[nsmartt]

Do keep in mind that the parent was specifically referring to assault weapons, which are presumably much more rare than other firearms, and also very rarely used in crime.

I have no statistics, and I have no clue how many baseball bat deaths occur annually. I just thought maybe this would be a useful reminder.

[mindcrime]

I haven't looked up the stats lately, but IIRC, the number of times a legally owned actual assault weapon was used in a crime in the US was something like 3 or 4... ever.

[MrMember]

It's hard to find definitive statistics on that. If you go looking around you'll see a few cases that pop up. In the early 2000s a police officer (and member of the SWAT team) used his issued MP5 to murder a few people, and sometime in the 70s a police officer found his wife in bed with another man and killed one (or both? I can't remember) of them.

The point is, like you said, it's exceedingly rare.

[mindcrime]

You're right, the stats on that are somewhat hard to find, or hard to qualify as definitive. I've seen articles that say "NO legally owned fully automatic weapon has ever been used to commit a crime" and I've seen a few articles that say the number is < 10. I don't think I've ever seen anything that even tries to argue that the number is higher than that however.

Guncite only comes up with two cases, one of which may one of the same ones you just mentioned:

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcfullau.html

[corresation]

There is no real definition of what an "assault weapon" is, and few restrict that to only automatic weapon.

I would say that an AR-15 is most certainly an assault weapon. It is a high power weapon (ignore the rather ignorant people who fail to understand the difference between a .22 and a .223) designed and built for military purposes. Being automatic fire or not has remarkable little relevance to its deadliness.

[mindcrime]

There is no real definition of what an "assault weapon" is, and few restrict that to only automatic weapon.

Right, because "assault weapon" is a made up term, created by the people at the Brady Campaign and other radical anti-gun groups, to promote their fear-mongering approach to advocating for more gun control. An "assault rifle" OTOH, does have a technical definition, and it does involve a full-auto or select-fire capability. A civilian AR-15 is not an assault rifle. Calling it an "assault weapon" makes as much sense as calling it a "gandering gillifrous".

It is a high power weapon (ignore the rather ignorant people who fail to understand the difference between a .22 and a .223)

Meh. A .223 is still a relatively low-powered round in the grand scheme of things. A typical .223 round has less kinetic energy than a standard 30-06 round which is used for hunting all over the United States. In fact, .223 is illegal for hunting deer and other large game in some states, because it isn't lethal enough.

http://guitarwarp.blogspot.com/2013/01/deadly-223-versus-saf...

[corresation]

Calling it an "assault weapon" makes as much sense as calling it a "gandering gillifrous".

It's purely coincidental that it is a weapon enamoured and used by so many spree killers. Purely coincidental. It's a high capacity, fast-action semi-automatic (not all semi-automatics are created equal, and the AR15 allows a practitioner to achieve automatic-rate fire) that is military built to empty clips effortlessly. Totally the same as a hunting rifle.

Meh. A .223 is still a relatively low-powered round in the grand scheme of things.

And then you point out a MASSIVE bullet used by almost no one but in bolt action rifles. A bullet that is essentially never used in the commission of murders.

Yes, and that bullet is relatively low-powered compared to a 120mm M1 KE round. Which is completely meaningless patter.

[saalweachter]

I love trying to find numbers for random claims. This one is a little bit tricky because none of the four numbers are readily available.

The closest numbers I can find so far are:

  Number of murders committed with blunt objects, 2010: 600 [1]
  Number of murders committed with 'rifles', 2011: 323 [2]
  Number of 'assault-style' rifles: 3.75 million [3]
  Number of baseball bats produced per year: > 1.6 million [4]

So we don't know what fraction of blunt object murders are bats, and we don't know what fraction of 'rifle' murders are 'assault-style' rifles. We also don't know for sure how many 'assault-style' rifles there, are just a random reporter's guess. We also don't know how many bats there are, just how many one company of many makes.

All this together makes me believe that no one has any basis to make any claims about the deadliness of guns versus bats, because no one knows anything about the deadliness of guns versus bats.

I certainly can't come to any conclusions either, but I can at least sketch out the bounds. If we assume that every blunt object murder is a bat and every rifle murder is an assault rifle, then there are twice as many bat murders as assault rifle murders. But the question is murder per bat versus murder per assault rifle. So how many bats are there? There are probably somewhere between 2 and 5 million bats sold each year, depending on how much of the market Hillerich & Bradsby have. If the average lifespan of a bat is 5 years and 2 million are sold per year, then we have around 10 million bats in the country. If the average lifespan is 10 years and 5 million are sold per year, then we have around 50 million bats in the US. This puts the bats : assault-rifles ratio at between 2.5 and 13.

So the way I see it, as long as no more than twice as many murders are committed by baseball bat than assault rifle, I feel comfortable saying that assault rifles are more deadly than baseball bats, using the metric of people killed / weapon. For me to feel comfortable saying that bats are more deadly than assault rifles, at least ten times as many people would need to be killed by baseball bat as are killed by assault rifles.

The numbers I could find would still allow for either conclusion -- there's just too much uncertainty in them -- but IMO it leans heavily towards the conclusion that assault rifles are deadlier.

  [1] http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/baseballbats.asp
  [2] http://blogs.marketwatch.com/election/2013/01/16/assault-rifles-are-not-involved-in-many-u-s-murders-a-look-at-the-data/
  [3] http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/20/assault_rifle_stats_how_many_assault_rifles_are_there_in_america.html
  [4] http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/2136195

[mindcrime]

If we assume that every blunt object murder is a bat and every rifle murder is an assault rifle, then there are twice as many bat murders as assault rifle murders.

That assumption definitely does not hold for the technical definition of "assault rifle" which includes full-auto capability. Murders committed with fully automatic weapons are very rare, and with legally owned ones, almost completely unheard of.

Now if you use the Brady Campaign definition of "assault weapon" - which basically just translates to "scary looking gun that I don't like" then you may find different numbers.

[learc83]

The number for assault weapons you're using is AR-15 type rifles. That doesn't include AK-47 variants, Ruger Mini-14s, or many others that are considered "assault weapons".

There are estimated to be around 1 million Ruger Mini-14 rifles alone.

Adding all of those rifles to the number and the total number of "assault weapons" and baseball bats are likely to be fairly close--at the very least more than half of your estimate for baseball bats which would put baseball bats ahead.