brasil State School, killing five students and two staff members before turning their weapons on themselves. Brazil, a nation with stringent gun control laws, was nonetheless unable to prevent this tragedy.
Similarly, in Mizhi County, Shaanxi, China, on April 27, 2018, a disturbed 28-year-old former student murdered nine students and injured 12 others at the Number Three Middle School — not with firearms, but with a knife. Despite China’s near-total firearm ban, mass attacks still occur frequently, reflecting a deeper societal malaise unrelated to gun availability.
Perhaps most disturbing is the Kerch Polytechnic College massacre in Crimea on October 17, 2018, where an 18-year-old student combined explosives and gunfire, killing 20 people and injuring 70 more. Once again, stringent laws did nothing to stop a determined attacker.
This litany of tragedies reveals an uncomfortable truth: schools are often designated as gun-free or weapon-free zones, attracting evil actors who perceive these as targets filled with defenseless victims. It also exposes another myth, that America is the only country where these school attacks occur.
Root Causes
Consider the Kyoto Animation arson attack in Japan on July 18, 2019, where a disgruntled individual deliberately set fire to a studio, killing 36 people and injuring dozens more. This tragic event underscores that attackers bent on destruction can utilize any available method, regardless of firearm availability.
Shifting the focus exclusively to gun violence distracts from addressing the deeper, root causes of targeted attacks: breakdowns in family structure, anomie, lack of in-patient mental health facilities, societal isolation, and cultural nihilism. Attacks are often premeditated and meticulously planned, motivated by complex psychological and societal factors — not merely accessibility to firearms.
Gun control advocates exploit tragedies to pursue a political agenda while neglecting the broader societal ailments fueling such violence. As the examples highlight and research underscores, disarming law-abiding citizens does not prevent determined criminals or disturbed individuals from perpetrating horrific acts.
It is high time we challenge the prevailing narrative pushed by mainstream media and gun control activists. School attacks — and targeted mass violence more generally — are not uniquely American problems, nor are they uniquely firearm-driven problems. They reflect a global sickness that transcends national boundaries.
Until society genuinely confronts the root issues — mental health, societal fragmentation, the breakdown of the family, and general moral decay — we will continue witnessing such tragedies, regardless of legislative action on firearms.
The media and gun control advocates have shaped a false narrative. It’s our responsibility, as critical thinkers and informed citizens, to reject simplistic explanations, acknowledge the global nature of targeted violence, and focus on real, lasting solutions beyond ineffective firearms legislation.
Ryan Petty is a serial entrepreneur and technology executive. He served on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission and is actively involved in the public policy arena as an advocate for improving school safety.
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