Life As A Black Man in America

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, my topic today was going to be on the issue of gun violence, mass shootings, the need for Congress to take some action to keep America safe, the fact that 90 percent of the people of this country want Congress to take some action. I was going to speak about that today.

But I would be remiss, as a Black man in America, to pass up the opportunity to comment about life as a Black man in America, in an urban setting, particularly when it comes to police community relations, you see, because we live in a gun culture, and nowadays, everybody has a gun.

Some folks have a culture of growing up shooting, hunting. Nothing wrong with that. Take the kids to the gun show, the family, on a Saturday afternoon. And at the gun show there is a bunch of unlicensed gun dealers there selling weapons of mass destruction to any and everybody. That is a part of the culture because everybody wants a gun.

Well, it is time for universal background checks. That is a simple piece of legislation, closing the gun show loophole, which that loophole is bigger than the Goodyear Blimp traveling sideways. That loophole is so big that you could fit the Goodyear Blimp through it sideways, and it is worth nothing because unlicensed gun dealers can sell guns to any and everybody. Any and everybody can purchase a gun over the Internet, no background check required. We need to close that gun show loophole by passing legislation that enforces the notion that there will be universal background checks.

I wanted to talk about that today, and I still think that is important. But even if we have universal background checks in this country, there is still a problem for Black folks who decide to arm themselves.

I mean, we had the case of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, yesterday, pulled over for a busted taillight. Here is a working man in the car with his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter, and he is armed, as everyone else in America is. But he is a Black man riding in the streets of a city in America, and so he must not be allowed to have that gun or, at least, if he has one, everybody is in such fear that they develop a trigger finger. And when he reaches for his license, then he gets blasted four times and his life is snuffed out. That is what happens to Black folks in America.

Now we find out that the man had a valid license to carry that firearm. In many States now, due to what the NRA lobby has done, you don't even need a license to carry the firearm in your car. So the man was acting lawfully. He gets blasted. He is no longer with us.

The day before, Alton Sterling got a little hustle going on. He is selling CDs at the store, at the corner store. Why shouldn't he be allowed to have a weapon? He has got a weapon in his pocket. Everybody else has got a weapon in their pocket. But no, he is a Black guy, and so we automatically develop a trigger finger when the police approach. Take him down hard, two on one, throwing him all across the car. You saw the video.

If the man had wanted to shoot, he would have pulled the gun out much quicker than when they threw him across the car and had him on the ground pinned to the ground. And he ends up getting shot in the back and in the chest.

This is life in America. This is our culture of gun violence that this Congress has allowed to manifest itself in this way.

We shouldn't have to live like this. Nobody should have to live like this. People walking around afraid of what their neighbor is going to do to them because they know that he has got a mental problem and he should not have a weapon, but he was able to get it over the Internet or through the gun show, unlicensed firearm dealers.

So weapons have proliferated into our society. We are now at war, not with a foreign enemy, but with ourselves, with our neighbor. It is not fair to any of us.

But I tell you, when America coughs, Black folks have always gotten pneumonia. Nowadays, when America coughs, Black folks die, and it really has to stop, ladies and gentlemen. This is not the way that we should live.

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