Gun Violence
Floor Speech
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Mr. THOMPSON of California. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him also for taking the time and the effort to put this Special Order together on such an important issue, important to all Americans.
I was a little bit taken aback. I came down to the floor early to participate in this Special Order, and I heard my friend from across the aisle who preceded us in Special Orders talking about the effort on the part of Democrats today in our 1-minute remarks of pushing for a vote on the issue of gun violence prevention.
Mr. Cicilline, I think, laid it out clearly what it is we are trying to do. We want a vote on two bills. One is a bill that would require background checks for anyone who purchases a firearm through a commercial sale. So it would expand existing law that says that you have to have a background check if you purchase a firearm at a licensed dealer to include other commercial sales: ads in a newspaper, online purchases, or gun show purchases.
Then the other bill is the bill that has been referred to as no fly, no buy, that says, if you are too dangerous in the eyes of the FBI to fly on an airplane, then you shouldn't be able to go into a gun store, pass a background check, and buy any gun that you want.
My friend from across the aisle said that this was clever and cute. Mr. Speaker, make no mistake about it: this is not clever nor is it cute. This is serious business. People are dying every day at the hands of someone using a firearm.
In the 3\1/2\ years since 20 elementary schoolchildren were murdered at Sandy Hook in Connecticut, 1,196 mass shootings have taken place in our country. Over 34,000 people have been killed by someone using a gun. We have had over 500 legislative days. What have we done during that time? We have had 31--31--moments of silence for those people who were murdered, but we have had zero votes on the issue of gun violence prevention, not one debate and not one vote on expanding background checks.
The gentleman across the aisle, I think, used some misleading statements when he talked today. He said that we should enforce the laws that are on the books. Well, when the background check bill was put into the law, there weren't many people buying guns online. As a matter of fact, we weren't buying much online. It was a long time ago, and online shopping had not come about as it is today, so the law didn't include that. So, obviously, we need to look at change in bills as we go.
What we want to do is we want to make sure that criminals, terrorists, and the dangerously mentally ill have a difficult time getting guns. The best way to do that, and our first line of defense in accomplishing that, is background checks.
You know, Mr. Speaker. You have been in the courtroom. You have seen these things happen before. You know this issue inside and out. They work.
Every day, 170 felons are prohibited from purchasing firearms because of background checks. Every day, 50 domestic abusers are prohibited from buying firearms because of the background checks. Yet they can leave the gun store, they can go online or go to a gun show, and they can buy the same gun without a background check that they were prohibited from buying in the gun store.
My friend from across the aisle, I think, was also misleading when he said that Democrats want to focus on the gun. There is no focusing on the gun. We know that guns don't get up and shoot somebody on their own. We are trying to focus on the person trying to buy that gun. That is why we want to do a background check. If the person is a criminal, if the person is a terrorist, if the person is a drug addict or a domestic abuser or dangerously mentally ill, the law says then they can't buy a gun at a licensed dealer.
Well, we have got this gaping loophole where they can leave the licensed dealer, they can go to the gun show or they can go online, and they can buy that gun. We want to stop that from happening.
My friend from across the aisle also said that these laws don't work. Well, we know they work. I just gave you the numbers on how many felons and domestic abusers are stopped every day from purchasing a gun. But you can look at the studies that were done in two States.
One was in Connecticut. Connecticut passed a permit-to-purchase law in their State where you had to get the background check to purchase. What happened in that State after that law was passed? A 40 percent drop in homicide by firearms. Now, go down the road to Missouri, who repealed their requirement to permit-to-purchase and what happened? A 25 percent increase in homicides by firearms.
They work. These laws work, and we ought to make sure they apply to gun sales in all commercial settings.
My friend across the aisle in his Special Order said that you just have to look at States where there are tough laws regarding gun violence to see that they don't work. Well, it is really interesting because there are just 10 States that supply about half--49 percent--of the guns that cross State lines before being recovered in crimes.
Those States account for nearly 21,000 interstate crime guns recovered in 2009. So people go to the areas where it is easy for them to access firearms, they buy them, and then they bring them to the other States and they use them.
It is not enough just to have a tough law. My home State of California requires background checks for all gun purchases. It is not a big deal. I bought a gun over the last break. As you all know, my friends here know, I am a gun guy. I support the Second Amendment. I have firearms. I use them. I collect them. I hunt with them.
I bought one over the last break from a very close personal family friend, yet the law says we still had to get a background check. It wasn't any heavy lift. I took it to a dealer, they did the background check, and in 10 days I got my gun.
California is a stricter State than many. Nineteen States go beyond what the Federal Government requires. The Federal Government requires, remember, that you have to have a background check if you purchase a gun at a licensed dealer. California says all guns have to go through a background check. As I say, it is not a heavy lift.
But Californians can leave our State and they can go to another State, one of the 34 States that only have the Federal requirement-- they can go to another State, they can go online, they can go to a newspaper ad, or they can go to a gun show--and they can purchase the same firearm that they would be prohibited from purchasing if they had to undergo a background check. We know it happens.
At the State of the Union, when we honored victims of gun violence, a man from Wisconsin was here because his sister took out a restraining order on her husband. Her husband tried to buy a gun, and that restraining order stopped him from being able to buy the gun. Well, he went home. He went online. He found someone that was selling the same gun, who wasn't a licensed dealer. He bought that gun. He took it to the beauty shop where his wife was, and he killed her, and he killed two other people.
Now, as Mr. Cicilline said, we can't stop every act of gun violence by passing any bill. And the people that say they don't support the background check bill because it wouldn't have worked in Mr. Clyburn's district in Charleston, or it wouldn't have worked in Mr. Perlmutter's district in the movie theater, or it wouldn't have worked in Orlando at the Pulse nightclub, they say, well, we only will support a bill that will work in all of these cases, well, the only bill that will do that is getting rid of all guns. There is not support on our side of the aisle for that, and there is not support on the other side of the aisle for that. It is a disingenuous argument.
Everything that we can do to stop people from being killed by someone with a gun we should be working on doing. The bills that we are talking about today are bipartisan bills. You know that, Mr. Speaker. Our bill has not only bipartisan support, it has 197 coauthors. I don't think there has ever been a time in the history of Congress that there has been a gun bill in this House that has had 197 coauthors. That is really out of the ordinary.
Folks have lined up to support this because they know it is good public policy. The American people know it is good public policy. Ninety percent of the American population believe that we should expand background checks to include all commercial sales. Eighty-five percent believe that we should enact the no fly, no buy. They say if you are too dangerous to fly, you should be too dangerous to buy. They are bipartisan. Both of those measures are pro-Second Amendment. They are certainly commonsense, and they most certainly have the support of the majority of the American people.
We should be doing everything we can to pass those bills. We shouldn't be going home. And I know that sometimes a hyperbole takes over. I don't for a moment think that every Member in this body is going home to sit on the beach. I know what most Members do, if not all Members. We go home and we work in our districts. You are going to do that. I am going to do that. Mr. Clyburn, Mrs. Beatty, Mr. Cicilline, we are all going to go home, we are going to meet with our constituents, and we are going to do our work.
But the point that we are trying to make is we shouldn't leave this body, we shouldn't leave this House, the people's House, to go home to do our work there without first passing this gun violence prevention legislation that is bipartisan, supported by the American people, and pro-Second Amendment--measures that will do a little bit more to keep guns away from criminals, terrorists, and the dangerously mentally ill.
Mr. Speaker, we should be doing that. We should be doing that here today before we leave on this 7-week recess.
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