More from the assault weapon ban: Pro and con.

“My son, Aaron Sullivan, was killed in July by an assault weapon. He was killed by another young man, a 19-year-old. My feeling on this is that we have laws that protect our children from tobacco and narcotics and alcohol and we determine when they can drive and when they can vote,” said Dr. Deborah Sullivan. She added that she would like to see that same protection to keep assault weapons “out of the hands of our most vulnerable young people.”

Brian Judy, Washington state liaison for the National Rifle Association: “In this day and age of 24 hour news, I want to give you a bit of breaking news … 70 million gun owners didn’t break the law today.” He said the bill is unconstitutional, arbitrary and will not reduce crime. “You can ban all semi-automatic firearms or you can ban none of them,” he said — you can’t ban a subset of semi-automatics because it will only lead to confusion and more people purchasing them.

10:38 a.m. Bill Pierce, concerned citizen: Said Sen. Adam Kline was “sitting there in smugness and arrogance” and that Kline’s position in support of abortion killed far more people than assault rifles. He said he became a member of the NRA at age 15, and that his father told him at the time that people would “stay up day and night” thinking of ways to take away his rights.

10:40 a.m., Linda Pillo, Police Chief for the Bellevue Police Department: “An FBI analysis found that 41 of the 211 law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty … were killed with weapons that can be defined as assault weapons.” (I didn’t catch the time frame of those 211 killings. Apologies.) She said assault rifles allow people to “spray a lethal volley” of bullets at a crowd of people. “Assault weapons can also be converted to fully automatic machine guns,” she said.

10:49 – Hearing is over, and the crowd is filing out.

Tags: assault rifle ban