In the wake of almost any mass shooting, we’re going to hear someone talk about how this problem is uniquely American. Mass shootings, they claim, just don’t happen in other places, only here.
Yet on some level, people know that’s not completely true. We’ve all heard about such attacks taking place in other countries over the years, but it seems to vanish from people’s consciousness almost overnight.
It doesn’t help when there are such attacks that we barely ever hear about.
In fact, here’s a report from India about three such places with gun violence and mass shootings that most of us heard nothing about.
South Africa, Denmark and Sweden have fought a wave of gun violence and mass shootings in all three countries despite strict gun laws.
South Africa was the last to see a mass shooting, with at least 19 people killed in two separate shootings in Johannesburg and Pietermaritzburg last week. In Johannesburg, 15 people were killed and many more injured when a gunman opened fire on customers in a bar. A similar scene played out the same evening in Pietermaritzburg, where two men entered a bar and opened fire on customers, killing four and injuring eight.
The two shootings happened despite strict gun regulations in the country, with GunPolicy.org rating South Africa’s firearms rules as “restrictive.” Citizens in the country are not allowed to own semi-automatic weapons without a special approval while the possession of a pistol is allowed but only after obtaining a license under specific circumstances.
South Africa’s strict restrictions have led to a large black market for weapons in the country, with nearly 13,000 people arrested in the country in 2020/2021 for illegal possession of firearms, according to the The Bharat Express News.
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Denmark has similarly restrictive gun regulations, with GunPolicy.org also classifying the country’s laws as restrictive. But the strict laws failed to prevent last week’s mass shooting at a Copenhagen shopping center where a lone gunman opened fire on shoppers, killing three and injuring seven others.
Sweden hasn’t been the host to anything we would term a mass shooting, but they’ve seen a huge surge in “gun violence” despite the nation having tough firearm restrictions on the books.
So what gives?
That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? If gun control is the answer to the American problem, then why does it seem that these regulations aren’t doing a damn thing to stop this kind of violence in Denmark, South Africa, or Sweden?
The answer, of course, is that guns are not now, nor have ever been the problem.
Mass shootings happen all over the place, despite what our media would like for you to believe. Gun violence happens all over the place, too. Further, when you look at things like mass shootings in relation to population, their rate of occurrence is often much closer to what we see here than most are willing to admit.
Assuming, of course, you use the actual number of mass shootings and not the Gun Violence Archive version that’s designed to inflate the numbers in order to make it look like a bigger issue.
You see, that’s what the real issue is. Our media does all it can to make this country look bad, particularly in regard to this issue.
They don’t report on things like Sweden, South Africa, or Denmark because it undermines their anti-gun narrative, and that’s what it’s really about.
Those countries are undermining the idea that gun control is the answer. Reality has a habit of doing that.