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Image source: CBS
BY ZACH TOOMBS
Assault rifles get all the talk these days — with
several lawmakers pushing for bans — but another type of weapon remains the most frequently
tied to U.S. gun deaths. Here’s New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly on CBS’s Face
the Nation.
“Only 2 percent of the people that we have arrested for guns in the
last two years have had assault weapons. We don't want them on the streets, make no mistake
about it, but the problem is the handgun.”
Kelly expanded on that in a New York Post op-ed
published Monday, when he noted 90 percent of illegal firearms seized from suspects last
year were handguns.
Assault weapons made up less than 3 percent of that figure. And
Kelly’s point about handguns also holds true in the nation’s third largest city.
With
40 killings this month, Chicago finds itself one homicide away from its deadliest January
in 11 years. As the gun death capital of America, the majority of Chicago’s gun murders come
from handguns.
While harsher federal restrictions on handguns are unrealistic,
Kelly says New York City, at least, would benefit from universal background checks.
That’s
part of the gun proposal package President Barack Obama put forward this month. As is,
gun laws allow purchases at gun shows and through private sales without a background
check. The president’s plan would close those loopholes. (Via PBS)
The Senate
will likely be the first chamber in Congress to vote on new gun restrictions, and they’ll
be evaluating each proposal separately — meaning we could see expanded background checks without
an accompanying assault weapons ban.
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