Joseph Woodrow Hatchett United States Courthouse and Federal Building--

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I came to the floor to talk about the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. But first, let me just express my gratitude to the Senator from West Virginia for his longtime commitment to come up with a bipartisan solution. This is not easy.

And there are a lot of examples of good-faith attempts to try to come up with an answer that can get the requisite number of votes. And I know the Senator from West Virginia knows how hard that is. But it hasn't deterred him from contributing to our efforts, and I think our product that we are voting on is better for that. I want to say thank you.

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I thank my friend, our friend, from West Virginia for those generous remarks.

As we all know, a lot of people have been working on this issue, for the last few weeks especially, intensely. And this included, obviously, a lot of people beyond those that I have the time to name here. But we finally introduced our proposed legislation last Tuesday, exactly 4 weeks after the last terrible shooting in Uvalde, TX. I am not a patient person by temperament or personality. So I was hoping we would get here faster. But the truth is, since it requires consensus and persuasion, sometimes it takes a little longer than you hoped for. And I appreciate the space that both the majority leader and the Republican leader have given us to come up with something that will achieve a result.

So often around here, people do things and say things not with the intention of actually passing legislation but with the intention of making a political statement, or messaging, as it is sometimes called. That is not what we are doing here. We are not looking to posture or to try to embarrass anybody. We are trying to find a solution to a very real problem. And I think what we have come up with will, in the end, pass the test, which I know so many of us believe is the standard. And that standard is: Will it save lives? Will it save lives? And I believe the answer to that is yes. And that makes this worth doing.

Well, from the beginning, I was optimistic that we could reach a bipartisan agreement, but I know that on both sides of the aisle, there were some places that we could not go. As the Senator from West Virginia said--a proud defender of the Second Amendment, as am I--I was not going to go anywhere in this negotiation that jeopardized the rights of law-abiding Americans under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Some people act as if the Second Amendment is somehow different than the rest of the Bill of Rights--the freedom of speech, the freedom of press, the freedom of association, the freedom of religion. Well, it is right there all in the same 10 first amendments to the U.S. Constitution, called the Bill of Rights. So it is entitled to no less respect than those other constitutional rights contained in the Bill of Rights.

But I think we have come up with a way to make good public policy and also to maintain that commitment to the Constitution. Some people want to create a false choice. I don't think we need to go there because there is not a false choice, as I said, between the Constitution and the Second Amendment and making good public policy. They don't have to overlap or interfere with each other. Both can stand on their own merits. Well, as I said, law-abiding gun owners are not the problem. And that was a redline for me.

During the course of our negotiations, our Democratic colleagues did push for a range of provisions that I believe stood no chance of becoming law, particularly in a 50-50 Senate. We know that if Democrats want to do everything their way or Republicans want to do everything our way, almost by definition in a 50-50 Senate, nothing will happen.

And to me, that was one of the most important things we are doing here. One is demonstrating that our institutions--in this case, the U.S. Senate--can actually work at a time when a lot of people are questioning whether our institutions can work and also questioning whether it is possible to come up with some bipartisan piece of legislation rather than fail as we have so many times before and each side sort of returning to their corner of a boxing ring and trying to message it to their base and not actually get a result.

So there were a lot of things that the President has asked for in this bill. For example, a ban on so-called assault weapons, which are a semiautomatic long gun, named, I guess, because of focus groups or polling assault weapons, but it is really a semiautomatic rifle. And there was also some discussion about high-capacity magazines. Neither of those are part of this legislation.

Now, I know there are Members who would perhaps love to have that, but they understand that to press that point to its logical extreme would mean we would not have anything at all. There is also no mandatory waiting period. There is no potentially unconstitutional requirement that gun owners store their weapons in a particular way.

Unless a person is adjudicated mentally ill or is a violent criminal, no one's Second Amendment rights will be impacted by this legislation, period. We know already that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System--which is the gold standard, in my view, to make sure we draw the line in the right place between law- abiding gun owners and those who cannot, under existing law, purchase a firearm. For example, if you have been adjudicated in a mental institution, you can't buy a firearm. If you have been convicted of a felony, if you have been dishonorably discharged from the military, if you are addicted to drugs--all of those are current questions in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which if you answer yes to, then you cannot legally purchase or possess a firearm.

Some wanted to include more categories, but we did not. We essentially are, by doing what we have done here, saying we are going to make sure that existing law is enforced but not add additional requirements.

Well, some of our colleagues like to say that to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals, we need to limit the rights of law- abiding citizens. But as we know, the bad guys--the criminals--aren't going to respect the law; they are going to get the guns by any means they can, including illegally.

