As the Crime Prevention Research Center has often pointed out, television crime shows seem to think criminals constantly use machine guns to commit crime. Unfortunately, CBS’ SWAT is no different (Season 7 Episode 9, April 19, 2024). This episode shows criminals using machine guns to commit a robbery from a Federal Research office.
In real life, criminals generally use machine guns so rarely that a 2016 survey of prison inmates only broke down the numbers for uses in crime of handguns (11.2%), rifles (0.8%), and shotguns (1.1%). There are few rifles, and the survey did not mention fully automatic weapons. A similar finding is available from the FBI UCR report, where 2.6% of all murders involve rifles of any type, and 0.3% of all murders involve unspecified “other guns.” There is a reason for that. Since 1934, there was only one possible known use of a civilian using a machine gun in a murder. And even before 1934, they were very rare.
Examples of similar television shows can be found here.
SWAT Season 7 Episode 9, April 19, 2024
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