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Letter: No semiautomatic problem

A call for reason and facts when examining gun related homicide in this country does not seem to have resulted in either.
Fact: the FBI reports in 2014 (last year available for statistics) that 248 homicides were accomplished with rifles. Of which, semiautomatic rifles are less than 20 percent. In other words about 50. In the whole U.S. In a year.
Fact: The same report cites 1,567 homicides with knives.
Fact: The same report cites 435 homicides with blunt objects including fists.
Fact: The same report cites 199 homicides by choking or drowning.
So to say that the U.S. has some sort of outsized homicide problem related to semiautomatic rifles (and BTW no expert would ever confuse them with automatic weapons) is patently absurd. Take away the Islamic extremist-related homicides and semiautomatic rifles are probably used less to commit homicides than poisoned cannoli. But what the heck, somebody probably died from hyperventilation too.
Michael Stahl
Carbondale
Editor’s note: For the sake of completeness, the report also lists 5,562 handgun homicides, 1,958 by “Firearms, type not stated” and 93 from “other guns.”


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