[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 137 (Monday, October 5, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11500-S11502]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ONE GUN A MONTH FORUM

 Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, on September 2, I convened a 
forum on gun trafficking. Across America, it is simply too easy for 
criminals, particularly gangs, to purchase and distribute large numbers 
of guns. And more guns in the wrong hands means more murder and mayhem 
on our streets.
  Because we must move more aggressively to stop this deadly crime, I 
introduced S. 466, the Anti-Gun Trafficking Act. The testimony I heard 
at the forum has made me even more determined to pass this sensible 
legislation and help stop gun traffickers.
  In order to share the insights of the witnesses at the forum with my 
colleagues and the public, I am submitting the testimony presented for 
inclusion in the Congressional Record. Last week, I submitted the 
testimony of Mayor Edward Rendell. Today, I am submitting the testimony 
of James and Sarah Brady. Through their tireless efforts with The 
Center to Prevent Handgun Violence and Handgun Control, they have 
helped reduce gun violence across our country and it was an honor to 
have them at the forum.
  I am also submitting the testimony from several young people who were 
kind enough to testify at the forum. John Schuler, Kenisha Green and 
Quanita Favorite live in communities where gun violence is an everyday 
occurrence, and they have experienced the pain and misery that results. 
We must do more to help them and the

[[Page S11501]]

other children who live in the crime-ridden neighborhoods of our 
nation.
  Mr. President, I ask that the testimony of James Brady and Sarah 
Brady, along with excerpts from the testimony of John Schuler, Kenisha 
Green, and Quanita Favorite, be printed in the Record.
  The material follows:


     john schuler--21 years old--resident of benning terrace in se 
                             washington dc

       I live in a neighborhood that guns are always going off. 
     You hear them late at night or early in the morning hours. It 
     sometimes feels like a war zone. The bad part about it is 
     that you never feel safe. You always have this fear that it 
     could be you that gets shot today. That's no way for children 
     to grow up.
       Nobody is willing to do anything about it. Guns are sold 
     all the time and its like--you can get one anytime you want 
     one. The people who sell em' don't even live in the 
     neighborhood. It's like a business you know. All the time, 
     somebody needs a pistol to protect themselves or because they 
     got to get somebody before they get taken out themselves.
       I've seen friends get shot or killed sometimes for no 
     reason at all. Or because they were in the wrong place at the 
     wrong time. You can get what ever you need, gloc, special or 
     what ever, you can get it if you got the cash.


  Kenisha green--20 years old--resident of park morton, washington, dc

       I've got so much to say and it just doesn't seem to be 
     enough time to explain how I feel. I've seen guns sold in and 
     around my neighborhood, to my friends and to my enemies. The 
     fact of the matter is that nobody wins. Every time a gun is 
     sold or stolen and ends up on the streets, you can just 
     scratch off somebody's baby being dead. We are killing each 
     other at alarming rates and its like nobody cares because 
     they say--``they're poor, or they're just dope dealers, or 
     they're just not worth it.'' It's not fair. Other kids get to 
     go to college and we get to go to funerals. These people who 
     sell guns are the real predators. They feed off of our pain 
     and make it seem like we be the animals. Any kind of weapon 
     you want, if you got the cash its available.


quanita favorite--18 years old--resident kennedy street nw washington, 
                                   dc

       Just like they sell crack in neighborhood guns are sold all 
     the time in my community. Just last week outside my apartment 
     I could hear a man and woman arguing in the alley. He pulled 
     out a pistol and started firing at her. It's like Dodge City 
     . . . everybody seems to be carrying. Not long ago my uncle 
     was shot and killed on Capital Hill. I still have nightmares. 
     Why are guns so easy to get in our neighborhood? Why do 
     people sell guns like candy and make the victims the guilty 
     parties. We are suffering in our neighborhood and nobody 
     really cares.
       I work for the Advocates for Youth here in Washington. My 
     job is helping other young people understand the violence and 
     that they can do something about it. Almost every person who 
     we come in contact with, throughout the Nation's Capital has 
     been touched by gun violence. Either a close loved one or a 
     friend at school. When people can purchase guns from other 
     states and easily bring them to sell on the streets of 
     Washington, we've got a real problem.
       I don't want to die or raise children in an environment 
     where walking down my street could be a life or death 
     situation. people have got to understand that we need drastic 
     measures to curb the illegal sales and purchases of weapons 
     or we all will become victims.
                                  ____


 Testimony of Sarah Brady, Chair, Handgun Control, Inc., September 2, 
                                  1998

