Pew Research is generally a good source of polling data on gun ownership, opinions and their use in the population. So it was sorta strange that they published a report on Tuesday summarizing data from 2024. Yes, 2024. We know…we’re already getting data from 2025, so it’s not clear what the hold-up has been, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some useful tidbits there.
Probably the most noteworthy is something that’s really always been true, but always bears repeating. Namely, the fact that the percentage of crimes committed using what the gun control industry likes to call “assault weapons” is incredibly small.
How small? Well, “Rifles – the category that includes guns sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” – were involved in 3% of these deaths.”
Just to be clear, Pew isn’t saying that “assault weapons” were used in 3% of firearms deaths, they’re saying that 3% involved rifles. Of all types. Those scary “assault weapons” are some indeterminate subset of that small 3% total. Gun-grabbers hardest hit.
Again, this is 2024 data. That feels like a decade ago now, but the drop in homicides from the peak of the post-Floyd, “restorative justice,” non-prosecution years was already being reflected in the numbers.
That trend is continuing, with the 2025 homicide numbers projected to be a historic low.
Not that any of those numbers will sway our friends in the civilian disarmament industrial complex. To them, the need for another “assault weapons” ban is a fundamental part of their orthodoxy. Never mind that the data showed very clearly that the Clinton ban was an utter waste of time.
Then there’s the inconvenient fact that Americans own, by most estimates, at least 30 million semi-automatic rifles — and probably far more — that are characterized as “assault weapons” by the anti-gun crowd. That means they are, by any measure, in common use a fact that’s been effectively conceded by two of SCOTUS’s left-leaning judges. And that’s an increasing problem, legally speaking, for the prohibition advocates.
So the next time you hear gun controllers shrieking about scary black rifles, calling them “weapons of war” and the “weapon of choice” for mass shooters, keep this reality in mind. Long guns make up a small fraction of the guns used to kill people in this country. Rifles (of all kinds), even less so. And “assault weapons” are a subset of that small number.
None of that will sway those hysterical gun-grabbers, of course. Their end goal, after all, is the abolition of civilian owned firearms of all types. They know perfectly well that more guns do not mean more crime. They just can’t let that narrative take hold among the general populace because that would be an existential threat to their (billionaire-backed) mission. And their jobs.