President Obama Is Right, Way More Americans Die in Gun Violence Than in Terrorism

BY ZOË SCHLANGER

In his address to the nation following the shooting at Umpqua Community College, President Obama stated that more Americans have died in the last ten years as victims of gun violence than they have in terrorist attacks.

He’s right.

In 2013 alone, 33,636 people in America were killed by gun violence. That’s more than all Americans killed by terrorists on U.S soil in the last 14 years, the September 11th attacks included; 2,977 people died in the 9/11 attacks, and 74 have been killed since by terrorists in the U.S, according to a recent study. According to a 2013 report from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, the average terrorist attack in the United States has resulted in 3.3 casualties.

In addition, in his speech, Obama twice stated that this is the only developed country in the world where mass shootings occur regularly. This appears to be true. As Newsweek previously reported, although the U.S. accounts for less than five percent of the world’s population, it had 31 percent of mass shootings between 1966 and 2012.

An investigation by Mother Jones in April found that guns are used in 70 percent of homicides in America, and more than 50 percent of suicides.

What’s more, the top five countries in terms of civilian firearm ownership rates —the U.S., Yemen, Switzerland, Finland and Serbia—were each among the top 15 countries in the world for incidence of mass shootings.