Protecting Our Kids Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1153, I call up the bill (H.R. 7910) to amend title 18, United States Code, to provide for an increased age limit on the purchase of certain firearms, prevent gun trafficking, modernize the prohibition on untraceable firearms, encourage the safe storage of firearms, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Mr. NADLER. 7910.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished Speaker of the House.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, our Nation has been through trying times these last few weeks as we have tried to process the mass shootings in Buffalo, Uvalde, Tulsa, and all too many other cities. Just this past weekend, we learned of yet another horrific incident in Philadelphia and yet more carnage in Tennessee, Arizona, Virginia, and South Carolina. And those are just the stories we saw in the news.
Day after day, we see more lives lost to gun violence in our schools, on our streets, in our houses of worship, and in our homes, touching every region of the country. And we hear the urgent calls from our constituents crying out for us to take action. Today, we heed that call.
H.R. 7910, the Protecting Our Kids Act, is comprehensive legislation to address the scourge of gun violence, a blight that killed nearly 45,000 Americans in 2020 alone.
It builds on the work of several of our colleagues, including:
Anthony Brown's Raise the Age Act, which would raise the lawful age to purchase an AR-15 styled semiautomatic assault rifle from 18 to 21 years old;
Robin Kelly's Prevent Gun Trafficking Act, which would establish new Federal offenses for gun trafficking and straw purchasing; David Cicilline's Untraceable Firearms Act, which would ensure that ghost guns are subject to existing Federal firearms regulations;
A trio of gun storage proposals--Rosa DeLauro's Ethan's Law, Elissa Slotkin's Safe Guns, Safe Kids Act, and Sheila Jackson Lee's Kimberly Vaughan Firearms Safe Storage Act--which would establish storage regulations that keep guns out of the hands of children and award grants for firearm storage assistance programs;
Dina Titus' Closing the Bump Stock Loophole Act, which would build on existing regulations banning the manufacture, sale, or possession of bump stocks for civilian use;
And Ted Deutch's Keep Americans Safe Act, which would ban the sale, manufacture, and illegal possession of gun magazines that hold more than 15 rounds of ammunition.
I thank each of them for their contributions to this bill and for making this country safer for all Americans.
Madam Speaker, all of us in this Chamber were shaken by the images of parents in Uvalde standing in line to match their DNA to the remains of their 9- and 10-year-old children, parents who should be picking up their children from school right now but who, instead, are picking up the pieces of their lives shattered by this unimaginable loss.
But the question today is: Who among us will have the courage to do something about it? Who will be able to tell mothers and fathers that their children need not go to school in a fortress just to keep them safe? Who will be able to tell children that they did all they could today to ensure that their parents will return safely from the supermarket or their office or an evening out? Who will be able to tell their constituents that they stood with them and not with the gun lobby?
Americans are watching. They are begging us to protect them and their loved ones from gun violence. Who among us will answer their call?
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), the cosponsor of the bill and a member of the Judiciary Committee.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, no 9-year-old should be sentenced to a death sentence. No grandmother shopping at a grocery store should get a death sentence. No mother who testified today should lose her son.
Vicious gun violence that has no rhyme and no reason. Yes, I am excited about this historic moment. H.R. 7910, the Protecting Our Kids Act, is, in fact, a solution to horrible and vicious problems.
It is clear, as I stand next to the children, they should not have died. As I stand next to those from Buffalo, they should not have died. As we know about those who were seeking medical care in Tulsa, they should not have died.
I have no problem with saying that we build on this, and as Ronald Reagan said to us, he at the time saw no reason for an AK-47 to be used for hunting or defending one's home.
Dr. Guerrero, a pediatrician, said that he raced to the hospital, and as he raced to the hospital, he found parents outside yelling children's names in desperation, sobbing as they begged for news of their related children. Or the mother who ran barefoot all the way to Robb Elementary School, begging and crying for a child. Or Miah, who had the wherewithal to watch as her teacher was shot dead, she marked herself with blood because she was attempting to save her life.
These children, these Americans, our loved ones, this should not happen again. So, this bill that has a package of storage bills, that has a package of munitions, that deals with the age, deals with a number of items, trafficking, ghost guns, bump stocks, this is a way to go.
