Are Blunt Objects More Common Homicide Weapons Than Rifles?

As a supporter of the Second amendment, while this is interesting, realize that even if firearms, of any sort, were the most used weapon or method of committing homicide, that still doesn’t allow the government to enact most of the firearms laws in place today. The second amendment protects, at its core, the right to self defense using arms. That means, to defend one’s self, property, family, home and country, one has the right to keep and bear arms. Although the courts are still determining the exact contours of this most important constitutional right, various arms obviously must be protected. Handguns of course are useful in a variety of situations including home defense from burglars. Before the most recent Supreme Court cases, anti-gunners argued that the Second Amendment pertained to militia use only. What this implies is that military arms, not military-like or military-style arms, are protected. This makes sense. At the founding, the people, who formed up militias, used the most advanced military arms possible. So, while handguns might be a good option for defending against a burglar, a fully automatic M-16 would probably be better suited for defense against a tyrannical government or foreign invaders, as well as possibly insurrection and riots. So, despite the numbers listed in the accompanying article, even if the firearms numbers are higher than other methods and weapons used in committing homicides, the government should be powerless to infringe upon the right of generally law-abiding citizens from keeping and bearing arms of their choosing.

Original Posting from Volokh.com

Are Blunt Objects More Common Homicide Weapons Than Rifles?

According to the FBI annual crime statistics, the number of murders committed annually with hammers and clubs far outnumbers the number of murders committed with a rifle…. [For instance, i]n 2005, the number of murders committed with a rifle was 445, while the number of murders committed with hammers and clubs was 605….

I’m not sure this is right, for a simple reason: The FBI statistics also include “Firearms, type not stated,” which suggests that not all rifle homicides are labeled as such in the FBI data:

Weapons20052006200720082009
Total14,96515,08714,91614,22413,636
Total firearms:10,15810,22510,1299,5289,146
Handguns7,5657,8367,3986,8006,452
Rifles445438453380348
Shotguns522490457442418
Other guns1381071168194
Firearms, type not stated1,4881,3541,7051,8251,834
Knives or cutting instruments1,9201,8301,8171,8881,825
Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.)608618647603611
Personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.)905841869875801
Poison9121096
Explosives211112
Fire1251171318599
Narcotics4648523445
Drowning251212168
Strangulation11813713489121
Asphyxiation961061098777
Other weapons or weapons not stated9581,1401,005999895

It thus seems that local law enforcement reports about 13-25% of all gun homicides to the FBI without indicating what the gun type is — likely because this isn’t clear to the coroner (e.g., the wound was made by a bullet that could have been fired either from a rifle or a handgun) and the crime hasn’t been solved, or perhaps just because the police department doesn’t bother to provide the gun type data even if it knows it. We don’t know what fraction of these homicides involved rifles, but it seems unlikely that the fraction is 0%. If we assume that 5% of the homicides involved rifles (following the breakdown between known handgun homicides and known rifle homicides), then blunt object homicides would still exceed rifle homicides. If it’s 25%, for instance if handgun homicides are more likely to be provably identified as such, but rifle homicides are more likely to seem ambiguous, then rifle homicides would exceed blunt object homicides.

It thus seems that local law enforcement reports about 13-25% of all gun homicides to the FBI without indicating what the gun type is — likely because this isn’t clear to the coroner (e.g., the wound was made by a bullet that could have been fired either from a rifle or a handgun) and the crime hasn’t been solved, or perhaps just because the police department doesn’t bother to provide the gun type data even if it knows it. We don’t know what fraction of these homicides involved rifles, but it seems unlikely that the fraction is 0%. If we assume that 5% of the homicides involved rifles (following the breakdown between known handgun homicides and known rifle homicides), then blunt object homicides would still exceed rifle homicides. If it’s 25%, for instance if handgun homicides are more likely to be provably identified as such, but rifle homicides are more likely to seem ambiguous, then rifle homicides would exceed blunt object homicides.

The Breitbart.com article briefly acknowledges the uncategorized guns problem, without noting its magnitude: “While the FBI makes is clear that some of the ‘murder by rifle’ numbers could be adjusted up slightly, when you take into account murders with non-categorized types of guns, it does not change the fact that their annual reports consistently show more lives are taken each year with these blunt objects than are taken with Feinstein’s dreaded rifle.” But the FBI’s reports don’t show this, because they don’t actually give a count of rifle murders — they give a lower bound for such murders (the cell labeled rifles) and an upper bound (the cell labeled rifles, added to the cell labeled “Firearms, type not stated”), and we don’t know exactly where the actual rifle murder count falls.

In any event, I don’t think one can say with any confidence that rifle murders are less common than blunt object murders. I’m generally skeptical of gun control proposals, whether aimed at handguns or rifles, because I think most such proposals will either have little effect on anyone, or would tend to interfere with self-defense much more than they would interfere with crime. But until we have a better sense of what the “firearms, type not stated” category means, I wouldn’t assume much about rifle murder counts.