Second Amendment Rights

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUTHERFORD. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), my good friend, for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about a major problem facing our communities, and that is human violence. I have four children and four beautiful grandchildren who are school-aged.

Madam Speaker, I have to tell you, when I turned on the television set and saw what was going on in Uvalde, Texas, my heart sank. I saw my grandchildren in the faces of those children that I saw fleeing from that horrible violence that was being conducted that afternoon. It is too often that we turn on our TV sets and see images of schools locked down and grieving communities. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, we saw that unfold in Uvalde, Texas. Yet, every time tragedy strikes, we hear the same conversation, calls for bans on firearms, universal background checks, and red flag laws. That is how we spent the last two days in this Chamber, talking about partisan bills that are, number one, redundant--a lot of these laws already exist--or number two, they are laws that will infringe on the rights of law-abiding American citizens. Ultimately, they won't fix the problem.

Madam Speaker, the problem is not guns. It is not gun violence. The problem is human violence. When I was sheriff, I used to explain to my community occasionally, when gun violence--as they would call it--would erupt, and they would ask me to talk about it.

Madam Speaker, I would tell the gentleman, Mr. Gohmert, I would always make the point to them that I could take that weapon off my hip, put it on that podium, and it would never, ever become violent. Now, some human may come along and pick it up and use it violently, but that is a human violence problem. It is not a gun violence problem.

I carried a gun for 41 years. It never became violent. Yet, we see it over and over again. Humans are the cause of this violence. It is a cause of the grief that we are seeing today and feeling in Uvalde and Buffalo and so many other cities across America.

We see it over and over again. A tragedy happens, a gunman is identified, and what do we learn? Then we learn that they showed all sorts of dangerous behavior and telltale signs of violence long before becoming a mass shooter, a murderer, killing animals, making threats, threatening words, self-harm, cutting themselves--the list goes on and on; mental health issues that should have been addressed long before they became an active shooter.

Madam Speaker, but people don't want to talk about that in the wake of a tragedy. The fact is, we already have the tools to deal with these individuals once they are identified. We have the tools to stop these horrific events before they happen. One of the things, as sheriff, I used to tell my officers all the time is I don't want to be the best first responder to a mass casualty event. I want to prevent it before it occurs.

Madam Speaker, I saw firsthand, countless times, when people were a danger, we stopped them before they could hurt others. We put them in jail. We arrested them for making threats. We identified them and we identified the threats that they were making, and we stopped them from acting on those threats.

The challenge here, we must focus on identifying those who are a human threat to themselves and others and then intervene. Too many times after all of these events, we hear that conversation: Oh, I knew this guy. I am not surprised.

Those are the conversations that we hear afterwards. We must identify those suffering from severe mental illness and formally adjudicate them so they cannot buy a firearm. That law already exists. We need to start adjudicating those who are mentally ill and a danger.

And let me say this: Everyone that has a mental illness is not a danger. Many people suffer mental illness and are not a danger. But those that are, we need to adjudicate them as such so that they can't go down and buy a firearm. Those laws are already on the books, but our community must do a better job of identifying those who need help and then get them the services and treatment that they need and deserve.

We could do this while also upholding basic due process rights. Our whole judicial process system is based on the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty. But the ex-parte order issued through these red flag laws throws these fundamental rights out the window.

Red flag laws take away a person's Second Amendment rights and a lower evidentiary standard without the opportunity to even defend themselves in court. Ex-parte is almost a secretive process. It is going on without the accused's knowledge. And we see how well the ex- parte process worked in the FISA courts, didn't we?

The reason our judicial system works is because it is adversarial. We have people on both sides of the issue who are fighting it out in court, discussing the facts. Ex-parte, you hear one side of the story. That is all. And they want to use that to take away your Second Amendment rights. Then once deprived of those rights, now we have to prove that we are innocent.

This is backwards and ineffective at solving our violence problem. Before we quickly jump to pass bad legislation--like we just passed this afternoon--let's do a better job of enforcing the laws that are already on our books.

Before we rehash the same talking points and debate partisan messaging bills, let's work together on the areas where we need change. Let's work together to bolster our mental health system so we can better identify people suffering from mental illness and adjudicate them if they are a danger and provide them the treatment they need and deserve.

Let's work together to strengthen penalties for those who steal and traffic in firearms. Let's work together to secure our schools and make sure that our kids have a safe place to learn.

The STOP School Violence Act of 2018, which was signed into law by President Trump, when we drafted the language for that bill, the first concern that I had was identification of those who are a threat, and that is the first part of that law.

The second part of that law now is CPTED, crime prevention through environmental design, how we can stop those who may be coming to our schools to commit violence.

Let's work together to identify the signs of dangerous behavior and prevent these acts of violence before they even happen.

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