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Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, the American people do not have to choose between safer schools and the Constitution, and neither does the U.S. Senate.
The American people want their constitutional rights protected and their kids to be safe in school. They want both of those things at once, and that is just what the bill before the Senate will help accomplish.
Thanks to the leadership and dedication of Senator Cornyn, Senator Tillis, and several of their counterparts across the aisle, we are considering a bipartisan bill that will make our country safer without making it any less free. This is the sweet spot: making America safer, especially for kids in school, without making our country one bit less free.
The legislation before us would make our communities and schools safer without laying one finger on the Second Amendment for law-abiding citizens. Its key provisions are hugely popular with the American people. This bill supplies significant new funding to law enforcement and police, to school security, and to mental health treatment both in school and in the wider community.
Under this bill, if a teenager has been convicted of a crime or adjudicated to be mentally ill, even before their 18th birthday, that important information will show up in a firearms background check until they are 21. This strengthens the existing background check system without expanding it.
States will receive new money for crisis intervention programs of their own choosing, and if they choose to use the money for so-called red flag laws, those laws will have to meet a new, higher standard for due process.
This is a commonsense package. Its provisions are very, very popular. It contains zero--zero--new restrictions, zero new waiting periods, zero mandates, and zero bans of any kind for law-abiding gun owners.
Police and law enforcement support the bill strongly. The police chiefs' association and the Fraternal Order of Police say: ``This bipartisan measure is . . . one that will save lives,'' according to the FOP and the police chiefs' association.
The National Sheriffs' Association calls it:
A bill that can actually save lives . . . that allows the States to craft their own unique answers to the questions raised by gun violence.
After years--literally years--of liberal demands that would make war on citizens' constitutional rights, our Democratic colleagues have finally accepted that we can make schools and communities safer without impeding on the Second Amendment.
We can do more to protect innocent Americans, schoolkids especially, without--without--eroding the Bill of Rights 1 inch, and that is just what the Senate will do when we pass this bill.
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