Whenever a writer fires off something that can be construed as biting or controversial in a volatile atmosphere, pushback -- some good, some not so good -- should come as no surprise.
A few weeks back, a piece I wrote about the predictable and distasteful reactions of some American officials and businesses to the insane killings of nine parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church predictably stirred all of that, and more. It even prompted a nice lady to conclude in print that I am "misguided."
"Jenkins misleads readers with his mention of mass shootings in other countries," she said, and characterized the column as being "riddled with inaccuracies."
Hardly. Not being in the business of purposefully misleading anybody, I was quoting what one of the nation's preeminent gun researchers had said about Obama's gun fib and pointing out the rank hypocrisy in the shootings' wake. There was more than enough pietism go around as the president, lawmakers and others tripped over each other to blame everything from the National Rifle Association to the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, which killer Dylann Roof was photographed holding.
The lady, from her perspective, heard Obama talking about "grace." I heard a particularly galling attempt to use the murders as political grist for the gun control mill.
"We as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency," Obama said before echoes from the shots could fade -- and before jetting off to Hollywood for fundraisers and gun violence advice from the same entertainment industry that glorifies slaughter and mayhem.
Economist and nationally recognized gun researcher John Lott says Obama was talking thorough his hat; mass shootings do occur in other advanced countries; many countries in Europe "actually have higher rates of death in mass public shootings," with Norway's the highest.
Lott and the FBI since 2009 have defined mass public shootings as four or more people killed, "and not in the course of committing another crime, and not involving struggles over sovereignty."
When you compare annual death rates per million people for mass shootings in the United States to European countries -- from 2009 until the Charleston shootings -- this nation is nowhere near the top of the list. Norway leads with 2.044 per million; Macedonia, 0.377; Serbia, 0.283; Slovakia, 0.201; Finland, 0.142; Belgium, 0.138; Czech Republic, 0.133; and, then, the United States, at 0.095. Next is Switzerland, followed by Austria, Netherlands, France, Germany, England, Italy and Russia.
The Crime Prevention Research Center, founded by Lott, collected data on the worst mass public shootings, where at least 15 people were killed.
There were 13. The three worst and nine of the 13 occurred outside the United States. Nine occurred in developed or "advanced" countries, the center said.
Of those 13, four were in the United States, two in Germany and two in the United Kingdom.
"But the U.S. has a population four times greater than Germany's and five times the U.K.'s, so on a per-capita basis the U.S. ranks low in comparison -- actually, those two countries would have had a frequency of attacks 1.96 (Germany) and 2.46 (UK) times higher," the CPRC says.
"Small countries such as Norway (with perhaps the worst example of a mass shooting in modern history, with 77 dead), Israel and Australia may have only one major attack each, one-fourth of what the U.S. has suffered, but the U.S. population is vastly greater. If they suffered attacks at a rate adjusted for their population, Norway, Israel and Australia would have had attacks that were respectively 16, 11, and 3 times greater than the U.S."
Oh, and when it comes to "frequency" of attacks, Lott found the U.S. ranked ninth in the world.
While critics balk at using murder rates to present the big picture because it does not make their case, using them makes eminent good sense. Raw numbers by themselves do not begin to tell the whole story. Alaska's rape rate per-capita versus its actual number of rapes is a startling case in point, telling the real story: A state with a small population where the total number of reported rapes is lower than in more populated states, but where the rate for every 100,000 people is three times the national average.
Lott's research belies the political left's contention that the United States is far and away the worse country in the world for mass murders, but I do not have much hope that presenting an accurate picture will prompt the left, or the nice lady, to accept the truth.
Not even a mustard seed's worth.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com, a division of Porcaro Communications.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com