[mpweiher]

What it rated false was the part where Obama said this type of thing doesn't happen (at all) in other countries.

And they went on to say that a lot of the other countries that ranked highly were small countries that had a single attack. Statistics don't work well in that regime.

And of course, here's what politifact themselves commented later:

"June 22, 2015: We heard from several of you regarding Obama's use of the word "frequency," and that frequency could refer to the incidents of mass shootings, not deaths as we examined. Looking at Obama's claim by incident, the United States has a higher rate of incidents than Finland, Norway and Switzerland. We agree that there is no preferred comparison and each is valid, and we've changed some language in this article to reflect that. ... "

[Consultant32452]

Connecticut (the state where the Sandy Hook shooting too place) has a population of 3.6 million, compared to Norway's 5 million.

Would it be more reasonable to compare individual US states to individual European countries? If so, are we going to throw out outliers like Berveik and the Sandy Hook shooting? Because with that philosophy pretty soon there aren't any mass shootings anywhere.

[mpweiher]

Nope. First it is reasonable not to define such a thin slice of violent behavior (mass shootings of 6 or more people it related to another crime and some more criteria I can’t remember) as to have a completely meaningless stat. If you unabashedly cherry pick like that, you can ‘prove’ anything you like.

Fact is: the us has 10x the gun deaths and 4-6x the homicides compared to other modern industrialized democracies.

Regardless of your attempts at spin.

[Consultant32452]

Fact is: when you try to make a reasonable apples to apples comparison between the US and European countries with regards to mass shootings the numbers supporting your original statement are at best murky and at worst bordering on pants on fire falsehood.

You may have some valid points regarding gun deaths and homicide rates, but that's not what this discussion was about.