Damning graphic shows exactly why the United States has so many mass shootings

A graphic has shown why the United States has more mass shootings than other countries.

The graphic, made by the New York Timesin 2017 and based on a University of Alabama study, shows that the more guns there are in a country, the more mass shooters there are.

It examines data during the period 1966 to 2012 and has resurfaced in light of the latest school shooting in the country.

The publication Americans make up about 4.4 percent of the global population but own 42 percent of the world’s guns. From 1966 to 2012, 31 percent of the gunmen in mass shootings worldwide were American, according to a 2015 study by Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama.

It comes after a shooter killed 19 children and two adults when he opened fire at Robb Elementary School, a primary school in South Texas on Tuesday. The 18-year-old suspect had a handgun, an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and high-capacity magazines, investigators say and the teenager is also suspected of shooting his grandmother.

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In a speech from the White House, US President Joe Biden said he was "sick and tired" of responding to mass shootings, as he called for gun control.

"How many scores of little children who witnessed what happened - see their friends die, as if they're in a battlefield, for God's sake," he said. "They'll live with it the rest of their lives."

He's got a point.

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