The NRA Claims the AR-15 Is Useful for Hunting and Home Defense. Not Exactly.

[jody]

7. Nonetheless CRS says there's no evidence the AWB reduced murder number.

Gun-Related Statistics
Crime and mortality statistics are often used in the gun control debate. According to a recent
study, however, none of the existing sources of statistics provide either comprehensive, timely, or
accurate data with which to assess definitively whether there is a causal connection between
firearms and violence.23 For example, existing data do not show whether the number of people
shot and killed with semiautomatic assault weapons declined during the 10-year period (1994-
2004) that those firearms were banned from further proliferation in the United States. Presented
below are data on the following topics: (1) the number of guns in the United States, (2) firearms-related homicides, (3) non-lethal firearms-related victimizations, (4) gun-related mortality rates,
(5) use of firearms for personal defense, and (6) recreational use of firearms. In some cases, the
data presented are more than a decade old but remain the most recent available.

See page 7 of http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL32842.pdf