I said "just because there is a definition doesn't mean it's a good definition". That doesn't mean I think it's a good definition or a bad definition. I personally prefer the definition used by massshootingtracker.org, which concludes there have been 1300+ mass shootings since 2013. However, I also think someone will argue about any reasonable definition.
I also said "It doesn't matter that the federal definition changed a couple of years ago." That doesn't mean I think any definition will work, only that for the purposes of this analysis, we can choose either the old definition or the new one - or any reasonable definition.
I'm willing to accept the old definition and focus on the real "salient", to use your term, issue, which is that the results of this op. ed piece are worthless, because of poor use of statistics.
Take your time.
If anything, it says that mandated arming of large numbers of citizens (conscription), and mandatory use of such weapons, leads to a higher number of mass killings.
That's a different conversation than the mandated disarming of large numbers of citizens.
Translation: it wouldn't fit the political agenda of the op. ed piece.
Buh-bye.
Okay, let's define "mass shooting" to include people who are shot wholesale by government action (by the way: why shouldn't it?), and increase the time frame to 75 years.
Now compare the U.S. to Europe, and your conclusions about the relative rates will be...somewhat different.
The Netherlands lost about 2% of its population in WWII, the equivalent of about 7 million deaths in a population the size of the current United States.