Time to Act on Gun Violence

Floor Speech

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Mr. THOMPSON of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about an issue that is very alarming to many people across the country, an issue that saddens everyone, and an issue that, sadly, isn't being addressed by this Congress.

Last week, we lost 49 innocent lives in the worst mass shooting that our country has ever seen. Sadly, it is not an insulated case. Let me give you some numbers:

In the 3 years since the terrible tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, there have been over 1,100 mass shootings. More than 34,000 lives have been cut short by someone using a gun. The House of Representatives has held 30 moments of silence for the victims of mass shootings since Sandy Hook, and yet we haven't taken a single vote on legislation that would help keep guns out of dangerous hands.

Mr. Speaker, I think that is shameful. The American people deserve more than silence. The American people deserve a Congress that is willing to stand up and do whatever it takes to keep our communities safe. That starts by making sure that terrorists, criminal domestic abusers, and the dangerously mentally ill don't have easy access to purchase guns in our country.

Today, suspected terrorists can legally buy guns in our country. Individuals who are on the FBI's terrorist watch list can walk into a gun store, pass a background check, and walk out with a gun or the guns of their choosing--and they can do it legally.

Since 2004, more than 2,000 suspected terrorists were able to purchase guns. More than 90 percent of all suspected terrorists who tried to purchase guns in the last 11 years walked away with the weapon that they went in to buy.

Now, in the wake of the horrific attacks in Orlando, Congress must make it a priority to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of suspected terrorists. There is bipartisan legislation that would prohibit those on the terrorist watch list from being able to purchase firearms in our country. This bill is common sense. If you are too dangerous to fly, you are too dangerous to buy a gun.

It is long past time for the Republican leadership to bring that bill up for a vote. We also need to pass my bipartisan bill to require background checks for all commercial gun sales.

Background checks are our first line of defense when it comes to stopping dangerous people from getting firearms. We know that background checks work. Every day, they stop more than 170 felons, some 50 domestic abusers, and nearly 20 fugitives from buying a gun.

Unfortunately, in 34 States, criminals, domestic abusers, and the dangerously mentally ill can bypass a background check by purchasing guns online or at a gun show. This is a dangerous loophole that needs to be closed.

Yesterday, Senate Republicans blocked consideration of no fly, no buy legislation and a measure to strengthen and enhance background checks. Now the Republican House is going on with business as usual, without giving the American people a vote to help prevent gun violence in our country.

If the Republican leadership agrees that suspected terrorists, criminals, domestic abusers, and the dangerously mentally ill shouldn't be able to buy guns, they should give us a vote.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. Esty), the Member who represents Sandy Hook, where the Newtown tragedy took place.

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Mr. THOMPSON of California. I thank the gentlewoman for the compassion that she brings to this debate, and it is understandable. Having met with and spoken with many of the parents who lost their children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, to talk to them, and to have to tell them that yet another year has passed and the leadership in this Congress has refused, has refused to hold one single vote on any measure relating to gun violence, is just despicable and very, very sad.

I know that the gentlewoman from Connecticut goes home every weekend and talks with those parents and those community members who were shaken to their core to get that call that there was a shooting at an elementary school, and that their child was involved, and had to come down to that school and learn that their child was taken from them. It is unacceptable that we allow this to continue.

When Sandy Hook took place, I was asked by the minority leadership to chair a task force on gun violence prevention, and I took that on. I took it on for a couple of reasons: One, I know it had to be done; and two, I bring a unique perspective to this debate.

I am a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. I am a gun owner. I am a hunter. I have vast experiences with firearms, including carrying a military-type assault weapon for the tour that I served in Vietnam. I consider myself a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, and would do nothing to take an individual's Second Amendment right away from them. As I say, I support it strongly.

I also believe that, as a responsible gun owner, I, and all of my fellow responsible gun owners, have a responsibility to answer this call, to figure out how we can put on the books laws that--while protecting the Second Amendment, while protecting an individual's rights to own firearms and use firearms for target practicing, collecting, hunting, or self-defense, we have a responsibility to make sure we keep firearms out of the hands of people who shouldn't have firearms.

