Wait — Big Black Scary Rifles Aren’t The Problem?

In the mainstream media? Who woke up this morning?
OVER the past two decades, the majority of Americans in a country deeply divided over gun control have coalesced behind a single proposition: The sale of assault weapons should be banned.
That idea was one of the pillars of the Obama administration’s plan to curb gun violence, and it remains popular with the public. In a poll last December, 59 percent of likely voters said they favor a ban.
But in the 10 years since the previous ban lapsed, even gun control advocates acknowledge a larger truth: The law that barred the sale of assault weapons from 1994 to 2004 made little difference.
It turns out that big, scary military rifles don’t kill the vast majority of the 11,000 Americans murdered with guns each year. Little handguns do.
In 2012, only 322 people were murdered with any kind of rifle, F. B. I. data shows.
The problem is that this isn’t a 2012 statistic. It’s an “always has been that way” statistic. Big, black scary rifles and shotguns are used in almost no murders, statistically. And as I have repeatedly pointed out the DOJ’s own statistics tell a much more-somber tale but one we refuse to talk about: About 5,000 black men are murdered with guns annually, nearly all by other black men — roughly half of all murders — but the percentage of the population they represent is six percent, give or take one or two.

This post was published at Market-Ticker on 2014-09-13.