Guns Don't Kill People; People Do.

This impressively crafted Internet meme was found on the National Rifle Association's facebook page, where the stated mission is, "To protect your Second Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and protect our country's hunting and shooting traditions."

First, I have to give credit where credit is due:  this is a great looking meme. It manages to to appear simultaneously somber, patriotic and factual.  After all, what greater authority on crime could there be than the FBI ? 

The statistics as presented in this meme are accurate, insofar as The FBI's  "Expanded Homicide Data Table 11" from 2011 does indeed show the column heading and the numbers cited:

Knives:  1694

Personal Weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.): 726

Blunt objects:  (clubs, hammers, etc.) 496

Rifles:  323 

Note, however, that the FBI does not add the qualifier "of any type", so it is not perfectly clear as to its definition of a "rifle".  

There is, however, more to this extensive table than the NRA shows in its meme.  Take a look at these columns, for instance:

Total murder victims	Total firearms	Handguns	Rifles	Shotguns	Other guns or type not stated
12,664	8,583	6,220	323	356	1,684
1,816	1,271	1,007	32	50	182
15	1	1	0	0	0
734	553	474	12	12	55

What are the "other guns or type not stated"?

If not for the NRA, I doubt I would have ever spent time perusing the FBI's website.  There are lots and lots of data tables available for public review.  That table 11 is pretty large, with lots of columns, but there's a smaller, simpler one, too, called "Expanded Homicide Table 7", which has only four columns:

Murder, Types of Weapons Used
Percent Distribution by Region, 20111
Region	Total all weapons2	Firearms	Knives or cutting instruments	Unknown or other dangerous weapons	Personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.)3
Total	100.0	67.7	13.4	13.1	5.8
Northeast	100.0	66.0	16.0	13.9	4.1
Midwest	100.0	71.6	9.4	13.0	6.0
South	100.0	69.1	13.2	11.8	5.9
West	100.0	63.3	15.3	14.7	6.7
1 Virgin Islands totals are not included in this table.
2 Because of rounding, the percentages may not add to 100.0.
3 Pushed is included in personal weapons.

From this table, which lumps all firearms together under one heading, it is easy to see that when people do  kill people, the weapon most often used is a gun.

So what about the message of the meme, then, which suggests that the Obama administration is unfairly targeting semi-automatic rifles because the FBI statistics show that knives, hands, feet, clubs and hammers are the more dangerous weapons?  Is it truthful?  Is it a distortion of the truth?

Make of it what you will.