My Big Cost Saving Proposal For The Pentagon

Why do we arm service men and women 
with $700 rifles?

Background: From a recent reading of the Pulitzer prize-winning Politifact site I learned that since 1968 "more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country's history." According to their findings, about 1.4 million firearm deaths have occurred in the past 50 years compared to 1.2 million U.S. fatalities in war. The number of gunfire deaths does include suicides, but it's sobering to think of the huge homicide rate in our country.

But guns are far from being the only murder weapons involved in these phenomenal numbers. According to the same Politifact site, there are even more Americans killed each year with knives, by physical assault, or with clubs, baseball bats and hammers than there are with rifles. Of course, when you add handguns to the mix, that dramatically changes the equation, since pistols are the weapon of choice for most one-on-one murders.

In the wake of the latest horrific school shooting, I've heard some of the above statistics being used to downplay the idea that limiting access to semi-automatic rifles would substantially reduce fatalities in our country.

Which leads me to a simple question.

If such weapons as AR15's, especially when equipped with large magazines, aren't a significant factor adding to our nation's overall civilian kill rate--or increasing the number of school children being maimed and slaughtered--why not rethink how we train and arm members of our military, to whom we issue very similar (though fully automatic) weapons?

Just think of all the tax money we could save if we sent soldiers to battle armed with baseball bats and hammers instead? Or given the fact that more people die as a result of auto accidents than from gun murders, why not just give them vehicles to crash into enemy lines?

We don't do so for one simple reason. They are not as efficient at killing the largest numbers of people possible in the shortest amount of time possible.

Here's a link to a piece on the urgency of funding more research on this topic. 
https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2017/11/gun-violence-out-of-control-cancer.html