Study: Assault rifles not often used

A large amount of coverage of gun violence in America focuses on when semi-automatic weapons are used, particularly when brought to bear in mass killings, given their capacity to quickly inflict grievous harm. The intensity of that media klieg light, however, may be disproportionate to how often those firearms are actually used in these bouts of sudden violence, which have been given a name: “active shooter events.”

A study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that semi-automatic assault rifles were used in only about 25 percent of such U.S. incidents from 2000-17. The rest of the time, firearms including handguns, rifles and shotguns were the weapon of choice.

The FBI defines an active shooter event as “a situation in which an individual is actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined or populated area.” The researchers used FBI data on 248 U.S. shootings, as well as legal filings and media reports, to determine what weapons were used. The study may raise questions about whether calls to restrict only semi-automatics in the wake of such attacks are missing the bigger picture, one in which other weapons are used three times as often — albeit with less carnage.

“It's a very simple study,” said Dr. Adil Haider, the lead author. “What it shows is that if you have an active shooter incident, if the person has a semi-automatic, they're able to shoot twice as many people, and hence twice as many people end up dying.” If there’s to be an informed debate about regulating guns, Haider said, people need to know that handguns can be, and are, just as easily used by an assailant intent on killing in a public place.

A trauma surgeon and director at the Center for Surgery and Public Health,

Haider noted that government funding was not used for this study.