| As reported by jointogether.org Leah Barrett, Executive Director of CeaseFire Maryland, said: "And to those in the gun lobby who still say assault weapons are not used to commit crimes, let them respond to the fact that between 1998 and 2001, according to FBI statistics, assault weapons were used to kill one in five law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty." Well, I thought I would look and see what I could find, knowing the gun control camp's penchant for exaggerating, such as in the claim that 15 children a day were killed with firearms--which would only be true if you counted adults aged 18 through 24 as children. Ms Barrett does not give her source document, so I went to what should be the definitive document, the FBI Uniform Crime Report's Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 2001 (2002 is not availible yet). First I did a quick scan of the document for any occurences of the term "assault weapon". I came up with no occurences. So then I started through the tables in the report. I found that in 2001, not counting Sept 11th, 70 officers were killed feloniously (AKA slain) in the line of duty. For the same year, 78 died in duty related accidents. I was unable to find a table that specifically mentions 1998 to 2001, but I found many that gave stats from 1992 to 2001. By reading those tables I was able to find out that from 1998 to 2001: 533 officers were killed in the line of duty - 309 were accidental deaths in the line of duty - 224 officers were killed feloniously -- 207 were killed with firearms -- 13 were killed with "other" weapons -- 2 were killed with cutting instruments -- 1 was killed with a bomb -- 1 was killed with "personal weapons" (AKA hands and feet) So, "one in five" would mean approximately 44 or 45 deaths. Of the 207 killed with firearms: 144 were killed with handguns 49 were killed with rifles 14 were killed with shotguns Again, no mention of "assault weapons"; however, 15 were slain with their own firearm. Note that the number of deaths with rifles, 49, is approximately the one in five figure we are looking for. That was the closest I could find to her claim. I also did a search using several search engines of the FBI website to find the source of her statistic...to no avail. Basically, I can find NOTHING which corroborates Ms Barrett's claim. So Ms Barrett, how is THAT for a response? |
| A Response To the Executive Director, CeaseFire Maryland |