Federal Law Enforcement Officer Service Weapon Purchase Act of 2025

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition.

I thank my colleague from South Carolina for his excellent presentation, but this bill is a case study in a legislative majority that is in search of not common ground and common sense but rather extreme measures that divide and polarize the Congress and the people.

Once upon a time this was a sensible, bipartisan bill led by our Democratic colleague, Val Demings from Orlando, Florida, who had been a police chief. Her bill allowed Federal agencies to sell handguns that they were no longer using to the active-duty officers, who previously carried those handguns, for fair market value as long as they completed a background check like everybody else in America.

Mr. Speaker, last Congress, Republicans weakened that bipartisan bill, which I think commanded unanimous support in Congress, by stripping the background check requirement while still restricting the bill to handgun sales to current law enforcement officers only. So we were willing to go along with that compromise. We accepted that in the last Congress.

When the bill came to the floor for a vote, however, Republicans filled the bill with a menagerie of more outlandish and extreme provisions, and that is the version that they started with in this Congress which is before us today.

When we marked up this legislation, we offered an amendment that would allow them to go back to the compromise version of the bill, a version of the bill that they themselves had introduced and that we support, but they refused to do it.

So today, in place of a reasonable, commonsense, and common-ground bill, Republicans are dug in on another extreme proposal that riddles our gun laws with loopholes and politicizes what should have been a simple, bipartisan measure.

The bill before us today would allow surplus firearms to be sold not only to active Federal law enforcement officers in good standing, but also to retired law enforcement officers.

Because the bill now has no background check requirement, it could create a situation in which it would be possible for an officer to retire and commit a crime, such as domestic violence or assault, that would ordinarily render him or her ineligible to purchase and possess firearms but then still be able to buy a firearm from the Federal Government without any background check at all.

While the bill includes a good standing requirement, as they remind us, this is plainly meaningless as applied to retired officers who may have left the department in perfectly good standing but could not pass a background check today.

Agencies can certify that an officer is in good standing when they retire, but they have no way to track the behavior of their former officers after that if they cannot do a background check. So an agency could unknowingly sell a surplus firearm to someone who cannot lawfully buy a gun, and all of this would occur under the statute without any background check at all.

The bill also allows for the sale of any firearm except machine guns. That includes not just handguns, but also assault weapons, destructive devices like hand grenades, and even firearms that are subject to heightened restrictions under the National Firearms Act. Moreover, it allows them to be sold at salvage value, effectively making it so that the Federal Government and the taxpayers would actually be subsidizing gun sales. They replaced fair market value with salvage value.

My colleagues have claimed that the bill would not really allow for the sale of all of these types of firearms because it only applies, they say, to service weapons. However, they need to read their own bill. It allows for the sale of any firearm other than a machine gun that is issued to an officer. That means if an officer uses not just a handgun, but an assault rifle, a grenade launcher, or anything classified as a destructive device, any firearm or destructive device used by a SWAT team, any firearm or destructive device used by the Secret Service, so long it is not a machine gun, if issued to an officer, can be sold back to him or her without a background check under the bill at salvage value.

If that is not what they mean, and they have been scrambling to deny it, then they should change the language of the bill because that is plainly what the bill says. Forgive me for insisting on scrupulous attention to words, Mr. Speaker, but that is the business we are in when we enter the legislative process.

Taken together, the bill makes it so that an officer could retire, commit a crime, become a person who may not legally own firearms under Federal law, then buy from the Federal Government a handgun, a semiautomatic assault rifle, a sawed-off shotgun, or even a grenade launcher, at a discount, with no background check at all.

Now, Mr. Speaker, this is a famously do-nothing or do-very-little Congress. They don't have much on their agenda other than slashing $880 billion from Medicaid, SNAP, Meals on Wheels, Head Start, and the other programs that actually serve Americans who don't live like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. However, Mr. Speaker, you would think they would have the time at least to write a bill that would not permit these kinds of things to happen.

