Update: more here.

Are “assault weapons” causing a problem on the street? No. Most experts define an assault weapon as a weapon capable of fully automatic firing. Assault weapons are machine guns and submachine guns. That type of weapon is not what I was being asked to address.

Another use of the term “assault weapons” appeared in the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban where it was used to describe semi-automatic firearms that have mostly cosmetic features normally associated with military firearms. These semi-automatic weapons were called assault weapons because they “looked” bad, not because of what they could do.

So, fewer than 3% of murders were committed with the guns McCarthy’s bill would most restrict. By contrast, 6.0% of all murders are committed with hands and feet (that includes pushing).

All questions of whether this passes the Constitutionality sniff test aside, it’s stuff like this that really erodes what little faith in government I have, (…and that ain’t much, folks.) If they’re this astoundingly inept when writing legislation about an industry I’m familiar with, then they are probably also equally clueless when writing legislation to muck up other industries I don’t know anything about, such as agriculture or banking. Now that’s scary.