Protecting Our Kids Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio for yielding.
Why do we have guns?
Why do we have the Second Amendment?
Is it to hunt? Sure.
Self defense? That is even more important.
The fact is, if you read the founders--Federalist No. 46, James Madison contrasts us with the tyrannical governments of Europe who are, ``afraid to trust the people with arms.''
Joseph Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution in 1833: ``The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic. Since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these were successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.''
We have a Second Amendment because we understand in this country that there are some things, inalienable rights, that you cannot justly take away from a free and equal human being. Tyrants disarm the people they intend to oppress. Those are the facts.
Jewish people in Germany were prohibited from owning firearms; 13 million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis.
The Soviets instituted gun control and millions were killed; 20 million dissidents were rounded up and exterminated.
Mao disarmed the Chinese people; 20 million dissidents were exterminated.
In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge was able to take advantage of the fact that limited gun ownership to just hunters and killed 1.5 million to 3 million Cambodians.
Turkey disarmed Armenians, and 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the Armenian Genocide.
The South disarmed slaves and actively fought against their arming. And then in the 20th century, armed Black Army veterans, for example, in Louisiana, were able to defend against the KKK.
Even fact-checking organization Snopes said: ``We find it reasonable to conclude that gun confiscations, facilitated by laws requiring the registration and/or licensing of firearms, played a crucial role in carrying out of 20th-century genocides.''
This is not fiction. This is in our lifetime. This is in our grandparents' lifetime. This is in our recent history. This is why the Second Amendment matters. It is not trivial. It is not something you just brush aside. This is a foundation of liberty. It is who we are. But in order to sell a lie to the American people that the government will protect them from all manners of evil, while defunding the police, leaving our borders wide open--I am glad my colleagues can suddenly find Uvalde on a map--while allowing dangerous cartels operating hundreds of miles into Texas, allowing fentanyl to pour into our communities and kill tens of thousands of children--the very children my colleagues say they wish to protect.
In order to do this, Democrats in this body are willing to take away citizens' God-given right--yes, the God-given right that was mocked earlier--to protect himself or herself, or her family or his family, from harm--the very harm they foster by appeasing lawlessness, and importantly, from the very tyranny being applied to them to deny that right.
That is what is at stake, this bill; and it gets brushed aside, raise the age limit. Well, there are constitutional questions to that, in the 4th Circuit, 9th Circuit, and other circuits.
The second title in straw purchases, the very straw purchases the Democrat DAs don't even want to really prosecute, would prohibit a law- abiding citizen from giving a gun to a friend as a gift.
Safe storage would make it unlawful for me to have the 22- and the 20-gauge, propped up by my door right now in Texas, to kill coyotes and snakes. It would make it unlawful.
This will not do any good. It will harm Americans, and it undermines our foundational liberties that are crucial for a free state.
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