I hope, as we go in the future, we are not afraid of a 7-day waiting period or an assault weapon ban. This is the way to go.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 15 seconds.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, this is the way to go.
I thank Chairman Thompson and Chairman Nadler.
This is the way to go. Should they be given a death sentence? Where is the responsible gun owner that can stand with me and declare that they should live? You are out there.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson), a cosponsor of the bill and the chairman of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record an article dated May 31, 2022, from The New York Times titled ``California has America's Toughest Gun Laws, and They Work.'' [From the New York Times, May 31, 2022]
California Has America's Toughest Gun Laws, and They Work (By Shawn Hubler)
The grotesque toll of gun violence is again being debated in Congress. As Luis Ferre-Sadurni and I reported over the long weekend, states are not holding their breath.
Particularly this state: In ways that have tended to be underreported, California has significantly lowered gun deaths, Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, an emergency room doctor and longtime firearm violence researcher, told me this week.
``For the last 20, maybe even 25 years--except for the two years of the pandemic, which have increased homicides and suicides across the country--our rates of firearm violence have trended downward,'' said Dr. Wintemute, who directs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, Medical Center in Sacramento. ``And this has been at a time when most of the rates in the rest of the country have gone up.''
California's rate of firearm mortality is among the nation's lowest, with 8.5 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2020, compared with 13.7 per 100,000 nationally and 14.2 per 100,000 in Texas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported. And Californians are about 25 percent less likely to die in mass shootings, compared with residents of other states, according to a recent Public Policy Institute of California analysis.
I asked Dr. Wintemute how California is different. Here's a lightly edited excerpt from our conversation, which took place on Memorial Day after his emergency room shift:
Just a couple of weeks ago, California had a mass shooting. By what measures are our policies a success?
You have to look at it on a population basis. We do have more mass shootings in California, but we're also by far the largest state. I looked a while ago at the rates of firearm violence across the 21st century--homicide and suicide together--and the rest of the country was up, but California's rates were so far down that the average was flat.
We always hear that nothing works, that even California's strict gun laws are ineffective.
That's because we evaluate policies one at a time, in isolation. The results for one policy might be mixed or even negative. But what California has done over a number of decades has been to enact a whole bundle of policies that I think work in synergy, to measurable effect.
It sounds like the ``Swiss cheese model'' public health experts have used to address Covid.
Yes. The idea is to prevent the holes in the policies from lining up. But if we rank the states, California's rate of firearm violence ranks 29th out of 50 states for homicides and 44th for suicides.
Can you share some examples?
California has done a lot to prevent high-risk people from purchasing firearms. We've broadened the criteria for keeping guns out of the hands of people who pose a danger to themselves or others due to mental illness. If you're convicted of a violent misdemeanor in California, you can't have a gun for the next 10 years; that offense has to be a felony in most states.
We require background checks, and not just from licensed retailers; in most states, purchases from private parties require no background checks or record keeping of any kind. We have a system, that we're evaluating now, for getting guns back from ``prohibited persons''--people who have been convicted of violent crimes or who are facing domestic violence restraining orders. And we enforce these policies, unlike a lot of other states.
What else?
In the early 1990s, cheap handguns--``Saturday Night Specials''--were almost entirely manufactured around Los Angeles. It was a few companies making upward of 800,000 cheap handguns a year. So the state imposed standards for design and safety. One of the companies has since gone to Nevada. The rest went belly-up and no one else has come in to fill the gap.
What about gaps?
Every time California sets a new standard, the gun industry tries to outwit it. Unregulated ghost guns have become immensely popular here, precisely because we're such a tightly regulated market. And the state program to recover guns from prohibited people has never had the level of funding it needs to do the whole job--there are only about 40 trained agents for the whole state and a backlog of at least 10,000 people whose guns need to be taken.
Overall, what could the rest of the country learn from California?
The lower the prevalence of ownership, the lower the rate of firearm violence--that's been one of the most robust research findings for decades. Rates of gun ownership are lower here, in part because of this bundle of state measures. In the United States overall, something like 25 percent to 30 percent of individuals own guns. In California, it's about 15 percent to 18 percent.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, the evidence doesn't lie. California's rate of firearm mortality is among the Nation's lowest, with 8.5 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2020, compared with 13.7 per 100,000 nationally and 14.2 per 100,000 in Texas. Gun safety laws work. It is that simple.
Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Lieu), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Demings), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Correa), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Garcia), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, how much time remains on each side.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Dean), the vice chair of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath), a member of the Judiciary Committee who knows the tragedy of gun violence personally.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Escobar), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Jones), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Kelly).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the distinguished chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Brown).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan, (Mr. Levin).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Manning).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Speier).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 10 seconds to the gentlewoman.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a May 27, 2022, piece from CNN titled ``States with weaker gun laws have higher rates of firearm related homicides and suicides, study finds.'' [From CNN, May 27, 2022] States With Weaker Gun Laws Have Higher Rates of Firearm Related Homicides and Suicides, Study Finds (By Emma Tucker and Priya Krishnakumar)
A new study published Thursday by a leading non-profit organization that focuses on gun violence prevention found that there is a direct correlation in states with weaker gun laws and higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidental killings.
The study by Everytown for Gun Safety determined that California had the strongest gun laws in the country. Hawaii topped the list with the lowest rate of gun deaths in the country while Mississippi led the country with both the weakest gun laws and highest rate of gun deaths.
``What this project does, is show what we've been saying for years: Gun laws save lives,'' said Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. ``We think this is going to be a really important tool for lawmakers, reporters and advocates that have been looking for the kind of visual tool that can make that case clearly.''
To compile its list, the group used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, looked at each state's rate of gun deaths in 2020 and compared those rates with 50 policies that they say are scientifically proven to be effective in preventing gun violence, Suplina said.
The research team then weighed the list of gun safety policies based on their efficacy, ranked each state on its implementation of those policies and compared that score with the rates of gun deaths in each state, he said.
The CDC's data includes homicides, accidental killings and suicides committed by guns. According to the CDC, over 45,000 people in the United States were killed with a firearm in 2020--more than half died by suicide.
The analysis, first reported by CNN, put California at the top of the list for gun law strength--a composite score of 84.5 out of 100, with one of the lowest rates of gun deaths per 100,000 residents, at 8.5 out of 30 and below the national average of 13.6. Hawaii has the lowest rate of gun deaths in the country with the second strongest gun law score. It also has the lowest rate of gun ownership, with firearms in 9 percent of households, the data shows.
As state legislatures begin to convene for their 2022 legislative sessions, lawmakers will consider a breadth of bills that either loosen or expand gun protections across various states.
``I have seen firsthand in California that the work we have done to strengthen gun laws has been both life-saving and effective,'' said Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA). chair of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. ``Gun laws work, and we need them across the board to ensure that felons, domestic abusers, and those with mental health issues can't simply go to the next state over to circumvent the very laws meant to keep guns out of their hands.''
CNN has reached out to the National Rifle Association (NRA) to comment on the research, but it declined to do so before seeing the data.
Mississippi has the weakest gun laws with a score of 3 out of 100 and has the highest rate of gun deaths per 100,000 residents--28.6 out of 30, the research shows.
Massachusetts has adopted 37 of the 50 policies and has the second-lowest rate of gun deaths, while Missouri has only eight of the gun safety policies and the fourth highest rate of gun deaths in the US. Louisiana and Wyoming are among the top five states with the highest gun deaths and the weakest gun safety laws.
``Lawmakers in the states at the bottom can't pretend to be ignorant about the importance of gun laws after looking at this report,'' said Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, which has been fighting for gun safety measures since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut that killed 20 children and six educators.
Mother and activist DeAndra Dycus said the gun violence problem in Indianapolis is ``tearing our community apart.''
Nearly eight years ago, her 13-year-old son, DeAndre ``Dre'' Knox, was shot in the back left side of his head at a birthday party in Indianapolis when shots were fired during a confrontation between two boys. DeAndre, now 21, survived after being on life support for several days, Dycus said, and he currently lives in a facility with non-verbal quadriplegic paralysis.
``As a mother, when I look at him, I see everything that was taken away,'' Dycus said. ``My son was a dreamer. He was a scholar. He was on this road to being something great.''
