Does not matter. More deaths wth hammers than long guns. Period. Tell that to the poeple whower killed with hammers. Welcome to the wonderful world of numbers. You do know, dont you' that when you remove one source, folks who want to do mass harm will just find another. Who ever though pressure cookers, fertilizer or jet airliners would be weapons. But when there is a will there will always be a way. Blaming the object is a fools errand.
There were not more murders by hammers than long guns -- there were more murders by hammers and clubs and other blunt objects than with long guns. This is a silly discussion, because hammers are made for a special useful purpose, driving nails; a few of them may have been used to kill people but I would bet a large amount of money (to refute your silly point) that the other weapons in the category (clubs and other blunt objects) were used more than hammers. So it's not "hammers killed more people, period." Allll kinds of things can be used for murdering people, including hammers, sticks, ropes, kitchen knives, fists, gasoline, etc. But only one of the things we're talking about are specifically designed, built and intended to be used to kill people, and those are semi-automatic weapons -- rifles and handguns. They are absolutely unnecessary for any recreational purpose that couldn't be done with much slower-acting guns, single-shots, double-barreled shotguns, bolt-action rifles and revolvers, and as I said somewhere else, the fantasy that these slobs could use their weapons to prevent a government tyranny is a fantasy. Scores of people are murdered every year because of this stupid, silly fantasy. The weapons are used for murder and to intimidate neighbors and fellow citizens. We had a guy show up at a meeting here with an open carry semi-auto pistol worn on his belt, which is legal, but it was known in advance that there would be some hot tempers at this meeting, though nobody expected any kind of physical violence, and his presence scared everybody including the cops and the people who were technically on his side in the discussion. And that was the intent. Whose idea of democracy is that?
Rifles and handguns together were responsible for more than 14,000 murders in 2018. These weapons make it possible for a single person to kill masses of people, because that's what they're well-designed to do. Very, very few other things accessible to crazy people will do that -- bombs are one, as Tim McVeigh proved on Oklahoma City, and I would point out that he was encouraged in his work by the very same kind of people who are marching around with the AR-15 style rifles, the right-wing anti-government crazies.
