The FBI’s Annual Crime Report Is Out, and The Anti-Gun Crowd Won’t Like It

However, as has been the case in previous years, the numbers show that rifles in general — including semi-automatics as well as others — only account for a fraction of a percent of the total homicide rate in the United States.

Here’s what the FBI’s 2018 homicide numbers show us:

• Overall, the number of homicides dropped from 15,195 in 2017 to 14,123 in 2018. The overall number of people murdered with guns dropped as well.
• 10,265 were committed with firearms, out of which handguns accounted for 6,603.
• Rifles were used in 297 homicides, shotguns in 235, and “other guns” in 167.
• 2,963 homicides were listed as “firearms, type not stated.”

What does this show us? According to the available information, rifles accounted for just 2.1 percent of total homicides last year — and 2.9 percent of gun homicides.

Once again, deaths from knives and “personal weapons” like hands, fists, and feet were higher than the number of homicides committed with rifles. More than five times as many murders were committed with knives (1,515) as with rifles, and more than twice as many people were killed with “personal weapons” (672). Other years included in the FBI report’s table — which spans 2014-2018 — show similar disparities between the same weapon types.

Again, these numbers are just for rifles as a whole. There’s no further breakdown for what kind of action or cosmetic features the rifles had.

But despite the facts, the question of what to do about the AR-15 and other widely used semi-automatic rifles — sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” — will likely remain as one of the main focus points in America’s ongoing debate about guns and the Second Amendment.

Story cited here.

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