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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
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State
Rep. John Myers |
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Myers condemns assault rifle availability
HARRISBURG, May 5 – "What do we have to do, have our police patrol the streets in tanks?" state Rep. John Myers, D-Phila., asked today in response to the latest killing of a city police officer.
Sgt. Stephen Liczbinksi was cut down Saturday by several bullets fired from a Chinese-made assault rifle after he pulled over a vehicle wanted in connection with a bank robbery.
Myers said the killing is further evidence of the need for Pennsylvania to enact more sensible gun laws to reduce the easy availability of firearms, particularly handguns and semi-automatic assault rifles.
"An assault rifle is meant for only one thing: to kill people," Myers said. "It sprays out a lot of bullets in a short time, bullets that can kill someone hundreds of yards away and go through walls. It is not a practical home-protection firearm."
The Bush administration allowed the federal ban on the sale of assault rifles to expire several years ago, but Myers is hopeful that a change of administration in Washington in January could lead to its reimposition. Failing that, he believes Pennsylvania should consider prohibiting the sale of assault weapons.
A Chinese-made surplus SKS assault rifle can be purchased for around $100 because of its cheap manufacture and the huge number of them produced. The SKS used to kill Liczbinksi had been rebuilt and modified to give it a more modern look and to allow it to accept a higher-capacity bullets clip.
"As with virtually everything else we have proposed, including the ability for Philadelphia to craft its own restrictions, the gun lobby and its usual supporters in the legislature would cry that any such control on assault rifle sales would harm collectors and hunters," Myers said. "They will minimize the lasting harm an assault rifle caused to Sergeant Liczbinksi’s widow and children and ignore the escalating toll of death on the streets of Philadelphia and other communities, large and small, across Pennsylvania.
"I’d like to see them poll the opinions of Sergeant Liczbinski’s colleagues in the Philadelphia Police Department and see how they feel about the sale of assault rifles."
Myers noted that the regulations for buying an assault rifle are far less stringent than those purchasing a handgun.
Myers has introduced a number of bills that seek to limit the easy accessibility to handguns by criminal elements in Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia region. His latest (H.B. 2228) would require all ammunition sold in Pennsylvania to have a code imprinted on the projectile to allow it to be traced. The bill also would create a statewide database that could be referenced when a bullet is recovered at a crime scene.
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