[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Page 12497]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     NOT ALL GUNS ARE CREATED EQUAL

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, crime 
statistics indicated a growing threat posed by a military-style 
semiautomatic assault weapons in the hands of criminals. A 1994 report 
by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF, 
determined that while assault weapons made up only 1 percent of the 
guns in circulation in the United States at that time, they accounted 
for up to 8 percent of the guns used in crimes, ``thus making them 
preferred by criminals over law-abiding citizens 8 to 1.'' The ATF 
relied on data such as this to support the establishment of a federal 
ban on assault weapons. Such a ban was enacted by Congress as part of 
the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and was signed 
into law by President Clinton.
  Following the enactment of the assault weapon ban, the National 
Institute of Justice, an agency within the Department of Justice, 
conducted a study that was mandated by Congress on the short-term 
impact of the statute. The study found that crimes involving assault 
weapons dropped 20 percent in the year following enactment of the law. 
Additional research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
found deaths caused by guns dropped from 38,505 in 1994 to 29,573 in 
2001.
  Ten years after the assault weapons ban was passed, Los Angeles Chief 
of Police Bill Bratton said:

       Since the assault weapons ban was passed in 1994, we have 
     seen a 66 percent decline in the frequency of assault weapons 
     use in crime. Violent criminals love these weapons because 
     they give them far more firepower than conventional weapons 
     that greatly increases their capacity to kill. We cannot 
     allow these weapons to get back into their hands.

  On May 8 of this year, two Fairfax County police officers were shot 
to death by an 18-year-old armed with multiple guns, including an AK-
47-style assault rifle. Unfortunately, assault rifles like the one 
reported in this attack, as well as many other similar assault weapons, 
are once again being legally produced and sold as a result of the 
expiration of the assault weapons ban.
  In 1994, I voted to establish of the assault weapons ban and 10 years 
later I joined a bipartisan majority of the Senate in voting to extend 
the ban for another 10 years. Unfortunately, despite the overwhelming 
support of the law enforcement community, the ongoing threat of 
terrorism, and the bipartisan support in the Senate, neither the 
President nor the majority's congressional leadership acted to protect 
Americans from assault weapons like the one used in the attack on the 
Fairfax County police station. As a result, 19 types of previously 
banned military-style assault weapons are once again on the streets and 
in the neighborhoods of our cities and towns.
  Congress must take up and pass common sense gun safety legislation to 
help prevent such tragedies from occurring in the future.

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