Wayne Gilchrest: “Mr. Chairman, I want to make a comment about the M-1 target rifle that was mentioned earlier to be considered illegal.…”

“Mr. Chairman, I want to make a comment about the M-1 target rifle that was mentioned earlier to be considered illegal. It is my understanding after looking at the list that the M-1 rifle is still and remains legal. Mr. Chairman, when I served in Vietnam, my fellow Marines and I carried some of the most sophisticated assault weapons in the world. They were M-14 and M-16 rifles and could fire 20 rounds at lightning speeds. We generally fired them on semiautomatic. Some could also fire like machineguns. The enemy carried AK-47's, which was the Soviet-made gun-of-choice in all of the Communist countries at the time. They functioned in essentially the same manner, and were capable of rapid fire. I took a bullet from an AK-47; I can attest to their deadliness. Today, just about anyone can go to a gun store and buy guns which are just as sophisticated as the ones we carried in Vietnam, if not more so, with the only difference being the automatic fire function. I remember the 18- and 19-year-old soldiers in Vietnam and how they seemed too young to carry such powerful weapons. Today, 14- and 15- year-old kids are getting assault weapons through gangs and they are killing each other. Police generally carry service revolvers--six-shot pistols which fire much less rapidly than semiautomatics. In too many cases, police are going up against criminals who are armed like infantry soldiers, leaving police out-gunned.”