News release from Congressman Marlin Stutzman (IN-3rd, R):
Stutzman Condemns Senate Gun Ban
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Congressman Marlin Stutzman, chairman of the Republican Study Committee’s 2nd Amendment Initiative, issued the following statement today after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved S. 150, the “Assault Weapons Ban of 2013.”
“My family continues to grieve with the victims’ families in Newtown. However, kneejerk reactions rarely solve problems and that is the case with Sen. Feinstein’s Assault Weapons Ban,” said Stutzman. “This country tried Senator Feinstein’s anti-gun crusade in the 1990s and it failed to reduce murder rates then and it will fail to reduce murder rates now. This ban undermines the Constitutional right of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms. Senators from both sides of the aisle should oppose this misguided and ineffectual legislation.”
Background:
- In 1999, the Department of Justice released a study that examined the short-term impact of the assault weapons ban on gun-related violence between 1994 and 1996. The study found that the ban had “failed to reduce the average number of victims per gun murder incident or multiple gunshot wound victims.”
- According to a January 2013 internal memo from the Obama administration’s Department of Justice, “an assault weapon ban is unlikely to have an impact on gun violence” and “a complete elimination of assault weapons would not have a large impact on gun homicides.”