``But on the flip side, I see this little boy who has made such an impact, not just on our city but our country, as it pertains to what it looks like to survive,'' she said. ``Dre has embodied that.''
Everytown designated a list of five foundational laws that have proven to be the most effective in lowering gun violence rates. These include requirements for a background check and/ or permits to purchase handguns; a permit to carry concealed guns in public; the secure storage of firearms; the rejection of `Stand Your Ground' laws; and the enactment of `extreme risk' laws that temporarily remove a person's access to firearms when there is evidence that they pose a serious risk to themselves or others, according to Everytown.
Last year, several conservative states--such as Texas, Iowa, Tennessee, Montana, Utah and Wyoming--passed legislation allowing some form of permitless carry as President Joe Biden pushed forward executive actions to address gun violence following several high-profile mass shootings.
In Texas, the controversial ``constitutional carry'' legislation went into effect in September that allows most Texans who legally own a firearm to carry it openly in public without obtaining a permit or training.
Supporters of the bill have argued that by removing the licensing requirement they are removing an ``artificial barrier'' to residents' right to bear arms under the Constitution and ensuring more Texans have access to ``the protection of themselves or their families'' in public. But law enforcement officials and experts have expressed concerns that the open carrying of firearms makes it more difficult for police to quell violence.
``As we've seen gun extremism continue to rise in this country, we've also seen people who open carry start out at marches and rallies and then show up in elected officials' homes, in polling places, statehouses and then on January 6th at the US Capitol,'' Watts said.
According to Watts, the shooting in a Michigan high school in December that killed four students is a ``textbook example'' of why laws that require the secure storage of firearms are essential to gun safety.
The alleged gunman in that shooting, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, is accused of fatally shooting four classmates and wounding several others on November 30. His parents were charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter in the same incident. All three have pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors allege that James Crumbley, the father of the suspected shooter, bought the gun used in the shooting four days earlier. The incident prompted outrage over Ethan's alleged accessibility to the gun, arguing that the shooting could have been prevented.
Only 23 states currently have some semblance of a secure storage requirement, Watts said.
Last year, Everytown successfully worked to pass secure storage laws in Maine, Colorado, and Oregon, among others, according to Watts.
During this year's legislative session, Watts said the organization will work with lawmakers in hopes of passing such laws in at least 14 states. States such as California, Michigan and New Jersey are working on first-of-its kind legislation that requires parents to be notified about secure storage.
Everytown's research shows that 21 of the country's states have rejected Stand Your Ground laws, which allow individuals to use deadly force in public as self-defense even if they can safely walk away from the situation.
Despite strong gun laws, some states still feel the effects of being close to a state with more lax regulations. For example, Illinois has the sixth-strongest gun safety laws in the country, but its neighboring state of Indiana has much weaker gun laws, Suplina says.
According to Suplina, this could explain why such a high number of guns purchased in Indiana have ended up in Chicago. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice charged six Indianapolis residents related to the straw purchasing of firearms. Prosecutors said more than 20 of the guns were recovered in Chicago after being used in violent crimes, including murder.
Gun violence overall has risen during the pandemic. More than two-thirds of the country's 40 most populous cities saw more homicides last year than in 2020, and most of them were a result of gun violence, according to a CNN analysis of police department data. For many cities, the elevated rates of homicide continued into 2021.
While experts say the reasons for the rise in homicides are varied, murders are increasingly carried out with guns. The increase in gun violence was underscored in the FBI's 2020 Uniform Crime Report, which stated that about 77 percent of reported murders in 2020 were committed with a gun, up from 74 percent in 2019. The agency reported that the number of homicides increased by nearly 30 percent from 2019, the largest single-year jump the agency has recorded. There is no federal database of gun sales, but other independent surveys have found that gun sales have soared during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Castro).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, I rise to confront the Nation's leading child killer: gun violence.
Passing the Protecting Our Kids Act does that by raising the legal age to buy certain semiautomatic rifles and closing the ghost gun loophole. It strengthens safe storage rules at home and clamps down on bump stocks and high-capacity magazines.
