GOP keeps in place funding ban on gun violence research

[benEzra]

22. Bans on modern-looking rifles and magazines *do* target mainstream gun owners, not criminals,

because rifles (modern-looking or not) are the *least* likely of all weapons to be used by "criminals and the mentally ill". Of course, I'm sure you already know that.

Murder, by State and Type of Weapon, 2013 (FBI)
[font face="courier new"] Total murders...................... 12,253
Handguns............................ 5,782 (47.2%)
Firearms (type unknown)............. 2,079 (17.0%)
Clubs, rope, fire, etc.............. 1,622 (13.2%)
Knives and other cutting weapons.... 1,490 (12.2%)
Hands, fists, feet.................... 687 (5.6%)
Shotguns.............................. 308 (2.5%)
Rifles................................ 285 (2.3%) [/font]

The trend in rifle homicide, 2005-2013 (from FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2005-2013, Table 20, collated):

[font face="courier new"] 2005: 442
2006: 436
2007: 450
2008: 375
2009: 348
2010: 358
2011: 323
2012: 302
2013: 285 [/font]

I'm sure you also know that the 32-percent household ownership figure from the General Social Survey is a deep outlier, probably because it involves describing your gun ownership face to face with some stranger from Chicago over the course of an hour and a half interview, and the interview is explicitly NON-anonymous. The holes in the GSS dataset and the resulting skew compared to anonymous polls are, of course, why it's the only household-ownership number that the prohibition lobby likes to cite.