[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 128 (Tuesday, September 17, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H10434]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          VIOLENCE IN THE HOME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I am here today, first of all, to say 
that over the weekend I was very pleased to hear the Speaker say he had 
no problem with reporting to the floor the bill that I have been 
pushing for a very long time. That is a bill that takes the Brady bill 
and says, if you are also found guilty of domestic violence abuse, you 
should be denied the purchase of a gun. I think all of us understand 
how terribly critical that is.
  This bill passed unanimously in the other body, the Senate. 
Unanimously. Not one vote against it. The President has promised he 
would sign this bill if we could get it to him. He restated that 
promise on the train as he was coming to the convention. So, I would 
hope that this body would at least get that bill up there, now that the 
speaker has said he had no problem with it. He is the last remaining 
roadblock in getting that forward.
  So I hope everybody joins me in sending a letter or speaking to the 
Speaker and getting it here before we go home. If you know the history 
of violence in the home, there is a tremendous number of incidents 
every single year where a weapon brings this to a terrible conclusion.
  Furthermore, the taxpayer funds most of the damage done by those 
weapons because people end up in the emergency wards in America. Very 
often 80 percent of those costs are funded by the taxpayer. This is one 
of the real drivers of high health care insurance or high health care 
costs in this country, the fact that we have not gotten weapons brought 
down under control.
  Mr. Speaker, while the Brady bill was originally terribly 
controversial, people now, I think, are in total agreement it should 
not be rolled back. It is proven and has stopped all sorts of people 
with criminal records from getting a gun. I think every American feels 
that criminals should not be able to go buy a gun, so that makes sense.
  Our biggest problem is many States have not lifted domestic violence 
convictions to the level of a felony. They consider them a misdemeanor. 
Other States have allowed people, even though it is considered a 
felony, to plead guilty to a lesser crime. Therefore, when they do the 
checks for whether or not you should be able to buy the gun, an awful 
lot of people who have been convicted of domestic violence problems are 
able to escape.
  Again, when we look at the record, there is absolutely no reason that 
we should allow this to happen. So I really hope that everybody joins 
with me and we get that done before going home.
  Mr. Speaker, we heard yesterday from both candidates a lot of 
discussion about crime and what they were going to do. I do not think 
we are ever going to solve totally the crime in the street and the 
violence in the society until we crack the culture of violence in the 
home.

                              {time}  1300

  Imagine if you are afraid to be out on the street, if you are afraid 
to walk down the street; that is terrible, and we have to do everything 
we can so that Americans do not become prisoners in their home and 
afraid to go outdoors. But think how much worse it is, Mr. Speaker, if 
you are also afraid to go home because you get beat up at home, too.
  I think that we have been too casual about this for much too long a 
time. And we have begun to make some real progress with the Violence 
Against Women Act, with the Brady bill, with the antiassault weapon 
ban, and now that we have Speaker Gingrich saying this could go 
forward, I hope it does, because we need to keep making that kind of 
progress.
  If a child sees every dispute in the home solved with violence, I 
cannot think of anyone who can put together a good enough conflict 
resolution course that they can teach in the school a couple hours a 
week that would change and overpower what the child learned in the 
home. Examples are so much more powerful.
  So here is something we could do before we go home that could make a 
real difference. It would also save a tremendous amount of money on 
health care because of the costs that we see every year in our 
emergency rooms. I am not quite sure what we are doing here. I mean 
last week we hardly had any votes. September 30 is coming. That means 
the whole government gets shut down again.
  I see us doing all sorts of namby-pamby things. Why do we not do some 
of these things that apparently we now have agreement?
  The other thing I hope that we would be able to do after the 
Speaker's appearance on television this week is get the report out. He 
said he did not have problems with that. I would hope that we could get 
that done before we go home, to have issues that have been floating 
around this House for 2 years, that is settled, I think needs to be 
settled before we go home.

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