TopsailWolf said:
Those kids lying on the ground dead at schools around the country would be just as dead after getting shot with a shotgun and 9mm with extended clips. 100 people die every day from "gun violence," most of which are handguns. Yet the only time we hear about any of it is when a school is involved 5x/year or when a white guy kills a black guy. A life is a life. I agree that we need significant changes to the background screens and procedures in acquiring guns, but if you think taking away AR-15s is the answer I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.
Of the ~30,000 deaths using guns each year, around 20,000 of those are suicides. Only around 10,000 are homicides.
But yes, handguns are used in homicides involving firearms at approximately 18 times the rate of all types of rifles.
Here are the stats from the FBI:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xlsEvery year in the United States, there are about 14,000 total homicides, and approximately 6,500 people are murdered using a handgun, while only around 315 are killed with ANY type of rifle. AR-15s and AK-47s are a relatively small subset of types of rifles, so they may be only used in around 50-100 homicides per year.
Compare that (in those same stats) to around 1,600 people murdered every year with knives or other cutting instruments! Even if you had 100 people murdered every year from an AR-15 or AK-47, you still have 15 times more people murdered with knives than an AR-15 or AK-47!
So you have 10,000 people murdered each year from all types of guns. Compare this to other causes of death in the United States. There are currently
70,000 people dying each year from drug overdoses. Also
according to the CDC, you have 40,000 people dying each year in car accidents, 36,000 in unintentional falls, and 65,000 in unintentional poisonings.
A big one that almost nobody talks about is that medical errors kill
250,000 people every year!
Averaging these other causes of death, you are about 700-800 times more likely to be killed by a doctor in a medical error, in a car accident, accidental fall, accidental poisoning, or drug overdose...than you are to be killed using an AR-15 or AK-47.
Oh, and there are 650,000 abortions every year in the U.S.
Since the Democrats "love the children so much" and "care about human life so much" (when they aren't cheerleading abortions), why aren't they launching nationwide campaigns to reduce medical error deaths, car accident deaths, or stop drug overdose deaths? Why aren't there calls to ban cars or more heavily regulate doctors?
But in the bizarro fantasy-land clown world created by hype from the Leftist Lamestram media, the world is coming to an end because 50 to 100 people are killed with AR-15s in a year? Because the Leftist Lamestream media endlessly hypes and covers the very rare occasions when an AR-15 is used in a homicide.
Meanwhile, they largely ignore the REAL crises and causes of premature death -- including 70,000 drug overdoses per year and 200,000+ deaths from medical error. Speaking from personal experience, my own father has almost been killed twice by doctor error. And I know many people personally who have been killed in car accidents. I don't personally know anyone who has been murdered using a firearm.
