National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2010

Floor Speech

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2010 -- (Senate - July 20, 2009)

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AMENDMENT NO. 1618

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, the business pending before the Senate is the amendment I have offered to the Defense authorization bill. I think it is close to nearing an agreement with both sides about a process for proceeding to have debate on this amendment and then perhaps, hopefully, a vote sometime as early as Wednesday of this week.

I think it is important to note for the record--because many have already or some at least have come down already and spoken on this amendment--that I had hoped to offer this amendment as a second-degree amendment to the hate crimes amendment that has been on the floor now for the past week. The Defense authorization bill was brought up early last week. Immediately, this hate crimes amendment was offered. It is a nongermane amendment. It is not relevant, obviously, to the underlying content of the bill.

The Defense bill sets priorities for our national security interests for the coming year. Yet the Democratic leadership chose to make the hate crimes amendment the first amendment to be debated and voted upon. When they did that, it had been my intention to offer as a second-degree amendment the concealed carry amendment, which is now the pending amendment before the Senate. It makes sense in a lot of ways, to me, to do that simply because one of the best ways to help prevent hate crimes against potential victims of hate crimes is to allow them to defend themselves. The concealed carry permit is something most States across the country have. What my amendment simply does is it allows those who have concealed carry permits in their own States to be able to move across State lines to other States that also allow concealed carry permits. Obviously, they also have to respect the laws of those individual States if there are restrictions on the exercise of that right.

I think it is important in the debate over hate crimes to point out that the victims of those crimes ought to have at their disposal as many ways of defending themselves as is possible. Frankly, there are lots of organizations that have come out in support of this amendment for that reason, because they believe if you want to prevent those types of violent crimes, those types of hate crimes from being committed in this country, one way to do that is to allow individuals who are the potential victims of those types of crimes to be able to have a concealed carry permit in order to deter a crime from being committed.

It is also important to point out that there are a number of arguments that have been raised against this amendment which just, frankly, are not true.

First of all, my amendment does not create a national concealed carry permit system or standard. My amendment does not allow individuals to conceal and carry within States that do not allow their own citizens to do so. My amendment does not allow citizens to circumvent their home State's concealed carry permit laws. If an individual is currently prohibited from possessing a firearm under Federal law, my amendment would continue to prohibit them from doing so. When an individual with a valid concealed carry permit from their home State travels to a State that allows their citizens to conceal and carry, the visitor must comply with the restrictions of the State they are in.

It has been suggested that somehow this preempts State laws. That is not the case. The restrictions an individual State imposes upon concealed carry laws that have been enacted by that State must be followed by any individual who has a concealed carry permit in their own State. In other words, the individual who travels to that State will be required to live under the laws that are on the books in that State.

But it does get at an issue which I think many have raised regarding people who travel across State lines all the time--truckdrivers, for instance, who on any given day take a cargo load from one State across several States in this country and want to be able to protect themselves as they do so. In many cases, they stay overnight in truckstops or pull over for a nap somewhere. Being able to possess a firearm that would enable them to have some level of self-protection and to deter crimes from being committed makes a lot of sense.

So the amendment is very straightforward and very simple. It is simply tailored to allow individuals to protect themselves while at the same time respecting States rights. So individual States can continue to enact restrictions on that, and every State has those. They may be place restrictions, and I think most States--I know my State of South Dakota has restrictions regarding courthouses, schools, and those sorts of places where there are restrictions against concealed carry. Many States have those types of laws which would apply to anyone who has a concealed carry permit in their own State of residence and moves into another State that also has a concealed carry permit law. So they would have to live under the laws of those States. So I want to make very clear what the amendment does and doesn't do.

I have heard it said here that somehow this is going to be used to circumvent or to preempt State laws. That certainly is not the case. But it does get at the heart of what is a constitutional right in this country. The second amendment of the Constitution allows people to keep and bear arms. That is a constitutional right, and it should not be infringed upon. Like I said before, an individual State can enact statutes that impose restrictions on that. That is something most States have, and every State treats the situation a little differently. But an individual should be able to exercise their second amendment constitutional right and be able to travel through individual States as long as they live by the laws of those States.

So that is essentially what the amendment does. It is very simple, very straightforward, and not particularly complicated, as I said. It certainly doesn't do many of the things that have been proposed here on the floor that it does. So I thought it was important to set the record straight.

Obviously, we will have a debate about this in the next couple of days. I think we will probably have a debate on the defense amendment here first, and then we will get to this particular issue. But I hope my colleagues, as they listen to that debate, will do their best to ferret out and to differentiate facts from myth and facts from fiction because there are a lot of statements that are being made that are not consistent with the facts, and the facts on this are very clear.

So I look forward to having the opportunity to make that case and to have this issue debated. As I said before, I had hoped to be able to offer this as a second-degree amendment to the hate crimes amendment because I think it fits very nicely there. As I said before, it ties in to the overall theme of protecting potential victims from hate crimes by allowing them to have a deterrent. Obviously, a concealed carry permit acts as a deterrent and has been proven over time, both in terms of the data you look at as well as a lot of anecdotal examples, to have the desired effect, which is to prevent many of these crimes from occurring in the first place.

Because the Democratic leadership filled the tree--in other words, precluded or prevented my offering a second-degree amendment to the hate crimes amendment--we are now offering it as a first-degree amendment and understand completely the importance of moving the Defense bill forward. So I think, on Wednesday, after we have had a certain amount of time to debate, we will bring it to a vote, and I hope my colleagues would support this. I think it is an amendment that has broad bipartisan support. I already have 22 or 23 cosponsors on this amendment from both sides of the aisle, and I hope that number grows because it is common sense. It has been very effective in many States across the country.

We want to use as many tools as we can to deter crime, particularly violent crimes that are committed against individuals in this country. It seems to me it makes sense in having a concealed carry permit law that allows an individual who has a valid concealed carry permit in their individual State of residence an opportunity to move freely across this country and to have that constitutional right protected.

With that, Madam President, I yield the balance of my time and look forward in the next day or two, as this issue is debated further, to having a discussion with my colleagues here in the Senate in hopes that we can get this amendment enacted on this bill. So I hope my colleagues will vote for it when the time comes.

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