"Should <killer item> be banned" should be calculated against benefit of item, not only the lives ended.
Even fewer people are killed with nuclear weapons, but they're not 'legal'. The issue of knifes vs handguns vs assault rifles also considers other uses and whether banning them encroaches on personal liberties (of the murderer).
A knife has many other purposes e.g. carving a roast chicken. In many countries it's not legal to carry round a blade most of the time - in the UK you need a good reason, such as being a chef going to a new restaurant, and you can carry a non-locking folding blade of three inches or less in length.
A gun is only used for shooting. It limits my freedoms less to say "You can't hunt game or take a handgun to a shooting range" than it does to say "You cannot buy knives to eat your dinner with".
It's true that a lot of people in the USA own handguns for "self-protection" in the home. Perhaps the best questions are not "How many people are killed per year with a rifle?" etc, but "How many people are killed per rifle?", in which case I think knives would be vastly lower than firearms.
It also raises the point that even though there are fewer assault rifle deaths, maybe it is more often a murder weapon among its owners - there are perhaps many more people who own handguns who have never hurt anyone with them. Why? One reason is that an assault rifle is a greater upgrade over a handgun when you're on a shooting spree than when you are trying to repel an intruder from your house. After all, one intruder only need a few bullets to repel, whereas in a shooting spree even an assault rifle could often do with more bullets in a magazine (from the attacker's perspective).
>How many people are killed per year with a handgun?
I don't think these are interesting questions in this context at all. Can a crazy shooter (ok, not you ;) kill more effectively with an assault rifle? Absolutely. That is the only important question, I think.
And if you want to ask these particular questions, it would be also interesting to know how many assault rifles are out there? How many handguns and knives? Perhaps there are fewer people killed by rifles because there are much less rifles?
How many people are killed per year with a rifle?
How many people are killed per year with a handgun?
For control: How many people are killed per year with a knife?
It turns out to be that a lot more people per year are killed with knives than with assault rifles. I saw a number somewhere less than 3% in the FBI database for rifles, whereas knives make up something in the order of 20% to 25% of homicides.
Yes, HANDGUNS are, by far, the weapon most used to commit homicides.
And, yes, the data shows that most homicides seem to affect 18 to 24 year old males.
And, yes, the data shows that hispanic and black kids in inner cities are at most risk.
All I am proposing is that we ought to look at the actual data and act accordingly. I would spend time and money to try to understand and prevent the mass killings of youngsters in the inner cities. That's where the tragedies, to the tunes of thousands of kids per year, are taking place on a daily basis.
The white guy in the suburbs who owns a couple of handguns, a couple of shotguns and a couple of "assault rifles" is not the problem.
I am more than ready to see it differently. If you have reputable data to support the idea that so-called "assault rifles" are responsible for a sizable number of murders please let me know where to find it. I'll read it. The data I looked at was from the US Department of Justice and FBI. Not sure where one would find more accurate data.
My motivation here isn't political. Let's look at the data and see what is REALLY happening as opposed to following media spokes-holes like sheep. I hope intelligent HN readers --who tend to be more analytical-- agree with this approach. We might like to believe that big-scary "assault rifles" are the culprit (and, therefore, what we should focus on) but I have found no data to support this idea. Again, feel free to uncover such data if it exists.
Now, one can always do as on of the Mythbuster guys once said when he didn't like the data: "I reject your reality and substitute my own". That's all well and fine, but it doesn't change the real and valid underlying data, does it?
In other words, you can believe whatever you want, but the truth is immutable.