Report: 75 Percent of Firearm Murders Since 1991 Committed with a Handgun

A Washington Post analysis shows 75 percent of firearm murders since 1991 were committed with a handgun.

In other words, if the Democrats had put an “assault  weapons” ban in place in 1991 and it was still in effect in 2019 it would have done nothing to stop three out of every four murders that occurred over the last 28 years.

The Post reports, “While high-profile mass murder events such as in Parkland usually involve rifles such as the AR-15, most firearm murders — three-quarters of them since 1991 — are committed with handgun.”

The  report correlated with gun control reporting surrounding the first anniversary of the Parkland high school shooting and the Post’s findings were consistent with a study on mass shootings released by the Rockefeller Institute of Government in 2018. Breitbart News reported the Rockefeller study, wherein researchers examined the time-frame 1966-2016 and found that mass shooters used handguns 75.6 percent of the time, rifles 28.5 percent of the time, and shotguns 17.1 percent of the time.

The findings from the Post and the Rockefeller Institute of Government mirror FBI crime reports, which show that rifles are rarely the choice of murders, relatively speaking.

On September 26, 2018, Breitbart News reported FBI crime stats which showed nearly four times as many people were stabbed to death than were shot and killed with rifles of any kind in 2017.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.