FBI Crime Stats on long guns used in crime.

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Owen Sparks

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FBI Crime Stats: You are more likely to be killed by hands and feet than by a shotgun or rifle. ANY shotgun or rifle, not just the smaller subset of 'assault weapons' which are used on only one and a half percent of all gun crimes.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/27/f...eet-than-by-a-shotgun-or-rifle/#ixzz2DTxdCSt4

Evidently the people in government who want to ban 'assault weapons' do so for reasons that have nothing to do with crime. For example, In 2011 there were 356 shotgun murders and 323 rifle murders for a total of 679 long gun murders. Again, only a relitivly small fraction of these murders were committed with long guns that fit the governments definition of an assault weapon.

During the same time period there were 727 murders committed with personal weapons which are defined as hands, fists, feet etc. and over twice as many people were murdered with knives or other edged weapons for a total of 1,964 people cut or stabbed to death.

Dispite what you might see in the movies, the number of people who died from being poisoned never exceeded 10 per year.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/27/f...eet-than-by-a-shotgun-or-rifle/#ixzz2DU3HBxYv

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/27/f...eet-than-by-a-shotgun-or-rifle/#ixzz2DU13SVnB
 
I remember reading something a while back (maybe on this forum) about baseball bats being one of the most common items used in murders committed with blunt objects and actually accounted for more civilian deaths than assault rifles.
 
Looks like that vacation trip to Hawaii is out. Crossed another vacation destination off the list, that won't receive tourist dollars.

My wife will be disappointed, but there are other destinations all over the world that will welcome our tourist dollars, I'm sure!

I love the punitive nature of the wallet.

OP, those crime stats aren't surprising. We knew all along that long gun crime, while unfortunate, was minimal.
 
I think the reason that long guns are rarely used in crimes is simply because they are just too long to conceal. Most criminals want to get away with their crimes so they choose a handgun or knife that they can hide under their clothing.
 
Thanks for these stats, I have used several bits of info from THR in my gun discussions with people I know and now I have this table to add to it.
 
I think if you check the admission stats for any trauma unit in a country which is not at war, you will find that stabs and blunt assaults always outnumber gunshot wounds.
For example these are the stats for the Johannesburg hospital trauma unit in 1999, which was one of the years in the late 90s where we encountered a lot of gunshot wounds:

Total number of adult trauma admissions: 16325 (of which 1554 were resus cases)
Road traffic and other accidents: 7892
Blunt assaults: 4440
Stabs: 2214
Gunshots: 1755
Not properly documented: 24

I recently emailed the head of the trauma unit and asked what the stats are like now and he says the number of gunshots have gone down from an average of 150 a month to somewhere around 100 a month.

Even if you take into account the fact that the circumstances surrounding the injuries cannot be known with any certainty in many cases (accident, self-inflicted, justified or unjustified injury) the numbers indicate that stabs and blunt assaults outnumber gunshots (of any kind) in the civilian population.
 
The other interesting fact is that long gun homicide has greatly *decreased* since the expiration of the 1994 Feinstein non-ban, another data point the U.S. media feigns ignorance of.
 
Well, that is a fact that is good for arguing against an assault weapon ban, but the anti-gun lobby can easily spin it to portray all long guns in a bad light. I imagine the argument going like this: "We banned assault weapons because they are bad, but shotguns and hunting rifles kill more people each year, ban those too!"
 
Assault weapons are seen as "bad" because they give the individual a suitable tool to throw off a tyranical government. Not because they are likely to be used in common crime. Remember what sparked the revolt at Lexington and Concord?
 
People advocate the banning of "assault rifle type weapons" because they have been used to commit very heinous acts which cause a strong emotional response and because they see no valid use for them. Its not just about total number of deaths but also a cost/benefit analysis. Almost all people in our society accept a relativity large number of automobile accident deaths because of the tremendous benefits provided to our lives by vehicles. If the benefit were not there you can be certain large numbers of people would oppose the ownership of cars.

The notion that gun laws are just about control are simply baseless. I know many private citizens who do not believe AR15's or AK's should be available to private citizens and none are running for office or amassing an army to take over the world. They simply do not see a reason to allow a weapon which makes it so easy to commit mass murder. That's it. No conspiracy theories. Not to mention, the idea that a bunch of citizens with AR15's are going to defeat a modern military is pure delusion. Revolutions against modern government militaries only succeed when the military itself joins the side of the rebels.

Now i do believe in the right to own such weapons and i in fact do. However, i do acknowledge there are valid reasons that people hold different a view.
 
