Gohmert: 'Any weapon' is an assault weapon

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Friday that he would not support efforts for a renewed assault weapons ban, because "any weapon" — including hammers and machetes — could qualify as an "assault weapon."

"I refuse to play the game of 'assault weapon,' " Gohmert said on the "Dennis Miller Show," as first reported by ThinkProgress. "That’s any weapon. It’s a hammer. It’s the machetes. In Rwanda that killed 800,000 people, an article that came out this week, the massive number that are killed with hammers."

The term "assault weapon" was defined in the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban as certain firearms, the majority of which were semi-automatic and possessed cosmetic features mirroring those on military or fully automatic weapons. Opponents of the ban have argued that features like pistol grips, threaded barrels, or telescoping stocks do not actually increase the lethality of a weapon.

At a press conference last month, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the president will "actively support" efforts by Democrats to reinstate the federal assault weapons ban, which sunset during the Bush administration. Obama pledged to address gun violence in his second term after the Connecticut elementary school shooting that left 26 dead. 

"He wants to move in the coming weeks, which is a fairly short period of time," Carney said. "And while he supports, and strongly, renewal of the assault weapons ban, and strongly other measures, he wants to expand the conversation beyond those specific areas of legislation to look at other ways we can address this problem.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has pledged to introduce an updated version of the bill sometime this month.

That bill would outlaw 100 specifically named firearms, along with any weapon that can accept detachable magazines and handguns with fixed magazines that can accept more than 10 rounds.

Gohmert has previously suggested that he believes school officials should be armed to prevent future violence, and suggested that had the slain principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School had a gun, the shooter may have been stopped.

"I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn't have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands. But she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids," Gohmert told Fox News.

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