Jerry Nadler: “I include in the Record a report from the Violence Policy Center entitled, ``Target: Law Enforcement, Assault Weapons in…”

“I include in the Record a report from the Violence Policy Center entitled, ``Target: Law Enforcement, Assault Weapons in the News.'' Section One Introduction: Background on Assault Weapons and Federal Attempts at Their Regulation Assault weapons. Semiautomatic assault weapons are civilian versions of automatic military assault rifles like the AK-47 and the M-16. The civilian guns look the same as their military brethren because they are identical functionally, except for one feature: military assault rifles are machine guns. A machine gun fires continuously as long as its trigger is held back--until it runs out of ammunition. Civilian assault rifles, in contrast, are semi-automatic weapons. The trigger of a semiautomatic weapon must be pulled back separately for each round fired. Because federal law has banned the sale of new machine guns to civilians since 1986 and heavily regulates sales to civilians of older model machine guns, there is virtually no civilian market for military assault weapons. Nonetheless, civilian semiautomatic assault weapons have proven every bit as deadly as their military counterparts. Regulation of assault weapons. The regulation of semiautomatic assault weapons has been a contentious subject for more than two decades. In the 1980s foreign manufacturers (principally China) began dumping semiautomatic versions of the Soviet-designed AK-47 military assault rifle--a ubiquitous staple of the world-wide small arms trade--onto the U.S.…”