As part of his ongoing push for a forced buyback of certain firearms, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke lamented that “America has more guns than human beings.”
O’Rourke made this observation in a tweet, wherein he wrote:
All countries have video games. All countries struggle with mental health. All countries deal with hatred. But only America has more guns than human beings. To end this epidemic, we need a mandatory buyback of every assault weapon in our country. https://t.co/fJv39lF1cN
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) August 22, 2019
O’Rourke did not mention the 2012 Congressional Research Service report showing that as private gun ownership expanded between 1993 to 2009, “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide” plummeted.
Moreover, the report shows that the decline in “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide” came as the number of privately-owned guns jumped from roughly 192 million firearms in 1994 to 310 million firearms in 2009.
As for the commonly-owned semiautomatic rifles for which O’Rourke wants to mandate forfeiture, FBI crime stats show nearly four times as many people were stabbed to death in 2017 as were killed with rifles of any kind. The same FBI stats show more people were killed with hammers and clubs than rifles, yet O’Rourke wants to ban the most popular rifles of all.
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.
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