These are unacceptable risks of dangerous weapons being sold to a person who may not legally have one. So reluctantly, I must oppose this bill which began as a Democratic bill which commanded unanimous, bipartisan support before.

Nothing in this bill is going to help law enforcement officers actually do their jobs, which was how all of this was introduced when we first started out today. Indeed, it doesn't provide a single Federal dollar to help local law enforcement.

In fact, our colleagues have not advanced a single bill during this entire Police Week or even this entire session of Congress to increase funding to State and local police.

In fact, the party that now controls the White House and both Chambers of Congress is now letting DOGE, Elon Musk, and their midnight crew of computer hackers dismantle entire agencies, fire thousands of Federal workers without cause, and generally wreak havoc across the government.

Last month, DOGE decided unilaterally to cancel more than $500 million of Department of Justice grant funding for local law enforcement, public safety, and crime prevention programs all over the country in our communities.

What did we hear from our colleagues across the aisle?

Did they stand up to DOGE and object to this defunding of the police?

No, Mr. Speaker. Our colleagues said absolutely nothing, and I mean that literally.

During the Judiciary Committee markup of the reconciliation bill, Democrats offered a simple amendment to immediately restore hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the police and for hundreds of other essential public safety grant programs dismantled by, as far as we can tell, one employee at DOGE.

Every single one of our GOP colleagues voted against that amendment, but they refused to utter a word in favor of Elon Musk's chainsaw massacre of local law enforcement and public safety programs. They don't want to be quoted supporting DOGE, but even if their quotes don't support DOGE, their votes support DOGE, and they have voted not to restore hundreds of millions of dollars that DOGE cut from our State, local, and county law enforcement and public safety organizations.

In case some of our colleagues haven't heard yet from their outraged constituents about this, let me offer just one example of more than 365 grants that were abruptly terminated by DOGE. That is one grant program per day all across the country.

DOGE cut funding for a program called the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative, which provided funding to dozens and dozens of rural law enforcement agencies across America allowing them, with their strapped budgets, to hire more officers and purchase up-to-date equipment and technology. They also supported rural victim services and crime prevention programs. This program was created to assist small, rural agencies that need Federal funding but are so small, short- staffed, or underresourced, they wouldn't even have the ability to apply for the funding.

One such recipient of this grant from the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative was the Shawano, Wisconsin Police Department, which was using the funding to pay for a detective dedicated to investigating and solving unsolved violent crimes and to stop narcotics trafficking in their community.

The police department said that the additional detective would build trust with community members, increase patrols in hot spot areas, enhance crime prevention, and sustain a reduction in violent crime in narcotics-related crime. This is just one of the hundreds of rural police departments and other agencies using this funding from this one grant program from 365 that were suddenly terminated by one DOGE employee running amuck in the Department of Justice.

This is funding, Mr. Speaker, that we in the House of Representatives voted for on an overwhelming bipartisan basis and that the Senate overwhelmingly voted for on a bipartisan basis. We had bicameral passage and presentment to the President. The President signed it into law. The Department of Justice got the funding. The Department of Justice programmed the funding, and the Department of Justice awarded those grants all across America.

Mr. Speaker, guess who stopped it without my knowledge, without their knowledge, and without anybody's knowledge?

It was one DOGE employee, one of Elon Musk's junior lieutenants who spent his career at Tesla, and then he decided he was going to wipe out hundreds of millions of dollars going to our people.

Mr. Speaker, are our colleagues going to allow DOGE to get away with this critical destruction of law enforcement in rural communities, urban communities, and suburban communities across the land?

Apparently so. They remain silent on it. They won't utter a word in favor of it, but they don't utter a peep against it. They just vote for it. They just sheepishly get in line and support this destruction of what we had already voted for to put into action.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose this legislation, which is a trivial distraction from what is really going on in America today. They are dismantling the priorities of the people as passed through the people's House and through the Senate and signed into law.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join us in actually standing up for law enforcement, for the police, and for community safety. I would invite them to join us in actually standing up for the Article I powers of Congress. I hope they will join us in rejecting DOGE's deranged funding cuts that are undermining public safety and harming law enforcement across the land.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, perhaps my friend from South Carolina would indulge me a few questions because I am puzzled by some of the representations that were just made.

