On October 1st, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history took place in Las Vegas. A lone gunman killed a total of 59 people including himself. He injured more than 500 others during the incident. Just hours after the shooting, celebrities rushed to social media to demand increased gun control measures. They criticized the sale of semi-automatic rifles and vowed to lobby Congress to pass gun control measures.
Celebrities weren’t the only ones clamoring for increased gun control measures after the shooting. Democratic lawmakers also made calls for bills to restrict high-capacity weapons, curb heavy-duty ammo and enhance background checks. The discourse echoed the same calls made in 2012 after the Sandy Hook shooting.
However, the relentless focus on gun control from liberal politicians and celebrities has been continually proven to be misguided. The latest FBI statistics show that rifles are not used for homicides anymore than knives. In fact, they used nowhere near the frequency of knives.
The FBI just released the Uniform Crime Report, or UCR, for 2016. This report found that more than four times the number of people were stabbed to death than were murdered by rifles of any kind, including assault rifles.
According to the FBI, more than 1,600 people were killed with cutting instruments or knives while 374 people were shot and killed with rifles. The report also found that more people were beaten to death than shot to death with rifles. Just over 650 people were killed with fists, hands or feet last year. This number is almost twice as many people as were murdered with rifles, and this includes assault weapons.
So, Americans are much more likely to die from being stabbed to death or getting hit from fists than to be murdered by an AR-15 or any other type of rifle.
Although the White House hasn’t officially responded to questions about increased gun control since the Las Vegas attack, it seems that stricter gun legislation probably wouldn’t make a big difference in the number of deaths in the U.S. anyway. The latest data from the FBI show that knives, hands, arms and legs are responsible for more deaths than assault rifles each year.
Plus, other reports indicate that stricter laws on assault rifles would not do much to curb shooting deaths in the first place. The vast majority of people that are killed by guns are murdered with handguns, not rifles. Strict gun control laws placed on handguns don’t help much either. Chicago has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the nation, but also has been experiencing increasing amounts of crime. The city had 762 murders and more than 4,000 victims of gun-related crimes last year. This is a 59 percent increase over 2015. The strict gun control laws certainly haven’t helped the city battle its high rates of violence.
~ Firearm Daily
