Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a hunter who served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he knows well the difference between an assault rifle and a hunting weapon, and he believes a ban must be in place for weapons that were originally designed for military use.
"I used the M4 carbine, almost identical to the AR-15 that's used in the vast majority of these shootings," Rep. Crow told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I know it well. I can disassemble that AR-15 probably with a blindfold on, the same way I could with an M4. They're almost identical."
Such weapons are designed for mass casualties and have "no place" on the streets, in schools, theaters, or other places they have been used for that purpose, he added.
Crow said as a member of a House subcommittee tasked with working on the gun issue, "I'm going on lead."
"I have two young kids now, and when I come home and my kids tell me about the bad guy drills that they have in their schools, that they are sometimes afraid to go to school, and I hear that sentiment across my district almost every week, I know we have a big problem," Rep. Crow said. "So, I'm going to lead on this because, you know, I didn't take an assault weapon with me to a deer hunt, and I didn't take my deer hunting rifle to me in Iraq and Afghanistan, because they're very different weapons."
He said he does respect the Second Amendment, but there is a "mixed bag" of political realities in his state, especially after the Columbine school shooting.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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