Once more, House Democrats will do something meaningful to address this carnage while House Republicans do nothing. Yes, a few Senate Republicans may do the absolute minimum, but when an 11-year-old tells Congress that she smeared her murdered friend's blood on her own body to play dead and stay alive in Uvalde, I will take baby steps over no steps.
From Uvalde and Buffalo to Parkland, Orlando, and Las Vegas, America is bleeding. While this legislation will not end gun violence, it is a tourniquet.
The deaths, suicides, and astronomical health costs are too high, and we cannot continue to forsake our national freedoms to learn, work, and worship without fear.
Let's pass this legislation and reclaim America's values and confront this Nation's leading killer of children: gun violence.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Chu).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch), a member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney).
Mrs. CAROLYN B. MALONEY of New York. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the Protecting Our Kids Act.
Today, the victims' families and community members from the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde appeared before the Oversight Committee demanding action. These communities have faced unspeakable tragedy.
It is our duty as lawmakers to listen to them and work to build a world where they will never have to see these horrific events repeated. This legislation will save countless lives from the violence these families have had to endure.
We must support every title in this bill, especially title II, cracking down on interstate gun trafficking. I have spent over a decade fighting for gun trafficking and straw purchases to be made a Federal offense. The illegal interstate movement of firearms into New York, known as the ``Iron Pipeline'' has caused countless firearms to enter our State unlawfully. Preventing gun trafficking across State lines should be a bipartisan goal.
As a mother and teacher, I am horrified by these attacks on our schools, grocery stores, and our communities. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Ms. Sherrill).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Espaillat).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time each side has remaining?
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Clark).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Horsford).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 15 seconds.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Allred).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis).
Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 7910, Protecting Our Kids Act.
You know, I am so tired of hearing about Chicago and other big cities. Local governments do what they can, do what they will. But this is not a local issue. This is a national issue. It is a national problem and it requires a national solution.
And so I urge all of my colleagues, no matter where you are from, make sure that you vote to protect our kids. And the only way to do that is get rid of these assault weapons and seriously reduce the number of guns in our society.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Dingell).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Titus).
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Mr. NADLER. I am prepared to close.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I could not sit idly by to hear the abuse of the Second Amendment that Judge Scalia would not recognize; and that is, that there are no restrictions.
I believe Judge Scalia would look at these dead babies and realize that the Constitution and the Second Amendment that is protected, untouched, would ask you the question, is there no sense of responsibility to be able to provide restrictions to save lives?
How dare you suggest that we cannot provide the kind of laws in Protecting Our Kids Act that provides the incentives and guidelines to save lives?
Ask the mothers and fathers of these babies. The Second Amendment is not absolute. It does allow restrictions; just as President Reagan said: He sees no reason for an AK-47, at that time, to be used for sport or to be used for anything else.
Support our babies and vote for this act. Where is your responsibility and courage?
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Too many cities in this country have become a shorthand for mass shooting: Newtown, San Bernardino, Charleston, Las Vegas, Parkland, Santa Fe, El Paso, Buffalo, Uvalde. The list goes on.
How many more communities must be visited by tragedy before we take action?
How many more parents need to bury their own children because an 18- year old with an AR-15 assault rifle stormed into their school?
How many more children must grow up without a parent because a high- capacity magazine allowed a shooter to spray dozens of bullets through a supermarket?
Let today be the day that we begin to end this cycle of gun violence and we take meaningful action to protect our communities and, most of all, to protect our kids.
You know, the Republicans tell us that we want to defund the police. We don't want to defund the police. President Biden just said the other day we want to fund the police.
They want to defund the police. They want to disarm the police. What chance does a policeman, with a regular service revolver, have against someone with an AR-15 assault rifle? None at all.
They want to make sure that our police have no chance at all to resist the dishonest people who use weapons of war because weapons of war overwhelm whatever any policeman may have. That is the problem here.
The problem here is that they want to defund--or I shouldn't say defund. They want to disarm our police, compared to the crooks and the murderers who have the weapons of war which can outweigh the service revolvers that any police officer will have.
So we want to protect the police officers. We want them to not be outgunned by the murderers. That is where we are. That is what this bill does. That is perhaps why they are afraid of this bill.
But we must pass this bill to save our police officers, to save our communities, to save our children.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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