Providing for Consideration of H.R. Federal Extreme Risk Protection Order Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Protecting Our Kids Act; and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCANLON. Madam Speaker, since the Judiciary Committee marked up the Protecting Our Kids Act last Thursday, dozens more Americans have been killed or wounded in shootings, including in Philadelphia.

Saturday night was a beautiful summer evening in the South Street entertainment district when a fistfight broke out. It ended with 3 deaths and 11 injured after multiple people pulled guns and fired into the bustling crowd. Most of those gun owners were licensed to carry. One had a ghost gun, which, of course, is the subject of our legislation today.

The point is that the current approach to gun violence in this country, which has encouraged a flood of guns to our streets, is not working. We need to do more, and we need to do it now.

This isn't about being progun or antigun. Gun violence is not a partisan issue. It is a sickness infecting this entire country.

Whether Philadelphia, Uvalde, Tulsa, Buffalo, or anywhere else in between, none of us should sit idly by and watch preventable gun deaths happen every single day, and I know that I, for one, cannot.

We are not helpless. We can change this. The needle on this issue has moved, and it is not going back. The only question is whether Republican Members of Congress and the Senate will listen to their constituents or the NRA.

Our fellow Americans are demanding action. There is nothing unconstitutional about the bills we consider today, and they will help stop the routine slaughter of children, neighbors, teachers, doctors, and seniors in our schools, neighborhoods, churches, temples, mosques, and supermarkets.

I refuse to tell our children that they must be sacrificial lambs to a radical, twisted theory of armed Second Amendment liberty that is decoupled from personal responsibility and refuses to recognize the overriding purposes of the Constitution, to ensure domestic tranquility and promote the general welfare, and that also refuses to recognize that there are constitutional limits to the Second Amendment. Our Constitution is not a suicide pact.

Our children know as well as we do that we can do something. We have the power to pass this bill, and we must.

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