Frequently, they obtain firearms on the street or through straw purchasers. Background checks don't deter them because they don't buy them from a Federal firearms licensee, which does a background check. They buy it from a member of a street gang or someone else.

So we have rejected those attempts to add restrictions, as I say, on law-abiding gun owners, but we have added stiffer penalties for straw purchasers and gun traffickers. That, I believe, is the most effective way to deal with the problem of street sales of illegal guns through trafficking and straw purchasing. That is a way to improve public safety.

Following the shooting in Uvalde 4 weeks ago, I said I wanted to look at reforms that might have prevented this terrible tragedy from occurring.

To me, that is the best way to approach these cases because it is hard, sort of in the abstract, to say what it is we could do that might save lives. Frequently, we can look at the fact pattern of what happened and say: Here is where there was a failure, and here is another place there was a failure. Unfortunately, in Uvalde, there were multiple points of failure.

One is a lack of our access to juvenile records. This young man showed up after he had his 18th birthday. Right now, the criminal background check system doesn't look back before you were 18 to see whether you had a mental health adjudication or some disqualifying criminal conviction.

That is a problem because if somebody who we know, in retrospect, is sort of a ticking timebomb as a result of his troubled past, there is no way under the current system to get access to that information.

So one of the things we have done here is to say: Let's see if we can work with the States to make sure that they supply to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System information that had it occurred as an adult post-18 would clearly disqualify someone from purchasing a firearm. This is a little bit of a challenge because every State kind of does things differently, and there is no way we can compel the State to provide the information, but I would think that Governors and State legislatures would want to work with us to try to keep guns out of the hands of people who we know are a threat to themselves and a threat to public safety.

Our bill incentivizes the States to upload whatever juvenile records they have to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to ensure that any disqualifying criminal convictions or mental health adjudications are available.

This is, to be clear, not an expansion but a clarification of the types of conduct and records that would disqualify somebody if you were an adult that are not currently available because we don't look past the 18th birthday--behind the 18th birthday to juvenile records.

So what we are doing is simply ensuring that those records, which would already disqualify somebody had it occurred if they were an adult, are available and could be considered as part of that background check.

If the background check for a buyer under 21 returns a potentially disqualifying record, what we have provided in this enhanced background check is an opportunity for the FBI to ask more questions.

And under our legislation, we don't change this part of it. The NICS system--the National Instant Criminal Background Check System--has 3 days to do a background check. But because it is computerized, 90 percent of them are done just in a matter of seconds, but on occasion the FBI has other information they need to investigate.

This was a real problem, for example, in Charleston, where Dylann Roof, somebody we know had a misdemeanor drug conviction--and on further inquiry, the FBI would have found out he was addicted to narcotics, which is also a disqualification. But because there was no opportunity to expand the background check beyond just the 3 days under current law, it wasn't part of the NICS system. And, unfortunately, he bought a gun and killed a lot of innocent people at Mother Emanuel Church there in Charleston.

So giving the FBI, for this cohort of 18- to 21-year-olds, an opportunity, if they come across something that needs further investigation, to give them up to an additional 7 business days to look into it.

I will give you another example. Let's say they come up with a record that demonstrates there was an assault. Well, there are different types of assaults against someone. It may be a bar fight or punching someone in the nose or it could be domestic violence. Well, the first is not a disqualifier under the law, but if the assault conviction actually turns out to be domestic violence, it would be. And so that is the kind of information that we are giving the FBI an opportunity to explore in this extension of the background check.

But this is not a mandatory waiting period, and it doesn't apply to gun buyers of all ages. For example, if somebody is 19 years old and they do the background check and they do what we require here, which is inquire of the juvenile record repository and the repository for mental health adjudications and local law enforcement, and they find nothing, then the transaction can occur in a matter of hours or a matter of days.

There is no mandatory waiting period. And this really addresses only that cohort of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds, which has become a common profile for young shooters who have shot innocent people everywhere from Uvalde to Sandy Hook in Connecticut and other places.

The profile, unfortunately, is very sad and very tragic, people who are a danger to themselves and others, and that is the reason why we thought this enhanced process was important.

We also included comprehensive due process requirements relating to firearms. I have talked about the fact that this is a constitutional right, and of course the Constitution guarantees due process of law. And a lot of folks are, frankly, concerned about these red flag laws, these crisis intervention orders when somebody is demonstrated to be a danger to themselves and others.

And the concern is that not all of these red flag laws contain robust due process requirements. What are we talking about? Well, due process generally is understood to include notice, the opportunity to be heard, the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses, and to present evidence in front of an impartial judicial officer.

So, in order to make sure that none of the grant funds would be available to States that did not have robust due process requirements and had red flag laws, as 19 States and the District of Columbia do, we have very strong due process conditions on the grants that are available.

