Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016
Floor Speech
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Mr. KING. I say to the Senator, I have a series of questions and some comments.
First, I come from a predominantly rural State with a very high number of gun owners, a very low rate of gun crime.
What you are talking about here today, adding the terrorist watch list as one of the elements of the background check and covering the noncovered parts of gun sales, online gun shows, will that have any practical effect on the gun owners in Maine?
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Mr. KING. It will have no practical effect. They will still be able to buy guns in either place. They would have to go through the instant background check and the law as if they were a felon or something like that. Then they would be prevented. But other than that, this isn't going to have any practical effect on the practical law-abiding gun owners in Maine?
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Mr. KING. I want to take a slightly different view than I have heard today on the issue of terrorism.
I am on the Intelligence Committee. Every Tuesday afternoon and Thursday afternoon that we are in session we meet upstairs in a closed room. Ever since I have been here in January of 2013, the subject in one way or another has been terrorism, has been the threats that this country is facing around the world.
What has happened in the last 4 years is a subtle change in the nature of that threat. When we first came, we were talking about Al Qaeda. We were talking about plots. We were talking about people coming here using airplanes, otherwise penetrating this country from abroad.
What has happened is that the terrorist threat has become homegrown. In fact, there is even a term for it of homegrown extremists or local terrorists.
ISIS is here. Every place there is a computer with an Internet connection, ISIS is there, and people like the shooter in Orlando may never go to the Middle East. I think he actually had traveled, but many of the people involved in this threat to our Nation never leave the United States.
So here is what we are doing, and here is why your amendment makes so much sense. We are spending millions of dollars--in fact, billions over the past 15 years--to counteract this terrorist threat, and it suddenly occurred to me, as I was thinking through it, we are spending millions of dollars to bomb ISIS's weapons supplies in Syria and Iraq, and they can buy their weapons here. How much sense does that make? It is just crazy that we are spending millions of dollars to interdict their weapons supply and yet the people who are here, who are under their thrall, who are thinking about terrorist acts and whom they are inspiring to these acts, can walk out and get a gun without any hesitation as long as they do not violate one of the terms of the current law.
The other piece of this that I think is important is that the current law that has the list of prohibitions--mental illness, felony, domestic violence, and there are nine--was passed in 1993. The world is enormously and fundamentally different than it was in 1993. In 1993 we had barely heard of Al Qaeda. There was no ISIS. There was very little threat or acknowledgment or understanding of domestic terrorism whatsoever. But now we are in terrorism 2.0. What happened in Orlando is exactly what we have been hearing about in the Intelligence Committee, what has been predicted by all our intelligence officials, and what many of us have been talking about. It is the nightmare scenario of an American who is radicalized online, who goes out and gets a gun and kills 50 people. That is the hardest threat to stop because there is no plot, there is no email trail, and there are very few phone calls. There is nothing. It is hard for our intelligence community to track someone like that. But if we have some knowledge of them, if they are in our database--to me, it just makes common sense that should be added to the list of disqualifications for buying guns.
This is no threat to anybody who is not on such a list. And I understand--and the Senator can please comment--the legislation we are talking about has a constitutional escape hatch for people who are wrongly on the list or whose names are mixed up, and they will have an opportunity to protest that list and to have their names expunged if they can make the case that there was something wrong with their being on the list; is that correct?
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Mr. KING. But if someone says: Well, if that is such a small number, why are we bothering? Because it only takes one to kill a number of people.
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Mr. KING. And that is really the essence of what the Senator is talking about.
As I understand it, there are two parts of what we are talking about today. By the way, the Senator is not talking about an assault weapons ban or magazine control or any of those things; we are really talking about two things. The first is the terrorist watch list. If you are on the list, you can't buy a gun. No fly, no buy. The second is to fill the loophole in the background check system because, as I understand the Senator's argument, if we say ``If you are on the watch list, you can't buy a gun,'' but there is this gaping 40 percent loophole where you could get a gun without any check whatsoever, then it doesn't matter. Anybody--a felon or anybody--could get a gun under that circumstance. Is that the logical progression?
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Mr. KING. And I find it hard to believe that if we were debating that law in 1993 under the current circumstances, that some cognizance wouldn't have been taken of the risk of domestic terrorists.
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Mr. KING. By the way, I would mention that since the Senator has been on the floor today, 10 people have been murdered with guns. It is about one an hour. Since the Orlando shooting, 100 people--twice as many as in Orlando--have been murdered with guns.
So we are talking about Orlando, but we are also talking about people all over the country, mostly innocent people, sometimes people who are victims of domestic violence. We are not talking about taking guns away from people; we are just talking about keeping people who shouldn't have them from getting guns. And I have never met a gun owner who doesn't agree that is just a commonsense restriction. Does my colleague view this in any way as a violation of the Second Amendment?