The gentleman answers a point I didn't make. He said that the officer must be in good standing in order to be sold the gun. That is true if they are an officer. What if they are a retired officer? What does it mean to be a retired officer who is in good standing when that person no longer has a record and the department is not keeping track of them? That is why the original legislation insisted that there be a background check.

I am wondering if the gentleman would answer that question.

Well, you get that one.

Let me ask another question.

The gentleman says that only handguns would be issued to officers, whether they are currently officers or whether they are retired, but SWAT teams are included by your legislation, I believe. Are not members of SWAT teams issued semiautomatic weapons and other kinds of guns? Are you saying that this applies only to handguns? If so, why didn't you write it to apply only to handguns?

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Mr. RASKIN. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina for the purpose of a colloquy.

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Mr. RASKIN. Even in the case of a SWAT team, the gentleman is saying that a member of a SWAT team would not have a semiautomatic weapon?

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Mr. RASKIN. Are they not issued to the officer?

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Mr. RASKIN. That is while you are an officer. Now let's say you retire and you commit domestic violence or assault or battery or some other offense 2 years later. The department is not notified of that, is not keeping track of it. What does it mean to say a retired person is in good standing if they have committed a crime in the meantime?

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Mr. RASKIN. There is nothing that would actually prevent the sale actually by GSA, right? Who would effectuate the provisions of the prohibited purchaser statute?

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Mr. RASKIN. Then we are establishing legislative history that, according to the gentleman, this legislation is designed to apply only to handguns and not to all of these other things which the gentleman says are irrelevant. Is that right?

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Mr. RASKIN. Then why is it in this bill?

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Mr. RASKIN. Neither are machine guns. The gentleman excluded machine guns.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I will reclaim my time, and I yield myself the balance of my time.

They went to the pains of excluding machine guns, saying that they didn't want a retired officer to be able to purchase a machine gun, but then they are allowing grenade launchers, semiautomatic weapons, and all these other weapons. I don't understand why, when the gentleman now is vigorously protesting that that is not the intention of the statute, that is not the intention of the legislation.

Please rewrite the bill to be in accord with what you are saying, which is that this applies only to handguns. Otherwise, you are just multiplying the proliferation of regulations which I thought you were opposed to.

Now you are saying we want the GSA to issue a whole bunch of regulations to do the work that Congress refuses to do. I think you are moving a little bit closer to what Congresswoman Demings' original legislation was if you limit it to handguns. What she said is: Obviously, someone who retires from the force can go out and purchase whatever weapons they want. This was the sentimental value of allowing an officer to purchase a gun that he or she used when they were actually in service, at fair market value.

Now you have riddled it with all of these other exceptions and completely changed the meaning of the legislation in a way that moves us backwards in terms of public safety. In America, 80 or 90 percent of the American people want a universal violent criminal background check.

We think we have enough loopholes as it is, with the internet loophole, which the majority refuses to close; with the private gun show loophole, which the majority refuses to close; with the person-to- person private sale loophole, which the majority refuses to close.

We don't need more loopholes. America already stands out as an outlier in the world among advanced industrialized countries. We have rates of gun violence and gun homicide that are 10 or 20 times higher than Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Israel, and Japan. You name it, nothing comes close to us.

Instead of helping police officers by getting guns out of the hands of criminals, our colleagues are just looking for ways to create more loopholes in the laws for purchasing guns.

Mr. Speaker, again, I just wanted to nail down into the weeds here exactly what the legislation says. The term ``firearm'' is the meaning given that term in section 921(a) of Title 18, excluding any machine gun. They have properly decided that we should not put more machine guns into the stream of commerce.

