Gun advocates in the U.S. regularly assert that violence — like the recent schooting in a high school in Florida — is caused by violent movies, video games, profane music lyrics, and/or mental illness. Regardless of the relative value of any of these media and notwithstanding that more could be done for mental health in our country, all these arguments ignore something very important.

Mass shootings don’t happen in other developed countries with the frequency they see in the U.S. Gun violence as a broad category is almost unique in the U.S. among First World nations. Statistics show the U.S. ranking just ahead of Uraguay and Panama when it comes to the firearm-related death rate, and far behind countries usually seen as more dangerous — including Mexico, Nicaragua, Serbia, and Peru. Even when looking at overall homicide rate (regardless of weapon), more than a hundred nations are doing better than the U.S. — and they have similar levels of mental illness, while consuming the same movies and video games that we do. Fucking Rwanda has a lower homicide rate than we do. In Slovenia, you’re four times less likely to be killed by homicide than in the U.S. It’s five times safer in Australia, Denmark, Portugal or the UK. In Taiwan, Germany, and Italy, the homicide rate is six times lower than the U.S.’s.

The difference isn’t that they’re all mentally healthy, or that they’ve strictly censored violence in movies, music, and games. The difference is that it’s harder to get guns in those places.