Criminals and the dangerously mentally ill should not be able to have firearms. They shouldn't be able to buy them, they shouldn't be able to own them, they shouldn't be able to use them. And surely this Congress can come together and figure out a way to make certain that this doesn't happen, to the best that we possibly can.

Now I will be the first to admit there is no bill in the world that we can pass that will solve every issue related to gun violence. But doggone it, we should try. We owe it to our constituents. We owe it to those who lost loved ones through gun violence, and we owe it to the responsible, law-abiding gun owners of this country to try.

Now I thought we had the makings of a good proposal when I sat down with my colleague and my friend from New York, Republican Peter King, and we put together the legislation, commonly referred to as ``the King-Thompson Bill,'' to require that anyone who purchases a firearm through a commercial sale would be required to go through a background check.

You wouldn't think it would be necessary. You wouldn't think that anybody would want to sell a firearm to someone who may possibly be a danger to their community or to our society. But the fact of the matter is that there are people who sell firearms willy-nilly to anybody with the cash to buy them. And we need to step in and make sure that we stop willy-nilly from selling these firearms to criminals and the dangerously mentally ill, and that is what the King-Thompson bill does. It says that if you buy a firearm through a commercial sale, you have to have a background check.

Now anybody who buys a firearm in any of our 50 States through a licensed commercial dealer has to go through a background check. That is the floor. That is the minimum Federal law. Some States, however, don't go any further than that, which leaves this big loophole. It exempts individual sales, and some of those individual sales are commercial.

When you set up a table at a gun show and sell firearm after firearm after firearm, or when you go online and you list your firearms for sale as an individual, people can call and say: I want to buy that gun.

No background check needed because you are buying it from an individual. You can meet down in the parking lot of your local whatever store and you can make that transaction.

That needs to be stopped. Thirty-four States don't do anything about that. The King-Thompson legislation would do something about that. It would say that you have to first get a background check.

Now it is a bipartisan bill. As a matter of fact, there are 186 Members of this Congress who are coauthors of that bill. Five of them are Republicans.

Ninety percent of the American people believe that you should have background checks for commercial sale of firearms. Eighty-five percent of NRA members believe you should have background checks for firearms. They know that this is the first line of defense.

Again, it won't stop everything, but it does work. 170 felons a day, through the existing background check system, are stopped from buying firearms. We know it works.

Sadly, about 40 percent of all firearm purchases are done outside of federally licensed commercial sites, so 40 percent of the people who are buying guns today are able to avoid a background check. That is wrong. We ought to close that.

When we started the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, we met with everybody. I conducted the meetings. I conducted the hearings. We met with gun owner groups, we met with gun dealers, people who sell firearms, we met with gun experts, we met with people who are opposed to guns and people who are for guns. We heard from police, sheriffs, the Federal agency that deals with gun laws. We heard ad nauseam. We heard from the NRA. We brought everybody in, all the outside gun groups, to tell us what we needed to do. And without question, we came away from that with the understanding that background checks is the number one thing that we can do if we want to make a dent in this gun violence problem that we have. And we should have a vote on that bill.

Now, we know that it works. I told you that, but don't take my word for it. Look at the facts.

When Connecticut passed what they call their Permit to Purchase, which is a background check legislation, their State saw a 40 percent drop in homicides by firearms; 40 percent drop.

Now, conversely, at the same time, Missouri repealed Permit to Purchase, which led to a 25 percent increase in homicide by firearms.

Those numbers alone tell us that we need to do something. We need to do everything we can to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them. And, again, if you are dangerously mentally ill, if you are a criminal, if you are a domestic abuser, or if you are a terrorist, you should not be able to have a firearm.

It is this Congress' responsibility to do what we can. Background checks are our first line of defense to making sure these aforementioned groups don't get their hands on firearms.

Esty).

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Mr. THOMPSON of California. I thank the gentlewoman for her comments.

She is absolutely correct. Our job is not that hard. Could you imagine that? On this floor, we are all parents; we have kids. Could you imagine losing your child? You send them to school, where they are supposed to be safe, and get the call that your son or your daughter has been murdered at school? That is hard. That is difficult.

What we are doing is not hard. It certainly shouldn't be hard for the Republican leadership to allow us to have a vote on gun violence prevention legislation that would help prevent these things from happening. They just happen too often. Every day, 31 people are murdered by someone using a gun. Every day, 151 people are shot in an assault in our country. That is hard.

