[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 29 (Tuesday, March 9, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H896]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          MEMBERS OF CONGRESS SHOULD RENEW ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. McCARTHY of New York. Mr. Speaker, assault weapons will go back 
on American streets in 188 days.
  We pay a heavy toll at the hands of criminals, gangs, and terrorists. 
The average cost of a gunshot wound is more than $16,000 to treat. 
Treating severe gunshot injuries like wounds to the head or spinal cord 
can run well over $1 million. The direct medical costs for firearms or 
related injuries is $4 billion a year; $4 billion a year. Half of that 
is paid by us as taxpayers.
  I know that the police across this Nation want to make sure that we 
keep assault weapons off the streets. Mr. Speaker, when we see that we 
are cutting the money for the COPS program and yet allowing assault 
weapons back on the street, to me it does not make any sense. Since I 
have been talking about this every Tuesday, we are hearing from people 
around the Nation. What I am saying to the people of this country is 
you do have a voice, and you can call Members of Congress and the 
Senate to make sure that we are allowed to bring the bill up on the 
floor so we can vote for it.
  This is not the time to go backwards. In the last 10 years, we have 
seen certainly it come down as far as assault weapon killings. We have 
a report from the FBI. Before the ban went in place, one out of every 
five cops that were shot were shot with an assault weapon. Why should 
we go backwards? When we know that there might be a possibility of 
having terrorists here in this country, when we know that gangs and 
drug dealers, these are the guns of choice, why would we want assault 
weapons back on the street?
  Mr. Speaker, $4 billion a year in health costs. I can talk about my 
own son who was shot. He was shot in the head. His medical care has 
cost over $1 million already, and the total keeps going higher and 
higher. This is going on with so many people. There are things that we 
can prevent. We cannot prevent every shooting; we cannot. We cannot see 
to it that every police officer is being protected. But we can do a 
better job, and that is by renewing the assault weapons ban by 
September 13.
  Mr. Speaker, 10 years ago, before I came to Congress, I was here 
lobbying the Members of Congress to make sure we had an assault weapons 
bill passed. There are some that will say the assault weapons bill has 
not worked. Well, it has worked; but there are loopholes in it, and 
those loopholes are where the gun manufacturers are allowed to make 
copycats of the guns that were banned. One of the guns that everyone is 
watching on CNN and all of the other stations tonight is the 
Bushmaster, the guns that were used by the snipers in the D.C. area. 
That is a copycat. That is a gun that was originally banned. Yet the 
gun manufacturers allow these to have copycats and put back on our 
streets.
  Do we actually want on September 14 for anyone to be able to go into 
a gun store and buy an assault weapon? Is this what this Nation is 
coming to?
  Mr. Speaker, I am not for taking away the right of someone to own a 
gun. I happen to believe that if people want to own a gun, they have a 
right to own a gun. But assault weapons are made for killing machines. 
Assault weapons are made for our Army. When we see our police officers 
and they have to wear protective gear, assault weapons can go through 
that. One of the other things that a lot of people do not understand 
is, when we did the ban back 10 years ago, we cut back the amount of 
bullets in a clip, down to 10. On the Long Island Rail Road, the clips 
that were used by Collin Ferguson to do his killing and shooting of 
people had 15 bullets in the clip.

                              {time}  1930

  And every one of those bullets made their mark. And he was able to 
get 30 rounds off and kill six people and injure 19.
  Hunters give animals a better chance of survival than we do with 
these large capacity clips. Our police officers are allowed to have 
these large capacity clips, our military are allowed to. And that is 
fine. I do not believe that our hunters need them, I do not believe 
that our ordinary citizens need those kind of clips.
  These are things that we should be doing. Those are good safety laws. 
Those are good gun safety laws.
  I hope that the American people will take up this challenge and 
demand that we are able to bring this vote up before September 13. It 
would be a shame to see assault weapons back on the street.

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