But many States don't have red flag laws. For example, Texas does not, but we sure have a lot of crisis intervention programs that are sort of focused on the same sort of problem.

We have mental health courts, veterans courts, drug courts. We have something called assisted outpatient treatment for people who, under court order, can be an outpatient and be required to show up for their counseling or treatment but also to take the medications that their healthcare provider requires them to take if they are going to manage their mental health challenges. That is done under a court order but as an outpatient. So it is another way of sort of addressing this problem of people having unmanaged mental health challenges and, in some cases, becoming a danger to themselves and others.

We firmly rejected the idea that the Federal Government would impose a national red flag law. And we did not view it as appropriate for the Federal Government to make the grant funds that are available through the Department of Justice be seen as an incentive to sort of nudge States or encourage States to pass their own extreme risk protection orders.

Those are decisions that are made at the State level, not here. But like I said, we provided robust due process requirements of any grants that go to those States. And it may be, as one of my colleagues said this morning, in his State, they have red flag laws, and he thinks that money could be used to ensure that the rights of law-abiding gun owners are protected by a robust due process.

And for States that don't have red flag laws, as I mentioned, there are other ways this money can go to help and address a similar problem. So all States will have access to these funds through the Department of Justice Byrne JAG law enforcement grant program.

So while some have said that taxpayer dollars are being used to violate someone's Second Amendment rights without due process, that is, clearly, a false accusation. Unfortunately, we know that when there is so much money to be made and so many people to be recruited to one cause or another when it deals with this general subject matter, that a lot of reckless and irresponsible and false statements get made, which is the reason I am here explaining what is in the bill and what is not in the bill.

One of the things that was very important to our Democratic colleagues is the definition of the ``boyfriend loophole.'' Just by way of explanation, under current law, before we passed this bill, if you are married to someone, if you are cohabitating with someone, if you have a child with someone and are not married or cohabitating or if you are in a relationship which is, for all practical purposes, similar to a marriage but not official, if you commit a domestic violence offense in your State and are convicted of that misdemeanor domestic violence, you are forever barred from purchasing or possessing a firearm.

One of the things we negotiated, frankly, because I think it just makes a lot of sense, is that for this category of boyfriends, so- called, roughly defined as recent or current serious relationship of a romantic or intimate nature, if you find yourself in one of those relationships and you commit an act of domestic violence, one of the things we negotiated is 5 years later, with a clean record, then you can have your Second Amendment rights restored.

And I think that is an important protection, again, of Second Amendment rights. Well, we would not agree that someone who was convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence against a girlfriend 30 years ago would be forever barred from their Second Amendment rights or someone who just had a casual dating relationship.

But as I said, we did include a provision to restore the Second Amendment rights to certain individuals who have a clean record of not committing any additional criminal acts, including domestic violence, for a period of 5 years.

We all know that there are plenty of people who make mistakes but then turn their lives around, and this legislation opens up the anatomy for individuals to have their Second Amendment rights restored if they do that.

We have worked throughout this process with a lot of different people, from the school safety portion to the mental health portion, and we have worked with law enforcement, and we have worked with a variety of groups, including some of the groups that represent gun owners as well as those who have advocated reform of our gun laws. I thought it was important for us to hear from everybody.

And now it may be that in the end, some of these outside groups do not love 100 percent of what we are doing here. We know that no piece of legislation is perfect. By definition, it is a compromise and a consensus to try to find that common ground. And so some outside groups may say: Well, we can't support that because it doesn't give us 100 percent of what we want, but frankly there is never a bill that passes that gives one side or the other 100 percent of what they want.

So just to conclude, just to repeat myself for emphasis, this bill does not infringe on law-abiding citizens rights under the Second Amendment. It doesn't actually expand the background checks system. It doesn't impose mandatory waiting periods or any other restrictions.

There is a lot of misinformation and, believe me, I think that is what social media was created for, for spreading misinformation or disinformation.

So there is a lot of misunderstanding about what is in this legislation, which is the reason I wanted to come to the floor and set the record straight.

This bill does, however, include important targeted reforms, complete with robust due process protections, that I believe in the end will keep our children and our communities safe while respecting Second Amendment rights.

Over the last couple of days, we have had a chance to have even further and more robust discussions among not only Republicans, but Democrats, and I appreciate those who perhaps may have been skeptical to what we were trying to do here--their willingness to keep an open mind, to ask us hard questions, and to force us to come up with good answers that will address their concerns. That is how we pass legislation here in the Senate; and my hope is that through those good- faith negotiations and debates and discussions, we can continue to build additional support for this legislation.

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