Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016
Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am delighted to be here. And before I ask my question, I just want to thank my colleague for what he is doing. I guess my first question would be, How are you doing? You have been on the floor for quite a while now, and I really appreciate it, but how do you feel?
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. We have some obligations that we ought to meet and that the American people would support us in meeting, and my question is, Do those obligations include not only strengthening our gun laws to make sure that certain individuals who should not purchase firearms are legally prevented from purchasing firearms--for instance, people convicted of violent hate crimes?
I think Americans agree that is not a class of people whose defense of their right to purchase firearms we should be rushing to defend. Those who are suspected terrorists on the no-fly list, on the terrorist watch list--that seems to be a very reasonable group of people to take out of the list of folks who are allowed to purchase firearms.
But if we just do those two things and we don't beef up the background checks, so that even if we do create a law that protects people who have committed violent hate crimes from being able to buy a firearm and even if we do pass a law that prevents people from the terrorist watch list or the no-fly list from being able to buy a firearm--even if those laws are in place, is it not true that if all they have to do is go online to buy a gun, if all they have to do is go to a gun show to buy a gun, then we have failed in our responsibility to protect the American people?
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That problem applies to a convicted felon who can right now get around the conviction and go and buy a gun through either of those loopholes--online or from a gun show. It applies to a domestic violence abuser who is ordinarily prohibited but can easily get around it by going to a gun show or buying a gun online. It applies to someone who has been determined by a court to be dangerously mentally ill.
So right now we have a system, as I understand it, where if you have been determined by a court to be dangerously mentally ill, if you go to a gun shop and go through the regular procedure, then your purchase of the gun will be interrupted. But all you have to do is go to a gun show or go online, and you get around the restriction. Isn't that the state of play right now, even for convicted felons, domestic violence abusers, and people who have been adjudicated to be seriously mentally ill?
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for another question?
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I have some statistics here that I find a little surprising, and I would love to ask my colleague for his explanation of them.
The statistics that I have are that 76 percent of gun owners and 71 percent of National Rifle Association members support prohibiting people on the terror watch lists from purchasing guns. Yet despite the fact that 76 percent of gun owners support putting people on the terror watch list--on the list that doesn't allow them to buy firearms--and despite the fact that 71 percent of NRA members support putting terror watch list folks onto the ban list for buying firearms, nevertheless the NRA has repeatedly opposed and attempted to block legislation that attempts to close the terrorist watch list gap.
Does the Senator have an explanation or a thought about why it is that when three-quarters of gun owners and nearly three-quarters of NRA members take one position, the organization is taking a completely different position from what their members support and from what gun owners support across America?
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If the Senator will yield for another question, it is my understanding that this position the NRA takes against any and every, even very reasonable, gun safety measure--and very likely, I suspect, for the reasons the Senator has identified as a marketing ploy on behalf of the big industry that pays them to do this. But it is my understanding that applies to a variety of other issues as well. The issue I want to ask about is the issue of high-capacity magazines.
Now, I am a gun owner myself. I belong to a gun club in Rhode Island. In order to get access to the range, I had to have a safety briefing by the gun club saying what I could and could not do on the range, saying what the range rules are. One of the range rules that was imparted to me in the safety briefing is that they don't allow high-capacity magazines on the range. They don't allow them for safety reasons.
I doubt this is the only one. If you have gun clubs around the country that will not allow high-capacity magazines on the range for safety reasons at the range itself, and yet here is the NRA wildly opposing any effort to limit any high-capacity magazine restriction of any kind, does that follow as part of that same argument? Is the industry as determined not only to sell more and more guns to a smaller number of people by creating fear that some imaginary black helicopter is going to come and take their guns away but also restricting the limits on high-capacity magazines?
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If the Senator will yield for a question, does the Senator recall that years ago there was an effort to prevent armor- piercing ammunition from being sold? Because our police officers who wear body protection for protection against armed assailants were very concerned that selling people armor-piercing ammunition would make them more effective at killing police officers. Whereas, it would make no difference in hunting deer or elk or anything else. They customarily, as I understand it, don't wear armor, but police officers do. Police officers have to go into dangerous situations with armed individuals. Therefore, there was considerable pressure to protect our law enforcement officers to try to put limits on the amount of armor- piercing ammunition that people could buy.
My recollection--if the Senator would confirm it, that would be my question--is that at the time, the NRA opposed any limit on armor- piercing ammunition and opposed the law enforcement forces, the local police chiefs and police officers who come to these crisis situations and their desire to be safe and their desire to be able to tell their families: It is going to be OK, honey. I have protective armor. It is going to help make me safe, and there is an armor-piercing ammunition that people are allowed to shoot at me; that they took all that away, and this was an argument that they made and they succeeded, and right now armor-piercing ammunition is available as a result of NRA lobbying.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for one more question? I see my senior Senator Jack Reed on the floor. I am sure he wants to engage in a question-and-answer with Senator Murphy. Before that, may I ask one additional question?
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The other question I want to ask is that in response to our effort to put people who are on the terrorist watch list into a category where they are not able to go and buy firearms in order to commit the acts of terror for which they are on the watch list, our friends on the other side of the aisle have suddenly come up with a new piece of legislation they say is designed to address this problem.
My question is, Do we know if this piece of legislation has ever been seen before? Do we know if it has been brought up in committee and given any kind of a review? Have they built a track record of interest and concern about this issue and built a legislative record to support their bill or does this appear to be something they whipped out of their pocket at the last minute to try to fend off the sensible provisions we have long fought for to keep people on the terror watch list from being able to go out and buy high-powered firearms?
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. To the point the Senator just made--if he will yield for one final question. When the government would have to go into court within 72 hours in order to try to interrupt the sale, presumably that would give the person on the terrorist watch list all sorts of notice about the government's investigative activities and an opportunity in court to do further inquiry into the government's investigative activities and in fact allow somebody who is on the terrorist watch list to have a window into the government investigation that he or she might be the subject of; is that not the way that would play out? It doesn't seem to make much sense to me.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. There is no model for it.
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