Anti-gun Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, during her morning questioning of Supreme Court Nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, amid several disruptions, asserted that so-called “assault weapons” are “not in common use” and that such weapons have allegedly been used in “hundreds of school shootings.”
She spent several minutes grilling Kavanaugh about firearms, specifically “assault weapons.”
But according to FBI Uniform Crime Reports, rifles of any kind consistently are used in two to three percent of all homicides in any given year.
Feinstein has pressed for a ban on semiautomatics that are commonly identified as modern sporting rifles. Kavanaugh noted that there are “millions” of such rifles in private ownership and that they are used for hunting and other purposes, but Feinstein seemed intent on portraying these firearms as not in common use.
Crime data from the FBI shows that in any given year, more people are murdered with knives or other sharp implements, and that more people are actually beaten or choked to death than are killed with rifles of any kind.
But Feinstein’s remarks seem oblivious to an NPR report from late August that a majority of school shootings reported by the U.S. Department of Education “never happened.”
“We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents,” NPR revealed after a lengthy investigation, “either directly with schools or through media reports. In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn’t confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn’t meet the government’s parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn’t respond to our inquiries.”
So, where are these “hundreds of school shootings” involving so-called “assault rifles” of which Sen. Feinstein spoke?
The exchange came on the second day of the confirmation hearings that could send Kavanaugh to the high court to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy at the end of July.
For the second day, several people were ejected from the hearing room for creating disruptions.
Anti-gunners are alarmed at the prospect of Kavanaugh being seated on the Supreme Court because of a dissenting opinion he wrote a few years ago in a case involving a ban on semi-auto rifles in Washington, D.C. The apparent concern might be toward a potential case reaching the Supreme Court on whether such firearms are protected by the Second Amendment.
