Another week, another mass shooting in the United States. I’ve linked before to my posts America is a Violent Country, and Assault Deaths Within the United States. I thought I would update the figures with the latest data from the OECD. The method and scope are the same as before. Here is the main figure, showing assault death rates for the US and 23 other OECD countries.

Assault Death rates in the US and other OECD countries, 1960-2013.

Assault Death rates in the US and other OECD countries, 1960-2013.

There’s a PDF available. The US data go as far as 2010 (three more years than before), with most other countries coming up to or around 2013. The story is much the same as before, with the US death rate from assault continuing to fall, but still much higher than other OECD countries.

Assault Death rates in Norway and the United States, 1960-2013.

Assault Death rates in Norway and the US, 1960-2013.

One other thing popped out at me from looking at the new data. The Norway series now includes data showing how a single event, the 2011 murders commited by Anders Breivik, creates a big outlier in the time series. You can also see something similar for the effects of the September 11th attacks in the US series, which push the rate for that year back far above trend, given the rapid drop in death rates in the 1990s.

Finally, here’s a small-multiple of the individual country time series, ordered by mean rate.

Assault Death rates by country, 1960-2013.

Assault Death rates by country, 1960-2013.