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Throughout the world, mass shootings have spurred greater gun control legislation. In Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries, massacres have caused legislators to clamp down on guns in a variety of ways. Below is a timeline of mass casualty shootings in the United States and elsewhere.

This related post articulates the actions other countries have taken to address to these threats. Meanwhile, the United States moved from lax gun control, to the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, and returned to laws varying in control on a state-by-state basis when the ban expired in 2004.

The Century Foundation has put together a synopsis on the prevalence of guns and gun violence in the United States, as compared to the rest of the world. The United States has nearly 9 guns for every 10 people; the next closest country is Yemen, a country with several simmering insurgencies, with 5.5 guns per person.

Lastly, there is a boisterous debate over whether the Assault Weapons Ban actually curtailed mass shootings. Bill Clinton recently claimed, “Half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in the history of the country.” Century sheds light on the veracity of this claim, which the Washington Post derided as untrue.

Image: Abigail Grimshaw

Writing: Therese Postel