The Police and Assault Weapons
According to Roth and Koper (Roth), (Impact Evaluation of the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994, May 1996 [347K]), "assault weapons are estimated to be involved in 1 to 7 percent of gun homicides". Their study further reports, "In sum, police officers are rarely murdered with assault weapons. Yet the fraction of police gun murders perpetrated with assault weapons is higher than that for civilian gun murders. Assault weapons accounted for about 10% of police gun murders from 1992 through May of 1996 when considering only those cases for which the gun make could be ascertained."
(From 1982 to 1993, of the 687 officers who were killed by firearms other than their own guns, more were killed by .38 caliber revolvers than by any other firearm. Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Guns Used in Crime, July 1995, p. 5. [PDF])