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Mr. KING. Don't you think one of the problems with this debate as it has evolved over the past few years is that it has become a kind of either/or?
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Mr. KING. If you are for the Second Amendment, there are no limitations whatsoever, and if you talk about limitations, you are against the Second Amendment. Do you accept that characterization?
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Mr. KING. Well, this solution being proposed, even if it only prevents 1 person, that could mean 50 lives or 100 lives. I think that is important.
By the way, it is a dirty trick, Senator, to quote Justice Scalia on this subject. He did make it clear in the Heller decision, as you point out, that the Second Amendment, as the First Amendment or any of the amendments, is not absolute. People say the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law respecting speech, but you can't yell ``fire'' in a crowded theater. That is established law. And Justice Scalia, in the Heller decision, said the same thing about the Second Amendment. It is not absolute. There are limitations that can be placed upon it, particularly in the transfer of firearms, and I think that is what we are talking about here.
So I commend the Senator, and I believe what we are talking about-- and let me go back to the Intelligence Committee for a minute. It took me 2 or 3 months--maybe I am a slow learner--but as I was sitting in the Intelligence Committee, I finally had two really visceral insights. One was that we are the only people watching the intelligence community; that we have this large apparatus, and we have these small committees in the House and the Senate, and we are the only people watching. That is not relevant to this debate, but that was an important realization imposed upon me, and what I thought was an extraordinary responsibility to pay close attention to what these agencies are doing.
The second insight was that the fundamental role of the Intelligence Committee and, I would argue, the fundamental role of this body is to constantly monitor and calibrate the tension that exists between two fundamental provisions of the Constitution--in this case, three. The first is in the preamble--the fundamental reason this government was formed in the first place--to insure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense. That is the essence of any government, the fundamental, sacred responsibility.
Then we have the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, and the Fourth and Fifth Amendments that have issues of privacy and issues of gun ownership, and we have to constantly balance and calibrate those provisions based upon technology and reality, circumstances, and facts.
We have a new set of facts. We are facing a threat today in the United States that is different from what we have ever faced before, where we have people who are being motivated from abroad mostly but are in our society, in our country--this fellow in Orlando was an American citizen, was born here--and we have to take cognizance of that. We have to take account of that reality. If we don't, we are failing, it seems to me, our fundamental responsibility under the preamble of the Constitution to provide for the common defense. That is what the American people expect us to do--to keep them safe--and this is simply one piece of the armor we can provide to keep the people of America safe.
I would conclude with a question to the Senator. Is there any hope of getting this accomplished? Where are we? Why is this so hard? This seems to be a commonsense response. I read a quote from the NRA today that said: We believe that terrorists should not have guns. So is there room for discussion, for compromise? Does my colleague feel there is an opportunity here to get to a place where we can respond to this new threat that is facing us without in any way compromising the values of the Second Amendment?
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Mr. KING. But my understanding is the amendment as proposed does provide a specific process whereby a person who believes they are wrongfully on the list, wrongfully denied the opportunity to purchase a firearm, has the opportunity to contest that, to have it litigated, and have it resolved in a reasonably prompt manner.
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Mr. KING. One of the odd things about this debate is that if this had been 15 years ago, I don't think we would even be having this debate. Background checks were generally uncontroversial. If we had would have had the terrorist threat, I couldn't believe--we have domestic violence on there. How about terrorism violence? That should be a part of this as well. That is all you are really proposing. Is that correct?
(Mr. SCOTT assumed the Chair.)
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Mr. KING. I thank the Senator. I thank him for his answers and thank him for his leadership on this issue.
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Mr. KING. I wish to discuss with the Senator and bring back the point we were discussing some 4 hours ago. It is hard to believe that it was some 4 hours ago, but this is really a national security discussion. This is really a national security discussion because of the changed nature of our adversaries and the changed strategy that they have for attacking us.
But first I want to go back to the Constitution, and purely by coincidence today I am wearing the Constitution. My daughter bought me this tie at the Library of Congress, and it is the handwritten version of the Constitution. You can see ``We the People'' in very large letters.
Why are governments formed, why are constitutions written? Going back to the earliest human societies, the fundamental function of bestowing power on the government is to protect you. Security is the fundamental, most sacred obligation of any government. And our Framers recognized that because in the preamble to the Constitution--the heart of the document, why we are doing this--the Framers were explaining to posterity, and two of the fundamental purposes, among several others, are to ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense-- the basic function of any government and the explicit function of our government.
Now, here are three important dates: 1812, 2001, and 2016. There is 1812 because that was the last time an adversary violated our shores. That was when Washington was burned by the British. It was the last invasion of America until 2001, but 2001 and 1812 have some similarities because 2001 was, in effect, a foreign invasion. It was plotted abroad, it was planned abroad, and people came here from outside of our shores and attacked our country.
