QUOTE(GeezUS @ May 16 2007, 07:01 PM)
From the FBI.gov site:
Victim/Offender Relationships
Of the homicides for which law enforcement provided supplemental data to the UCR Program, the victim-offender relationship was unknown for 44.1 percent of the victims. For the incidents in which the relationships were known, 76.8 percent of the victims knew their killers and 23.2 percent were slain by strangers. Among the incidents in which the victims knew their killers, 29.8 percent were murdered by family members and 70.2 percent were killed by acquaintances.
Weapons
Of those incidents in which the murder weapon was specified, 70.3 percent of the homicides that occurred in 2004 were committed with firearms. Of those, 77.9 percent involved handguns, 5.4 percent involved shotguns, and 4.2 percent involved rifles. Approximately 12.4 of the murders were committed with other types or unspecified types of firearms. Knives or cutting instruments were used in 14.1 percent of the murders; personal weapons, such as hands, fists, and feet, were used in 7.0 percent of murders, and blunt objects (i.e., clubs, hammers, etc.) were used in 5.0 percent of the homicides. Other weapons, such as poison, explosives, narcotics, etc., were used in 3.6 percent of the murders.
Note how many murders are committed by "assault" weapons that politicians are so "concerned" about. It's a teeny tiny percentage of the 4.2% in the rifle category. It's so teeny tiny that it doesn't even deserve it's own category.
From www.assultweaponwatch.com
"Assault weapons are not the weapons of choice among drug dealers, gang members or criminals in general. Assault weapons are used in about one-fifth of one percent (.20%) of all violent crimes and about one percent in gun crimes. It is estimated that from one to seven percent of all homicides are committed with assault weapons (rifles of any type are involved in three to four percent of all homicides). However a higher percentage are used in police homicides, roughly ten percent. (There has been no consistent trend in this rate from 1978 through 1996.) Between 1992 and 1996 less than 4% of mass murders, committed with guns, involved assault weapons. (Our deadliest mass murders have either involved arson or bombs.)
There are close to 4 million assault weapons in the U.S., which amounts to roughly 1.7% of the total gun stock.
If assault weapons are so rarely used in crime, why all the hoopla when certain military-style-semi-automatic weapons were banned by the Crime Control Act of 1994? A Washington Post editorial (September 15, 1994) summed it up best: No one should have any illusions about what was accomplished (by the ban). Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime.
The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control. "
