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FBI data shows knife murders trump rifle murders

Statistics released on Monday by the FBI shows that more than five times as many people were killed in knife attacks last year as by shootings with rifles. The FBI report is based on nationwide law enforcement data.

Published: October 4, 2019, 8:33 am

    According to the agency’s annual Uniform Crime Report, in 2018 some 1 515 murders were committed with knifes and/or other cutting instruments compared to compared to only 297 with rifles. In 2017, the difference was also pronounced when the FBI found four times as many killings by knife as by rifle.

    Also, more than double the number of people, 672, were beaten to death last year in the United States than were killed with a rifle.

    Democrats have been pushing for more gun control and even confiscations in the wake of a series of mass shootings. Calls by gun control advocates to ban “assault rifles” like the popular AR-15 have since multiplied. Anti-gun advocates speak of a national gun violence “crisis”.

    “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” Democratic Party contender Beto O’Rourke warned at the 2020 presidential debate last month.

    However, only 2,9 percent of the 10 265 gun murders in the US last year were committed with any kind of rifle, according to the FBI.

    Last year, President Donald Trump defended the use of rifles in the US by drawing a parallel with knife crime in London, as New York’s official population is very similar to London’s.

    Trump was speaking at the National Rifle Association, noting that London hospitals have been overwhelmed with victims of knife attacks.

    “They don’t have guns. They have knives and instead there’s blood all over the floors of this hospital,” he said. “They say it’s as bad as a military war zone hospital. Knives, knives, knives, knives.”

    The number of fatal stabbings in England and Wales last year was the highest since records began in 1946. There were 285 killings by a knife in 2018, the UK Office for National Statistics analysis revealed.

    The ONS says one in four (71) of all victims (285) were men aged 18-24 and 25 percent of victims were black – the highest proportion since data was first collected in 1997.

    The numbers may even be worse because while the New York Police Department keeps a searchable database of murders by category, London’s Metropolitan Police provides data on knife crime and murders but does not provide a specific tally of knife-murders.

    In London, Metropolitan Police crime data also excludes the City of London, the small historical administration of the mostly financial district which has its own police force.

    The British death rate for knife crime is 0,48 per 100,000. In the US, the rate is almost identical with 0,49. So even with strict British gun laws, Brits as a whole are at least as likely as to die from a stabbing as in the US.

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