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Floor Speech
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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to continue Republicans' fighting, as we are fighting tooth and nail to protect the rights of American citizens. And one of those rights, of course, is one that you and I know very well from our home States, the right to keep and bear arms.
The Second Amendment guarantees that every American--every American-- has the right to own and use a firearm, and every day people across your State of Oklahoma, my State of Wyoming, use that right responsibly.
We also know that, for the last 4 years, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and the radical Democrats have waged a war against the Second Amendment rights of American citizens. They tried to ban firearms, tried to tax ammunition to the point where it couldn't be afforded, directed the ATF to harass law-abiding gun owners, tried to make it impossible for citizens to buy, own, transport, or use a firearm.
So now Republicans are in control in the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House, and we are defending the Second Amendment from those who would try to take it away from us.
Senator Cornyn of Texas has introduced the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act. This bold legislation allows qualified citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights in any State that respects concealed carry.
Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas has introduced something called the SHORT Act. This legislation stops rogue bureaucrats--Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms--from harassing lawful gun owners. It shields citizens from unconstitutional gun registration schemes.
Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee has introduced the Protecting Privacy in Purchasing Act. This legislation is a direct strike against Democrats' alarming overreach on gun purchases. It will safeguard gun owners from the government's invasive tracking and spying on lawful purchases.
So, look, I am proud to be a cosponsor of all three of these pieces of important pro-freedom legislation. This fight is one of the most important that we are ever going to conduct. It is Democrats across the country that are determined to take away the rights of law-abiding American citizens.
They are pushing their anti-gun agenda in the courts. It is another place this is being fought out. They are scheming right here in the U.S. Senate to come after our Second Amendment rights.
When Democrats held the majority, we know what we saw. They had the audacity to try to ram through an unconstitutional so-called assault weapons ban, and they tried to do it by unanimous consent, coming here onto the floor and just trying to sneak it through. Well, I was proud to stand here in this Chamber, face them down, and emphatically say no to your unanimous consent.
Now Democrats are in the minority. Have they changed in terms of their beliefs in the Second Amendment? No, not at all. They continue to be obsessed with banning semiautomatic firearms simply because of the way the firearms look. That is what they are after. Let me be clear. Democrats' ban on so-called assault weapons--that is their phrase--is an assault on law-abiding gun owners, an assault against all of us. Every single page of their bill adds a new restriction, a new burden, and a new attack on citizens who follow the law. It dictates what you can buy and what you can't buy, bans more than 205 popular rifles, shotguns, and pistols, and it bans them by name. That is how extreme they have gotten. They want to trample on the rights of law-abiding citizens.
And it is a fascinating thing because they--instead of tramping on the rights of law-abiding citizens, they are out there trying to protect illegal immigrants' rights, saying they have rights. They don't.
That is the contrast of our party fighting for the rights of citizens, their party fighting for the rights of illegal immigrants.
Democrats are the party of defunding the police, the party of disarming the American people. Their actions have made our streets more dangerous, not safer. We are for safety and prosperity. They seem to be not for either.
So I oppose any of these policies that threaten the Second Amendment rights of the people of Wyoming, the people of your State of Oklahoma, and the people from States all across the country.
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