Assault Weapons Ban of 2022
Floor Speech
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Mr. MASSIE. Mr. Speaker, if facts are the ammunition of debate, I point out that the other side of the aisle entered this room unarmed.
There are so many mischaracterizations or misfires, if you will, about this bill and what this bill does that I don't know where to start.
But let me start here with the words of the author of this bill. He says it will ban weapons of war only suitable for soldiers in combat.
Is that what it does? Does it ban an M16? It doesn't ban an M16 or an M4. It bans the most commonly sold rifle in the United States today and for the last several years.
It doesn't ban weapons of war. It explicitly exempts the M1 Garand. General Patton said the M1 Garand is the finest implement of battle ever devised. Why is it exempted? It is a weapon of war.
It exempts the M1 Carbine. Look at the picture of the soldiers, the marines at Iwo Jima. What were they carrying? The M1 Carbine.
It exempts the quintessential Cold War weapon, the pride of the Chinese and the Communists, the SKS. It is exempted in this bill. These are literal weapons of war that are not in this bill.
Now, they will come back and ban those, but they don't want to ban them right now because they don't look scary enough. They have a wooden forestock and a wooden butt. They not made of plastic. They don't look like the scary stuff on the news, so they have no interest in banning that.
Literal, actual weapons of war are not banned, but the most common firearm sold today is banned.
But let's take them at their word. Weapons of war. These are weapons of war. We have got to ban weapons of war.
Well, they exempt 80-some Federal agencies from the ban. Literally, every bureaucratic agency in the government can have a weapon of war under this bill; weapons of war as they call them.
So we offered an amendment in the committee. We couldn't conceive of why the Department of Education would need a weapon of war to complete their mission of educating our children; coming up with the curriculum.
We couldn't conceive of why the USDA would need weapons of war, so we offered an amendment to exempt the USDA and the Department of Education from being able to have these weapons of war; so-called weapons of war.
Every Democrat, even though they couldn't give us a good reason of why these agencies would need weapons of war, or with whom they planned to go to war--are they bringing them to the school board? Where are they going to bring these things?
Now, they couldn't give a good reason why these agencies would need weapons of war. But they all voted to allow these agencies to have weapons of war.
Now, the reason they did, we came to that conclusion is, they aren't weapons of war. It is the most common firearm sold in the United States today. These are not weapons of war.
There was one Democrat who did articulate a reason. He said, well, they are actually good for defense. You have might need them to defend the Department of Education. Well, that is what the Second Amendment is about.
It is not about making sure that the Department of Education--which, by the way, is unconstitutional--but it is not making sure that the Department of Education could have proper defense; it is for the people to have proper defense. So that is the first falsehood.
Now, here is another reason that gun owners should be concerned about this bill. Maybe you don't own one of these firearms, but if you own guns, you know about terminal ballistics. You know what are suitable calibers for hunting deer, for hunting coyotes.
We have heard it said here today, and in the committee, and they showed us a video, oh, the terminal ballistics of a .223 round are so dangerous that we need to ban these AR-15s because they shoot .223 rounds.
What they didn't show you was a video of a deer cartridge, like a .30-06, or a 7-millimeter, or a .308.
If you are banning--if the purpose of this legislation is to ban these firearms because they shoot a cartridge with those terminal ballistics of a .223, then you plan, you absolutely plan to come after deer rifles because they have two and three times as much power; two and three times as much destructive and killing power as the firearm--as the cartridge used in the firearm that you seek to ban here today.
Another falsehood. This bill will save lives. Let me get to this. We heard it here today. I was waiting for it. It was mentioned a couple of times. Even the Speaker of the House mentioned it.
They have said that the 1994-2004 assault weapons ban--so-called assault weapons--reduced crime; that crime went down. Well, guess what? From 1995-2004, there were 2 million of these firearms imported or manufactured and sold.
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Mr. MASSIE. The number of these rifles doubled in the United States during your last assault weapons ban. If you think crime went down because of the last assault weapons ban, then you have got some explaining to do because the number of those rifles increased. Maybe, just maybe people became safer.
Mr. Speaker, I urge opposition to this bill.
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