The left’s relentless push to ban commonly-owned semiautomatic rifles under the guise of safety overlooks the fact that Americans face numerous things that cause exponentially more death than rifles on a daily basis.
Consider Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics from 2017, the most recent year of complete data. The total number of firearm-related deaths was 39,773. Roughly two-thirds of that figure, 23,854, were firearm-related suicides, with the remaining 15,919 being a combination of the approximately 500 accidental gun deaths that occur annually coupled with just over 15,000 firearm-related homicides.
If we break down the firearm-related homicides via FBI crime statistics, we see that handguns were far and away the common firearm for murder. The FBI reported 7,032 murders with a handgun verses 403 murders with a rifle, and 264 with a shotgun, in cases where the firearm was identifiable.