[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 129 (Wednesday, September 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H10570-H10571]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     BIPARTISAN PROGRESS ON THE USE OF FIREARMS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT


                 america's presence in the middle east

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, as we can see, nerves are taut here. One 
of the things I would just like to put that into context about is I 
have always thought it was a shame that we had not done more on energy 
independence so we did not have to be in the Gulf anyway.
  One of the problems we have is we are not defending great 
democracies. I have been very upset about how the Saudis treat our 
women in the military. They cannot drive, they cannot do this, they 
cannot do that. I think it is kind of ridiculous that when you are 
there to protect them, they then make it very difficult and put all 
sorts of restrictions on. Exactly the same thing had happened in 
Lebanon. I remember visiting Lebanon as a young member of the Committee 
on Armed Services, and saying this is an absolute nightmare. They said, 
this is the only place they will let us be.
  That is one of the reasons I get so frustrated about burden-sharing. 
I keep figuring if we are there to help, we ought to be able to use our 
best military judgment and not have them say, no, no, we want you just 
over the horizon. We want you here to help, but we do not want you to 
be seen, and we do not want women out, or we do not want this or that.
  Really, Mr. Speaker, what I came to talk about was something that we 
did today, I did today with the gentleman from New Mexico, Mr. Steve 
Schiff. Mr. Schiff and I are probably about as far apart as you can be 
when you come to the issues of firearms. Yet today we had a joint press 
conference, because we do agree on one thing. I wish we could see more 
bipartisan types of progress such as this.
  The gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Schiff] and I have been working 
for the last 3 years trying to get money from the Defense Department to 
transfer it over so we could use it to better the world of law 
enforcement, to bring that up to speed. Today we had the people from 
Colt Manufacturing showing a prototype safe gun that was absolutely 
exciting, because it went from being a glint in our eye to a real 
thing, a real gun that people could see.
  What does this gun do? Guess what, it only works for the owner. When 
you look at the numbers of law enforcement officers every year that are 
killed by their own gun, not to mention people who are guards in jail 
or guarding prisoners or on our border, we have all sorts of people. 
One of the major fears is your gun is stolen and used to kill you.

  This gun would end that fear once and for all, because, as we 
demonstrated today, it would only go off for the owner. The technology 
is here and the gun was there, and we could show it. I think that is 
the type of thing I would hope Republicans and Democrats would work 
together on, so we could fight crime not only by beating our chest and 
saying who is the toughest, who is the meanest, who is the gruffest, 
but also who is the smartest. We have not fought crime as smartly as we 
should.
  When you look at this gun and you look at the very high percentage of

[[Page H10571]]

crimes committed with stolen weapons, all of that would go away, 
because if everybody had this type of weapon, you could steal it, but 
so what? It would be like a rock, it would not do you any good.

                              {time}  1415

  The tremendous number of gun accidents in the home with children, or 
with despondent teens or whatever finding the family gun, again, those 
would go away, because it would only work for the family member who was 
the owner. And, of course, the law enforcement thing was what we 
really, really put all of our force into.
  So Sandia Labs, the National Institute of Justice, and law 
enforcement officers across the country have all been working to make 
sure that this gun is every bit as workable as the gun they have today. 
It cannot be some fancy-schmantsy thing that only works in a perfect 
climate, in a perfect temperature, with or without gloves, whatever.
  This works all the way across the board. It works with a tiny little 
chip. I got to be ring bearer at this event. It could work with a ring. 
It can work with something in the watch. It can work with a chip in the 
hand. It can work any number of ways that sets this off, so that it 
would work in a certain radius around the person but be absolutely not 
able to be reprogrammed or worked by someone else unless they had mega, 
megacomputers that could rewrite the codes.
  So my dream would be that we see more of these types of actions. 
Because while maybe many of the people who support me would like to see 
a gun-free world, and while many of the people who support the 
gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Schiff] would like to have no 
restrictions, we know that there are going to be guns around and that 
law enforcement is going to need them. So why do we not use whatever we 
have got to make them as safe, as accident-free and as valueless if 
anyone steals them as possible. That is today what we did in the safe 
gun. I would hope we would see that as a model for future action.

                          ____________________