[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 11989-11990]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Johnson) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to express my 
heartfelt sorrow and condolences to the victims and their families and 
the community of Aurora, Colorado, a great tragedy. Words are 
inadequate to describe it. And it's certainly a reminder to everyone 
that no time is promised to any of us. And we never know what will 
happen in the next second or the next minute or the next hour and 
certainly the next day. So we give praise that we were able to wake up 
this morning, come to the floor of the House and talk about an issue 
that is going to take a lot of time to heal.
  But while we are healing, we have work to do in this Congress. You 
see, the assault weapons ban, in place for 10 years, expired in 2004. 
And after the expiration of the assault weapons ban, it's been open 
season.
  Now, I know that there are people who hold the Second Amendment dear. 
And it is established clearly in law that citizens have a right to bear 
arms. Beyond that, the Constitution is silent. So it leaves it up to us 
to address issues concerning the reasonable regulation of that right. 
Should we not have any regulations, or should we have regulations that 
are reasonable?
  Now, I just heard some of my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle talking about the numerous bills that we will be considering this 
week having to do with stopping regulation in its tracks in all areas, 
whether or not it be child safety, food, drugs, car safety, whether or 
not it be air, water, food, drugs. I have heard talk that regulations 
stop jobs from being created. That is one that I disagree with; but 
nevertheless, we will be considering it today.

                              {time}  1030

  But there are some regulations governing the affairs of people that 
are reasonable, and that includes restrictions on who can bear arms and 
what

[[Page 11990]]

kind of arms they can bear. To say that we should have no regulations 
on weapons, particularly weapons of mass destruction, to me is unwise. 
I don't understand why someone who has a gun in their home for 
protection needs to have a magazine that is capable of rapid fire, a 
hundred rounds in a couple of minutes or in a minute. I don't 
understand why someone needs that kind of firepower to protect their 
home.
  I know people love to go hunting. I, myself, will one day have the 
opportunity to do that. I have never done it before, but I respect 
those who wait until hunting season begins on their particular prey of 
choice. They exercise that right and get a lot of joy and satisfaction 
out of it, and also bring home some food. I can't disagree with that, 
and we do need to cull our deer population and other populations. We 
have reasonable regulations on that. But you don't need an AK-47 to go 
deer hunting.
  My 5 minutes went by very quickly, but I think you all understand 
what I'm saying.

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