Big, Black, Scary Assault Rifles

These big black guns are so scary!

Welcome to our series on debunking the most popular gun myths. In it, we aim to totally destroy all of the myths that you are most familiar with. You will be able to use these to cram the truth down a gun grabber's throat.

And because sometimes the truth hurts, we don't care if they choke on it.

#1 - OMG!!! Those scary black assault rifles kill, like, so many people every year. We should, like, totally ban those.

Actually, the number of murders committed with a rifle is incredibly low. Especially considering that we have a population of 310 million people. How low? So low that way more murders are committed with knives than with rifles. How many more? According to the FBI, 400%-600% more. Note that I didn't specify "assault rifles". I said rifles. That's because the FBI groups all forms of rifles together in their statistics.

That's right! When you take all murders committed with bolt action hunting rifles, muzzle loading rifles, semi automatic hunting rifles, carbines, lever action rifles, revolving rifles, and of course the "Evil Black Assault Rifle", and you add them all up, they are still way-way-waaaay less than the murders committed by knives. Again - 400% to 600% on average each year.

Take a look at the screen capture below. It comes straight from the FBI's own database. As you can see, even though we have tens of millions of rifles in the hands of the public, only 285 murders were committed in 2013 using a rifle. Add that to the fact that we have a population of 310 million people, and the truth is not scary at all.

In fact, we are talking about an itty bitty teeny tiny fraction of 1% of all violent crime - including murder -  involve a rifle of some kind. Any kind. Even big scary black assault rifles.

To see the next myth destroyed click here.