In Los Angeles, of the 4,000 or more guns seized by police during 1988, only three percent would fall under even an expansive definition of "assault weapon."[47] Only 2.2% of the firearms confiscated in San Francisco in 1988 were military-style semiautomatics.[48] Assault weapons comprised one percent of the 4,800 firearms seized by the San Diego police during 1988, and were involved in only eight of the cities 144 homicides.[49] Police in Akron, Ohio seize about 400 weapons a year, and only two percent of these could arguably be classified as assault weapons.[50] In New York City and Washington, D.C., two areas of the country with notorious crime and drug problems, empirical evidence comports with the evidence available from other cities. New York City police statistics reveal that of the 16,370 guns seized in New York in 1988, only 1,028 of them were rifles of any type, and no doubt even fewer would fall under S. 747's definition of "assault weapon."[51] Of the 3,000 or more weapons that the Washington, DC police confiscated in 1988, not one was an assault rifle.[52] [Page 152]
National statistics accord with the low number of assault rifles confiscated in large cities. Four percent of all homicides in the United States involve rifles of any type, and less than half of one percent of those rifles could be considered military look-alike semiautomatic rifles.[53] In fact, according to 1987 FBI Uniform Crime Reports,Americans are far more likely to be killed by a knife or a blunt object instead of by a rifle of any type.[54] While they may appear menacing, both local and national crime statistics do not indicate that the so-called "assault rifles" are a serious crime or drug problem.