What is still swept within it? Any explosive, incendiary, poison gas, bomb, grenade, rocket, missile having explosive or incendiary charge of more than \1/4\ ounce, mine, device, and so on.

Why would we open this up if that is not the intention of my colleague? I take him completely in good faith at his word. Let's write that out of the bill because what we have seen is that people who mean to do harm to other people will exploit any other opportunity to do it. I don't understand the logic of excluding machine guns but then sweeping in all of these other dangerous weapons.

I am happy to yield to my friend if he wants to elaborate on that, or I will reserve my time. Maybe he can use some of his time.

Mr. Speaker, there is another bit of business we need to clean up here, and I would invite my distinguished colleague from South Carolina to join me in this.

We voted back on March 15, 2022, to erect a plaque in the Congress of the United States to honor the police officers who fought tooth and nail, with valor, courage, and heroism, to defend us against mobs of thousands of marauding rioters and insurrectionists, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, who came to try to overthrow a Presidential election. They stormed the Capitol. They injured, wounded, hospitalized, brutalized more than 140 officers, many of whom are still suffering from the physical and mental wounds today.

We voted back on March 15, 2022, to put a plaque up in Congress to honor them, and it reads: ``On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021. Their heroism will never be forgotten.''

Alas, Mr. Speaker, their heroism seems already to have been forgotten by some of our colleagues. The plaque exists. We have the plaque. It has been produced. Yet, the Speaker of the House refuses to put the plaque up 2 years later. Why? Why will we not honor the police officers, like Sergeant Gonell who was forced to leave the police force because of the severe injuries that he suffered then and is trying to support his family on around half the salary that he had before?

Why would we not honor the officers like Michael Fanone, who wasn't even on duty that day, but he heard about the riots at the Capitol, and he came down to join the fight with his brothers and sisters in blue and was nearly killed? He begged for his life to the mob, saying he had four daughters of his own. He had a heart attack. Will we not honor Michael Fanone?

Will we honor Officer Harry Dunn who fought for hours and hours, enduring not just other physical attacks but savage racial epithets and abuse?

Will we honor Officer Hodges who nearly died trying to stop the mob from entering the Capitol? He got caught in the doorway on the western front of the Capitol. He was tortured in front of the eyes of the world. You have probably seen the pictures of him being caught and beaten by the mob, which that day was wielding Confederate battle flags, American flags, baseball bats, steel pipes, broken furniture, you name it, to attack our officers.

These people gave blood, sweat, and tears. Several officers died in the aftermath, including Officer Brian Sicknick who died the very next day after receiving grievous wounds and injuries.

We could be doing a lot more for them. President Trump wants a fund for January 6. That is good, right? No. He wants a fund for the rioters' families. He wants a fund for the insurrectionists that he pardoned, not for the police officers. Will my colleagues say anything about that?

At the very least, let's put up the plaque to honor these officers. Not a single Member of the majority has given us one reason why this plaque, which is completed, has not been hung in the Capitol of the United States. Why not? If you don't respect the law enforcement officers and the police who fought tooth and nail for us that day, at least respect the rule of law. This was supposed to be up 2 years ago.

Mr. Speaker, forgive my passion, but I was there. I was here on January 6, 2021. I heard them chanting: ``Hang Mike Pence.'' ``Hang Mike Pence.'' The words are still echoing in my mind from that day. They were looking for Nancy Pelosi. They were quoted as saying they wanted to assassinate Nancy Pelosi. They stormed her office. They took over her office.

Do we honor police officers for real, or do we only honor them if it is politically convenient for us to honor them? Like the prosecutors, the new Attorney General got in. The new Acting U.S. Attorney, Ed Martin, got in. They were forced to withdraw that nomination after it turned out he had appeared 150 different times on Russian propaganda networks, like Russia Today and Sputnik, and after it turned out he had all kinds of Neo-Nazi affiliations and friendships. Anyway, he got in. You know what he did? They fired more than a dozen of the most experienced veteran prosecutors in the Department of Justice. Why? Because they did their jobs, because they prosecuted the people who committed that massive assault on American democracy. The greatest mass assault, violent assault on the Capitol in the history of the United States. We have never seen anything like it.

