National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2010

Floor Speech

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2010 -- (Senate - July 22, 2009)

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, let me, if I might, point out some of the statistics, and I will also add in response to the comments of my colleague from Illinois that the amendment was not applied to the District of Columbia.

With respect to the issue of federalism, I think it is important to note that back in 2003, there were 70 cosponsors in the Senate for a piece of legislation that allowed retired law enforcement and current law enforcement officers to carry across State lines--obviously an infringement on this notion of federalism that the Senator from Illinois has raised.

I also would point out that we do know the impact. The Senator from Illinois said we don't know what the impact of this is going to be. Any suggestion about what impacts could occur are very hypothetical. What we do know is that there are a number of States that have already enacted national concealed carry reciprocity agreements. In those States, we also know what the impacts have been. The impacts have been that clearly there has been less crime rather than more.

Studies have shown that there is more defensive gun use by victims than there are crimes committed with firearms in this country. In fact, researchers have estimated that there are as many as 2.5 million defensive uses of firearms in the United States each year, though a lot of those go unreported because no shots are ever fired. There are lots of examples, and I have a list of them here I could go through anecdotally too. These are those that have been recorded by the press where actually the defensive use by a firearm, someone with a concealed carry permit, has actually helped prevent crimes. There are countless examples of those that have been documented and reported by the press, not to mention, as I said, the estimated 2.5 million defensive uses of firearms in the United States each year.

There are estimated to be about 5 million concealed carry permit holders in the United States today. Assuming that every instance reported by gun control groups of improper firearm use by individuals with a concealed carry permit is true--something that can be debated, but assuming that it is true--over an entire year, for over 142,857 permit holders, there would be one--one--improper use of a firearm.

Put another way, concealed carry permit holders would be 15 times less--15 times less--likely than the rest of the public to commit murder.

There are some States--and some large States, frankly--that have issued concealed carry permits, and probably one of the largest States is the State of Florida. They have had a concealed carry permit law in effect in the State of Florida going back to 1987. Yet if you look at the 1.57 million concealed carry permits that people have in the State of Florida, there have only been 167 of those revoked. That is less than one-tenth of 1 percent.

As of 2008, Utah, which allows both residents and nonresidents to acquire concealed carry permits, had 134,398 active concealed handgun permits. Over the past year they have had 12 revocations or .009 percent because of some type of violent crime, but none of those crimes, incidentally, involved the use of a gun. During the 1990s and through the decade of 2000 so far, independent researchers have found 11 cases where a permit holder committed murder with a gun.

I would simply point out to my colleagues that the points that are being made by the Senator from Illinois are largely speculative. If you go back to 1991, the number of privately owned guns has risen by about 90 million to an all-time high. Over that same timeframe, the Nation's murder rate has decreased 46 percent to a 43-year low, and the total violent crime rate has decreased 41 percent to a 35-year low. This at a time--as I said, since 1991, the number of privately owned guns has increased by about 90 million to an all-time high. Also, as I said before, the number of permits that are issued across the country is about 5 million nationally. My State of South Dakota has about 47,000, but it is a small percentage of the overall number of Americans who actually could access or could get a concealed carry permit who do it. Most of them have a reason for doing it. Most of them are going to be people such as truckdrivers who are going across State lines such as the example I mentioned. There are lots of people who travel.

For example, as another case in point, I have two daughters who are in college. My oldest one will graduate next year. Currently she is in the safe confines of a college campus, but she attends college several States away from our State of South Dakota. When she is out of college next year, I fully expect--and we have discussed this--that she may get a concealed carry permit in the State in which she resides, to have a firearm in order to protect herself, because I think a lot of single women in this country do, particularly those who live in large cities and she would be living in a large city. When she comes home to South Dakota she, of course, traverses several States and during the course of that, she crosses two States where it would be illegal to have a firearm in her possession in her car to protect her as she travels those vast distances across several States.

There are lots of examples I think of people--law-abiding citizens--who, for purposes of self-defense, simply want the opportunity to, in a legal way, transport that firearm and they have concealed carry permits. They have gone through their State's background check--and by the way, all but three States that issue concealed carry permits require background checks, so it is the same thing you would go through in order to buy a firearm.

So the suggestion that all of these people are going to be able to get firearms: The Federal law prevents some of the very examples the Senator from Illinois mentioned from having access to firearms in the first place. Of course, the background checks, with the exception of those three States--as a practical matter those three States, which are New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Delaware, also go through the background checks. They don't have it as a requirement to get a conceal and carry permit. But background checks are going to be conducted. You are going to find out if there is criminal behavior in the background, mental illness, all of those things which under Federal law would prevent that person from possessing a firearm in the first place.

I reserve the balance of my time. The Senator from Louisiana is here and I assume the Presiding Officer will recognize the other side.

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