What is the Republican leadership afraid of? You are afraid to take a vote? Are you more afraid than the people that were in that nightclub in Orlando hiding in the restrooms hoping they wouldn't be the next one who was murdered? Are you more afraid than those children in the classroom in Newtown, Connecticut?

Give us a vote. Let's address this issue. It is shameful. There is nothing to be afraid of. We were elected to come here and do a job. Give us a vote.

Our Gun Violence Prevention Task Force I mentioned heard from every imaginable interest on this issue. We took what we heard, and we put it in this legislation.

The King-Thompson background check legislation addressed a whole list of issues other than just the background check provision. They were issues that were brought to us primarily by the NRA.

The NRA asked for specific things. They asked us to make sure that there was due process for veterans adjudicated as mentally defective before losing their firearms rights. We put that in the bill. There was a request to clarify that the submissions to the NICS system don't violate HIPAA, the medical protections for patients. We put that in the bill.

The NRA was concerned that the length of time that you have to wait in order to get your firearm after you passed a background check was too long, so we put in place a provision that reduces the purchase proceed timeline. Right now it is 3 days. Eventually, it would phase into being 24 hours, with the idea that the NICS system would have more complete records because the bill also allows the States to get grant funding to allow them to better get their information into the NICS, and our bill requires the Federal courts to put records into the NICS system.

The NRA said that hunting buddies shouldn't have to go through the background check. If you are at the duck club, your buddy wants to sell a shotgun, you want to buy it, you have been hunting buddies for a long time and you know one another, they said they shouldn't have to go through a background check, so we put a hunting buddies known person exemption into our bill.

There was great concern that this bill would lead to some sort of Big Brother list of any gun owners. Not only is that nonsense, but we took their concern and we raised them one. We added a 15-year felony for the improper storage of records by anyone in the government.

We also heard concerns that members of the armed services were conflicted. They have a permanent home address and a permanent duty station request, and that complicated their effort to own and purchase firearms. We put a provision in the bill that said members of our armed services can count their home and their permanent duty station as their residences. We took care of all of these concerns. These are things that the NRA said they have been trying to fix for years. Well, we fixed it in the King-Thompson bill.

At the same time, we take a step to fix this terrible problem we have where people can buy guns without having a background check--the dangerously mentally ill, criminals, domestic abusers, or terrorists.

This is a good bill, as I said, with 186 bipartisan coauthors. This is a bill that should be passed. No one knows that more than the gentleman from New York, Congressman Israel.

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Mr. THOMPSON of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York for his spot-on comments, passionate comments.

He is a colleague of mine from California. As an emergency room doctor, Dr. Raul Ruiz not only understands that we need to pass this legislation, but he has seen the carnage that has come in for his care.

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Mr. THOMPSON of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for his comments and for his service not only as a distinguished Member of this body, but his time as a medical professional. Sadly, he had to witness the carnage that comes about because of gun violence. I applaud his effort to help us reduce gun violence, to pass some commonsense laws that protect the Second Amendment.

As I said earlier, as a gun owner and as a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, I think that is absolutely necessary. I think it is absolutely irresponsible for any gun owner to not stand up and be counted when it comes to passing commonsense public safety measures, such as no fly, no buy and background checks for the commercial sale of firearms.

I thank my colleagues who joined with me this evening in this Special Order. You heard from everyone who spoke that moments of silence are not enough. We have had 30 moments of silence since the tragedy at Sandy Hook. It is not enough.

We need to stop being silent, we need to speak up, and we need to do our job. We need to show the courage that our constituents have placed in us. We need to do our job to make sure that when parents send their kids to school, they can be reasonably assured that their kids are going to be safe. We need to do our job so that when people go into a church to pray, they don't have to worry about some maniac coming in and shooting them during their prayer hour. We need to do our job to make sure that when people are relaxing and recreating in a club, or wherever it might be, they can feel reasonably assured that their Congress has taken steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who are criminals and people who are dangerously mentally ill, domestic abusers, or terrorists.

It is time to do our job. It is time to stop with the moments of silence. It is time to stand up, show some courage, and pass some commonsense, bipartisan gun violence prevention legislation.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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