2015 has seen a flurry of high-profile mass shootings in America.

In what's become a disturbing routine during his presidency, Barack Obama has pleaded with lawmakers to change America's gun laws.

"This is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together," a visibly frustrated Obama said hours after an October shooting at an Oregon community college. "This is a political choice we make to allow this to happen every few months in America."

But his previous calls for gun control have fallen on deaf ears, as Congress is yet to pass any meaningful gun-related legislation during Obama's time in office.

What is clear is that other countries don't have the gun violence issues that the US does. The president has tried to hammer home this point again and again.

"We're the only country in the world where this happens, and it happens once a week," Obama said after a school shooting in Troutland, Oregon last year left two people dead.

"At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other developed countries," Obama repeated after a mass shooting in June left nine dead at a church in Charleston.

And after the shooting in Oregon, he brought it up again.

"We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months."

Here, we take a look at the data that shows why America is so unlike the rest of the world when it comes to the popularity and the abuse of guns. We'll look at the role that policymakers play in the gun-control debate, and we'll look at what can be done (if anything).

It isn't pretty, but it's important. Hundreds of thousands of American lives hang in the balance.

Editor's note: Walter Hickey contributed to this post.

This post has been updated from an earlier version.