How Often Are AR-15s Used In Murders?
Clarifying a common soundbite in the "assault weapon" debate
How many murders are committed with AR-15s and other rifles that Democrats call “assault weapons?”
From a constitutional perspective, the question is irrelevant, because criminals’ actions do not alter the scope of an individual right, in this case the right to keep and bear arms. I provided the Supreme Court’s explanation about that here.
Nevertheless, Democrats, the pro-Democrat media, and civilian disarmament activist groups harp about crime, and many voters are manipulated by those harpings, so some supporters of the right to arms conclude they should respond in kind.
One of the ways they do so, is by contending that, according to the FBI, rifles of all types (not just AR-15s etc.) are used to commit only a few hundred murders per year, compared to larger numbers committed with knives, bludgeons, and hands and feet.
Based upon the FBI data, it’s certain that more murders are committed without firearms, than with rifles (and therefore, than with AR-15s etc.). However, the data are a bit complicated, and in this article I’ll sort things out.
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports section compiles crime data submitted by state and local law enforcement agencies, and publishes the result in annual Crime in the United States reports. If all you want to know are the numbers and per capita rates of total violent crime or the component violent crimes—murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape (previously of females only, but, starting in 2013, also of males), robbery, and aggravated assault—or total or component property crimes—burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft—for the U.S., any state, or the District of Columbia, you can get those data from the FBI Crime Data Explorer, for 1985 through 2020.
However, to determine how many murders are committed with various types of weapons, start here, on a page that contains links to annual reports from 1995 to 2019. Once on that page, click on 2019, then on Crime in the U.S. 2019.
That takes you to a page where, under “Offenses Known to Law Enforcement,” you can click on “Violent Crime.” Do that. On that page, over on the right, you’ll see “Table 4.” Open it in a new tab. At the top of Table 4, you’ll see the preliminary numbers and rates, for the U.S., of violent and property crimes for 2019 and the final numbers for 2018.
Leave Table 4 open. Go to the previous tab and on that page, scroll down to where it says “Expanded Homicide Data” and, on the last line, “Weapons Data,” and click on Table 8. There’s no more link-clicking now. Keep Tables 8 and 4 open.
In Table 8, you’ll see the numbers of murders committed with various weapons. However, these numbers are for murders for which the type of weapon used was reported. Notice that Table 8’s total number of murders for 2019 is 13,927. Now, go to your other tab, where you have Table 4. It says the number of murders for 2019 is 16,425. Therefore, the weapons used to commit murders were reported in only 13,927 of an estimated 16,425 murders.
However, the projected final number of murders for 2019 is 16,554, not 16,425. In a moment, I’m going to provide you a link to a spreadsheet that will show you the calculation required to get to that number. But first . . .
In Table 8, notice also that there is a category of weapon called “firearms, type not stated.” In 2019, the number of murders with rifles is 364, but how many of the more numerous “type not stated” ones were also with rifles? We don’t know. We can perform a simple projection, however, and that calculation is also shown in the spreadsheet to which I’m about to provide the link. But, long story short, if we use simple projections, there were 636 murders with rifles in 2019, not 364. And even if every one of the murders with “rifles” and with “firearm, type not stated” were with AR-15s—which is not the case—it would be still be fewer than the number with non-firearm weapons.
Caution: There is no guarantee that simple projections deliver accurate results. Therefore, when talking about murders with rifles, the safest thing to say is that “of murders in which the type of weapon used was reported during the five years 2015-2019, 30 percent were committed without firearms of any type. Of the 71 percent of firearm-related murders in which the type of firearm used was reported, four percent were with rifles of any type.” Complicated, but it’s the reality.
Here is the link to the spreadsheet. The cells in red are projections and contain the relevant calculations. If you understand spreadsheet formulas, you’ll be good to go. One tip: To see the cells involved in a formula (cells with red font), click on the cell, then click on the text bar immediately above the spreadsheet’s top row. Doing that will highlight the cells involved in the formula.
© 2022 Mark Overstreet