[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 41 (Friday, March 22, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E415]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[[Page E415]]



                       ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN REPEAL

                                 ______


                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 21, 1996

  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, an UZI is one of the assault weapons 
considered a weapon of choice for drug traffickers, street gangs, and 
paramilitary extremist groups. The NRA and the Republican majority want 
to make this and other cop-killing guns readily available. To do that, 
they will have to repeal the assault weapons ban--a ban that over 70 
percent of the American public favors because it makes the streets 
safer for our children.
  UZI's have no purpose other than to kill people. They are not hunting 
weapons, they are not used for target practice, they are just used to 
kill people.
  An UZI pistol was used on May 16, 1993, when a man who had been 
kicked out of a rural Fresno, CA, bar returned the next day with a 
friend and opened fire, killing seven people and wounding two others. 
This was the worst massacre in Fresno's history.
  An UZI semiautomatic rifle was one of the guns used by James Oliver 
Huberty, an out-of-work security guard, when he walked into a San 
Ysidro, CA, McDonald's and killed 21 people.
  If we want to avoid more massacres like these, we need to maintain 
the assault weapons ban.
  It is America's children, not the National Rifle Association that 
this Congress should be protecting. But tomorrow, when many of my 
colleagues vote to repeal the assault weapons ban, they will be voting 
to give violent criminals everywhere greater access to deadly weapons 
that can be used to murder our children, our parents, our brothers and 
sisters, and our friends.
  The Republican party is always claiming that it stands on principle. 
Now it can stand on the principle of more dead children.

                          ____________________