Now, in response to that attack in 2001, we mobilized a number of resources. We developed ways of protecting our aircraft, we developed great intelligence, an ability to determine when people were plotting against us, and indeed we sent our blood and treasure and young people to Afghanistan because it was a haven for terrorists. That was the reason we went there and in fact are still there--to keep that country from becoming an incubator for terrorists to attack this country, and we have been effective. We have been effective in preventing an attack on our country from abroad.
So as is always the case with warfare, our adversaries have developed a new strategy, and that is why the third date I mentioned is 2016. It was in the last few years, particularly in the last year, as ISIS has begun to be beaten back and to lose its territory in Syria and Iraq, that they have developed a new strategy which doesn't involve sending people here. It doesn't involve sending arms here or bombs or anything else. It involves using the Internet to radicalize people who are already here--often they are U.S. citizens--and then turn them against us. That is the new nature. This is terrorism 2.0. That is the nature of the struggle we are in now, and that is why the amendment that is being proposed makes so much sense from the point of national security.
If we discover an arms cache in Syria, we bomb it, but if ISIS wants to attack us here with terrorism 2.0, we sell them weapons. It makes no sense. The first rule of warfare is disarm your enemies, if you can, and that is exactly what we are talking about.
I think a lot of people just say: Well, this is just another gun control debate. We are talking about gun control. We are talking about national security. We are talking about defending ourselves from a strategy that relies upon people being able to acquire guns easily in this country--people who are terrorists or who are inspired by the terrorists or who want to be terrorists. And we can't have a bill that says you have to have probable cause to show you have already committed a terrorist act. That is too late. It has to be prevented, and that is what we are talking about here today.
So I think it is very important to remind ourselves that this is really a national security bill, and it makes no sense to close the terrorist loophole unless you close the gun show loophole because the terrorists aren't stupid. The terrorist APB they send out from somewhere else in the world to tell somebody to get a gun and kill people will also say, by the way, do it at a gun show or do it online because they will not check you.
My colleague already read a quote from the Al Qaeda operative who explicitly told people to do that. So if we don't do both things, it really is a false security. We are kidding ourselves. So we have to, one, close the terrorist loophole. I would venture to say 90 percent of the American people agree to that. If you were to walk up to people on the street and say: Do you think people should be prevented from getting on airplanes but they should be able to buy guns, they would look at you like you were crazy. That doesn't make any sense.
Yes, there are constitutional provisions built into the amendment we are talking about that allow people who are wrongfully on that list to have an opportunity to get off the list and to contest that designation. So this isn't some kind of wholesale violation of the Second Amendment. This respects the Second Amendment and is based upon the premise that due process is available in this situation.
Then we have to close the gun show loophole and the online loophole because otherwise doing the first thing just isn't going to be effective. So the two things together, to me, are national security and personal security because of all the other tragedies that we have talked about tonight that don't involve Al Qaeda or ISIS or al-Nusra or al-Shabaab or any of the other terrorist organizations but involve our individual citizens being killed in just stunning numbers. Since we have started talking here today--since the Senator took this floor--a dozen people have been murdered by guns--one an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
So we have a national security reason to do this, and we have also-- remember, the preamble, and I will finish with my question. The preamble has two pieces: provide for the common defense. That is what I have been talking about--national security. Insure domestic tranquility. That means keeping people safe here, not from enemies abroad but from criminal elements within our own society--again, the most fundamental and sacred obligation of ``we'' as a government. If we don't do this, we are committing constitutional malpractice. We are not abiding by the most sacred obligation in our Constitution--to keep our people safe. It can be done consistent with the Second Amendment, respectful of the Second Amendment, but in a way that will fundamentally realize the promise the Constitution makes to all Americans; that their government will protect them from foreign attack and from domestic unrest.
So I ask the Senator: Does he view this as, in large measure, a national security issue?
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Mr. KING. Will the Senator yield for a question?
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Mr. KING. On February 15, 2015, Dabiq, which is the sort of public newspaper of ISIS, published an explicit strategy for what they hope will become a worldwide conflict. The strategy is that westerners will fall into the trap of persecuting Muslims and drive them into the arms of radicals. That is the strategy.
So to the extent that we persecute and marginalize these overwhelmingly peaceful citizens who want to be citizens of our country or citizens of other countries in the world, we are doing their job. They said that is what we want to do and indeed some people in our society have fallen into that trap and are doing it. This is exactly what they want because they want this to be a war between Islam and the West. Do we really want to radicalize 1.6 billion people and 3.3 million here in this country, the vast majority of whom want nothing more than what the rest of us want, which is to raise our families and live our lives and enjoy the benefits of this wonderful country.
So I agree with the Senator and would ask him if he concurs that if we are marginalizing people of any faith, then in this particular case we are driving them into the arms of our adversaries.
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Mr. KING. I thank the Senator for his answers and for his leadership on this issue.
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