Whens the last time you heard of a masscre done wth a fully automatic weapon? The last time I even heard it brought up was the 1997 north hollywood shooting.
Most of our shootings are with handguns.
I don't know what he is blabbering about assault weapons then. He probably didn't mean fully automatic weapons.
The guy that asked him the question clearly scared the hell out of him! He is WAY too old mentally!!
People have a misconception because they see a AK47 or M16 in the US, that it is assumed to be a machine gun, those are sporterized variants that have been deemed legal for civilian use.
Usually they are in a affordable range anywhere from 400-1000 dollars, sometimes more.
Machine guns have been regulated since 1934 and new ones banned since 1986, the assault weapon ban focused on semi-automatic weapons that were deemed to have a "military appearance", this banned certain firearms by name as well as certain appearance such as the Colt M16 and M4, AK47, the Uzi, Galil, FN FAL, and a few other weapons that looked "military" in appearance. Several of the manufacturers renamed their products like "AK47 sporter" "Galil Sporter" to get around the ban so the ban extended to certain features on rifles that had "folding stocks, more than 10 round magazine, flashhider, bayonet lug, etc.), some weapons were changed in appearance with full stocks or 10 round magazines, purely cosmetic, the weapons were never truely banned, just new versions as well as new magazines were banned.
The assault weapon ban did nothing to get rid of crime. Machine guns have always been rare in crime with the exception of the days of Al Capone, the only cases I know of was a cop that went on a killing spree and the north hollywood shooters who illegally modified their weapons, but didn't manage to kill anyone.