If you buy guns and ammo you're harming America by funding the NRA: volume 109

[sir pball]

28. If you're including handguns, that would actually make a difference.

The math says that a confiscatory ban of all semi-automatic rifles in the US, with an immediate 100% compliance rate, would save a few hundred lives - in 2017, the last year the data was available, rifles accounted for 403 homicides(1). Yes, there are 3096s "type not stated" homicides, but a rifle-round injury is much more discernible than a handgun-round injury; that category just means the investigator couldn't determine what kind of gun it was (and if you've watched the John Oliver on medical examiners, that's no surprise). Let's be real generous and allow 310 more rifle deaths, for a total of 713 dead by rifles, assault or otherwise.

Out of 15,129 firearms homicides(1). 4.7%.

7,032 of those homicides were by handgun(I'm gonna stop citing, it's all from the 2017 UCR). Now, anecdotally the 38 revolver is still the most popular crime gun in America, but that's still only something less than 1/4 of handgun murders [citation needed]. Let's be generous and say revolvers in general are 1/3 of handgun homicides, that leaves 4,688 dead by semiauto handguns in 2017. The same magical 100% effective ban would then save a lot of people.

The logical, unfeeling calculus of the situation says we need to focus on handgun controls if we want to save as many lives as possible, full stop. If you want to spend the unfortunately limited political capital for gun control to minimize school shootings, then by all means spend it on assault rifles, but if you want to maximize your return, spend it on handguns.

(1) - https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls