An explanation, from a gun nut.

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117. Two problems with your post

1) 11-post history, past the magic 10 required to start a topic, first topic this. I know it's calling out, but my trolldar is going off.

2) Your FBI link is seriously cherry-picked, as far as "more likely to die by a hammer". For those not bothering to go to the FBI page (which is just a simple chart) it breaks down murders by weapon. It's not more recent than 2009, but regardless..

Firearms account for 9,146 of 13,636. In other words, practically all (well, 2/3rds), and that's only 2009, not recently.

Blunt objects (of which hammers are just a part, along with baseball bats, skillets, rocks, and whatever else) are 611, or 4%.

I think the cherry-picking comes in because firearms are broken down into handguns, rifles, shotguns, other, and unspecified. The "other" (which is where I assume assault weapons fall) accounted for 94 deaths in 2009. So, from that point of view, assault weapons specifically fell below "blunt objects", but overall, firearms were the weapon of choice in over 2/3rds of murders.