Steven Schiff: “this is an attempt to legislate through label. By mistakenly placing the title ``assault weapons'' arbitrarily on this…”

“this is an attempt to legislate through label. By mistakenly placing the title ``assault weapons'' arbitrarily on this group of firearms, and having the term ``assault weapons'' repeated over and over and over again in much of the media, it has served to totally confuse the issue about what weapons we are talking about here. It has even confused matters on the House floor. I heard a senior Member of the House just a moment ago say we need to ban automatic weapons. There is not a single automatic weapon in this bill. That is because automatic weapons--these are the true military combat weapons which can be set for constant fire with one pull of the trigger--are banned today. The weapons we are actually talking about do not fire any differently than the weapons that are not banned. If there were a difference between them, the proponents of this bill would have demonstrated that on the range by placing one against the other in a test that the media and the public could see. But I think that the real crux of this bill, the real way to know if this is legitimate law enforcement, in which I consider certain gun control proposals apart, or just grandstanding is the fact that this bill, if it becomes law today, will not ban a single weapon today. The law exempts all of the weapons that are called assault weapons today. Every one who owns one legally can keep one legally.”