People advocate the banning of "assault rifle type weapons" because they have been used to commit very heinous acts which cause a strong emotional response and because they see no valid use for them. Its not just about total number of deaths but also a cost/benefit analysis.
Except the worst mass murders in this country have *not* involved rifles, but ordinary pistols and ordinary (not extended) magazines.

The mass shooting that the prohibitionists leveraged into the AWB (the Stockton, CA shooting in 1989) involved 5 fatalities, the same number Gang Lu murdered with a 6-shot revolver not long after.

The whole notion that support for an AWB reflects a cost/benefit analysis is based on a fraudulent portrayal of the cost (black rifles as "the weapon of choice of criminals" and "weapons of mass destruction") and a fraudulent underestimation of the benefit (black rifles being the most common sporting rifles and the most common defensive carbines in the United States).
 
Not to mention, the idea that a bunch of citizens with AR15's are going to defeat a modern military is pure delusion. Revolutions against modern government militaries only succeed when the military itself joins the side of the rebels.

Just curious, but have you been watching what's happening in Syria lately?

The rebels are using hand-built grenades (20 oz coke bottles with nails and flash powder, launched via large slingshots), small arms, and improvised explosives of various designs (propane canisters up to fuel tanker trucks). What larger weapons they have are captures.

They're up against a superior force with tanks, jet aircraft, and other modern weapons, while they make do with Toyota pickup trucks and motorcycles.

And they're holding their own rather well. Bitter, tough fight, but they ARE holding their own.
 
Except the worst mass murders in this country have *not* involved rifles, but ordinary pistols and ordinary (not extended) magazines.

The mass shooting that the prohibitionists leveraged into the AWB (the Stockton, CA shooting in 1989) involved 5 fatalities, the same number Gang Lu murdered with a 6-shot revolver not long after.

The whole notion that support for an AWB reflects a cost/benefit analysis is based on a fraudulent portrayal of the cost (black rifles as "the weapon of choice of criminals" and "weapons of mass destruction") and a fraudulent underestimation of the benefit (black rifles being the most common sporting rifles and the most common defensive carbines in the United States).

There are of course people who believe in the banning of military style rifles who also believe in additional restrictions against handguns. However, i think many who single out rifles either recognize benefits of handguns or are simply more comfortable with them due to familiarity.

Half of a cost/benefit analysis is benefit and if one sees no benefit no cost is considered acceptable. While most of us here do see benefit with private ownership of certain rifles others do not.

Many recognize that the AWB was absolutely pointless. Regardless of whether or not a total ban of such rifles would reduce the occurrence of mass shootings the AWB practically nothing to reduce the availability of such weapons but instead it primarily just limited features.




Trent, i have to disagree with your assessment that the rebels are "holding their own". I don't believe they've made any progress in defeating the government military. Syria had relatively few privately owned guns to begin with and any success with improvised weapons has nothing to do with privately owned guns. The only successful overthrows of dictatorial governments in modern times have occurred only after a sufficient amount of military forces had defected.
 
but there are other destinations all over the world that will welcome our tourist dollars, I'm sure!

All over the world? Good luck finding a place outside this country where you can take your gun with you and carry it. I know you didn't specify that, but that's what it seems like. If you don't like Hawai's gun laws, you darn sure won't like 95% of the rest of the world's.
 
All over the world? Good luck finding a place outside this country where you can take your gun with you and carry it. I know you didn't specify that, but that's what it seems like. If you don't like Hawai's gun laws, you darn sure won't like 95% of the rest of the world's.
I would not take my gun with me all over the world. You are correct, I didn't state that. I'm not going to Hawaii because of their stance on an issue.
 
The problem is the public doesn't see the stats. In the movies, when there's a bunch of bad guys making a big move, they do it with military-style rifles instead of pistols. Therefore, if you allow people to have military-style rifles, they will be able to do things together as a group and commit an even bigger crime. As a general rule of thumb, bad guys only carry pistols if there are only one or a handful of them.
 
The problem lies with the nature of politics. For many politicians, it's about what they can sell. Logic, facts, ethics are secondary issues.

Secondly, on a visceral level, unscrupulous politicians understand what the Second Amendment is about. Hardly surprising they would pick at it.

The anti-gun theme had a life of its own. Like Kardashians, it arose, became "important" and talked about because ... it was being talked about. But, interest is waning.

We should just keep defending the Constitution. When you think about it, the only protection the Constitution has comes from the people.
 
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