This administration not only pardoned more than 1,500 people who participated in that brutality, in that attempt to overthrow an election, which Joe Biden won by more than 7 million votes, 306-232 in the electoral college, not only did they pardon all of those offenders, whether they were nonviolent or violent--and a lot of them have already gone on to reoffend since they got their pardons from Donald Trump--not only did they do that but they wanted to sack the prosecutors for doing their jobs.

Is there anybody on that side of the aisle who will speak out against this obscenity? No, I don't think so.

Is there anybody on that side of the aisle who is uttering support for law enforcement during our law enforcement week who will say it is time to put up the plaque in honor of the officers who defended us?

Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues have some good reason for doing what they are doing. The Framers of the Constitution thought that people who participated in the government would come to identify with their branch of government. That is why I thought, well, when they stormed the Capitol and Donald Trump incited a violent insurrection against us, we would, in bipartisan unison, denounce it and vote to impeach and convict.

Ten Republicans did join all the Democrats in doing that. That was historic. Seven Republican Senators voted to convict after seeing overwhelming evidence.

Mitch McConnell also found the evidence completely convincing, but he said that he didn't think the Senate has jurisdiction to try to convict a former President, despite the fact that that contradicted two centuries of precedent, and the Senate ruled on the very first day against that motion to dismiss the charges. He said there was nothing that could be done, even though Donald Trump was actually, factually, ethically, and morally responsible for everything that happened.

When will my colleagues finally break from the cultish obedience to Donald Trump, who is now over in the Middle East on what looks like a business trip for him and his family? They are all raking in not just hundreds of millions of dollars but billions of dollars with their business deals.

My colleagues are back home doing his bidding, trying to slash $888 billion from Medicaid and the programs that the American people have built. Our parents and grandparents built those programs so we can take care of ourselves.

The richest man in the world and Donald Trump have another agenda. They have left your agenda behind. They left you guys to do the dirty work.

Donald Trump is collecting a $400 million flying grift gift from Qatar. They are giving him bribery force one. Nobody has ever seen anything like this in the history of the United States. They are trying to give him a jet plane.

It is humiliating for the American President to be flying around in a plane created by the dictator, the theocratic monster of Qatar, while they are collecting billions of dollars. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has gotten $2 billion from Saudi Arabia.

This is totally in violation of the Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 says that nobody holding an office of trust under the United States shall, without the consent of the Congress, collect a ``present, emolument, office, or title of any kind whatever from any king, prince, or foreign state.''

That is Donald Trump's new business, to go collect foreign government emoluments.

I hope my colleagues will join us in demanding that he come to Congress to ask for permission to keep that $400 million bug-riddled airplane that he wants to fly around on somebody else's tab. It is absurd, the lengths that they have gone to, to mangle and trample our Constitution.

Let's get back to law enforcement and the rule of law, starting with the Constitution of the United States of America. The President wants to keep all of these gifts from foreign dictators. Come to Congress.

That is what Abraham Lincoln did. The King of Siam gave Abraham Lincoln elephant tusks. This is in the middle of the Civil War. Check out the descent of honor and integrity in our country. In the middle of the Civil War, President Lincoln comes to Congress and says: Can I keep those elephant tusks? Congress comes back with a message: We love you, Honest Abe. You are doing a great job in the war, but no. Turn those over to the Department of the Interior.

My colleagues will not even demand that Donald Trump bring his corrupt gifts, his royal spoils, to the Congress of the United States to ask our consent. Every President has done it up until this one.

Let's get back to the rule of law. Let's enforce the Constitution. Let's honor the police officers who defended us. Let's stay away from bills that just put a lot more guns into traffic to make life more dangerous for police officers and for everybody in America.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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