Echoes of Columbine

There is only one single ingredient that every mass shooting has had in common, the gun. This is also the one topic guaranteed to bring out the highest emotions. Mass shootings are not uniquely American, but 31% of the worlds mass shootings take place in America, while accounting for only 5% of the worlds population. America is a gun culture, there is no debating that fact. 320 million Americans own around 350 million guns. The United States can now arm nearly every man, woman and child from shore to shore and still have guns left over. With numbers like that it might seem that every American owns a gun, but only about 40% of the population owns guns. while 3% of the country owns one half of all of the guns. By far the most common guns used in massacres are those that can do the most damage in the least amount of time. Semi-automatic handguns are the chosen weapon in over 70% of mass shootings. Semi-automatic rifles are a second choice, followed by shotguns and then revolvers.