[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 195 (Wednesday, December 19, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Page S15993]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    RENEWING THE ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the past month has been marked by several 
high profile, tragic shootings. Across the country, Americans have been 
attacked in places once thought safe, by people wielding deadly 
firearms. There can be little doubt that the plague of gun violence is 
continuing to permeate our society. At what point will we say act.
  Early Sunday morning December 9, a young man entered a Christian 
missionary center in the Denver suburb of Arvada, carrying an assault 
rifle and approximately 1,000 rounds of ammunition. Shooting randomly, 
he gunned down two staff members in their mid-20s and wounded two 
others. Just over 12 hours later, the same gunman walked into a church 
75 miles away in Colorado Springs and killed two sisters, 18 and 16 
years-old, and wounded six others, before shooting himself.
  Four days earlier, on December 5, a young man entered a busy mall in 
Omaha, NE, carrying an assault rifle. Spraying bullets at people at 
both point blank range and from the third-floor balcony, sending 
holiday shoppers running as dozens of shots echoed throughout the mall. 
Before he turned the gun on himself, the gunman had killed eight people 
and wounded five others, two critically.
  Of course, these were only the shootings that captured national 
headlines. Hundreds of others fell to their deaths this past month at 
the hands of someone with a firearm. This month caps a year that 
witnessed the worst ever school shooting in the United States, when a 
student killed 32 classmates and staff members at Virginia Tech 
University. Each one of these horrific events emphasizes the need for 
common sense gun legislation. Together they scream out for change. As 
2007 draws to a close I once again urge my colleagues to help put an 
end to these kind of tragedies by renewing the assault weapons ban.

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