Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, criticized the Senate Democrats’ proposed assault weapons ban as a prohibition against “scary looking guns,” one that even the Justice Department (DOJ) has acknowledged does not limit gun violence.

“The proposed assault weapons ban is a singularly ineffective piece of legislation,” Cruz recalled, during a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing  on gun violence today, a 1994 judgement from the DOJ. “That was the Janet Reno Department of Justice under President Clinton that said that the assault weapons ban was singularly ineffective. Under it, there has bee no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”

The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney pointed out recently that FBI data shows that more people die from injuries incurred by “hands/feet/fists” than from assault weapons.