Jim Sensenbrenner: “Mr. Chairman, I think that a police officer in Michigan stated the problem to me very well a couple of months ago when…”

“Mr. Chairman, I think that a police officer in Michigan stated the problem to me very well a couple of months ago when he said the real issue in crime this year is not repeating rifles, it is repeating offenders. The truth of the matter is that there are less than 1 percent of violent crime committed in this country by assault weapons described in this bill. The truth of the matter is that if we ban all these weapons that are listed in this bill, still hundreds more than function exactly the same way with the same killing power that these guns have will still be on the streets, still available to the criminals and nothing will have been solved by passing this except to absolve some people in the political world we live in today from this next year's election. The fact of the matter is 6 percent of the criminals in this country commit 70 percent of the violent crimes and are serving less than a third of their sentences. The answer to the violent crime problem in this country is not banning the few assault weapons in this bill, it is taking the repeat violent offenders off the streets, locking then up, and throwing away the keys.”