       Good morning. I'm Sarah Brady, chair of Handgun Control, 
     Inc. and the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence.
       For too many years, the ladies and gentlemen of the United 
     States Congress have heard strenuous objections from the NRA 
     and its allies to reasonable gun control measures. The Brady 
     Bill, the assault weapon ban, and the currently pending 
     Childrens' Gun Violence Prevention Act of 1998 . . . all were 
     characterized by the gun lobby as an assault of the rights of 
     gunowners that would do nothing to stop the trafficking and 
     use of firearms by criminals.
       The gun lobby was and is wrong about those measures, but 
     I'm particularly curious to hear what they have to say about 
     the proposal we are discussing today that would limit handgun 
     purchases to one a month. You see, the whole point of this 
     proposal is to make it extremely difficult for straw 
     purchasers to buy multiple firearms and resell them to the 
     criminal market. As every major law enforcement group in the 
     nation will tell you, these multiple sales are the easiest 
     and most efficient way for legal guns to transform themselves 
     into the tools of robbery, rape and homicide.
       But you don't have to take my word for it. In 1993, the 
     same year this federal legislation was first introduced by 
     Senator Lautenberg, Virginia reacted to its reputation as the 
     number one gun trafficking state in the northeast by passing 
     its own one-handgun-a-month law. As our research demonstrated 
     three years later, Virginia's law successfully disrupted the 
     gun trafficking pattern from that state to the rest of the 
     northeast. For crime guns purchased after implementation to 
     the new law that were recovered in the Northeast, Virginina's 
     share fell by 54%. Even more dramatically, the percentage of 
     guns traced back to Virginia gun dealers fell by 61% for guns 
     recovered in New York, 67% for guns recovered in 
     Massachusetts, and 38% for guns recovered in New Jersey. 
     Quite simply, the one-gun-a-month law curtailed Virginia's 
     role as the arms supplier for the eastern seaboard.
       Maryland's one-gun-a-month law took effect in October, 
     1996. Last year I joined Governor Glendenning in applauding 
     the law's effects--in 1997, not one Maryland handgun bought 
     in a multiple sale was traced from a crime in the District of 
     Columbia. And, the state not only showed an overall drop in 
     crime in 1997, but as of last November, Baltimore police 
     recovered 623 handguns, as opposed to 934 in the year before 
     the law went into effect.
       But as effective as one-gun-a-month laws are at the state 
     level, a national law would do so much more to curb 
     interstate gun trafficking. The same tracing data that 
     demonstrates that Maryland and Virginia are no longer the 
     main suppliers for gun traffickers demonstrates that Georgia, 
     Florida and other states with weak gun laws have to some 
     degree taken over the business. If even one state allows 
     straw purchasers to walk out of gun stores with ten 
     semiautomatic pistols in a bag, we will all suffer when those 
     guns make their way to the streets and alleys of neighboring 
     communities. Just last spring, Philadelphia law enforcement 
     officials cited the multiple sales of weapons to concealed-
     carry licensees as one of the most important sources of that 
     city's continually high rate of gun violence.
       We need to stop pretending, after all this time, that the 
     gun problem and the crime problem exist independently of each 
     other. New research by the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence 
     demonstrates that the more guns sold per transaction, the 
     more likely that those guns will be recovered in another 
     state in connection with a criminal investigation. The Center 
     studied data involving 1,173 guns that were traced by ATF as 
     part of a criminal investigation and which were later 
     discovered to have been purchased as part of a multiple sale 
     transaction.
       The Center's study showed a clear link between multiple 
     sales and interstate gun running. Guns that were purchased as 
     part of a sale involving 3 or more guns were trice as likely 
     as other guns to be recovered in another state.
       The research also showed that a gun purchased as part of a 
     multiple sale is far more likely to be a junk gun, or 
     Saturday Night Special. A gun that is purchased as part of a 
     sale involving more than three guns is three times more 
     likely to be a Saturday Night Special. It doesn't take much 
     imagination to see what is happening here: interstate gun 
     traffickers are acquiring Saturday night specials at the bulk 
     rate in one state and selling them in another.
       These conclusions bear out what our common sense tells us. 
     Gun dealers know that the guy with the hundred dollar bills 
     buying 10 Lorcins at a time is not giving them out as party 
     favors to his buddies. Law enforcement knows that the drug 
     dealer's girlfriend buying five Tec-9 assault pistols is not 
     using them to decorate her living room. Prosecutors know that 
     the straw purchaser with the technically clean record who is 
     fronting for violent criminals is as dangerous as a drug-
     dealer--but much harder to catch and put away. Jim and I know 
     that the Brady Law's background checks and waiting periods 
     cannot prevent a buyer with a clear record from supplying 
     half the gangsters in his neighborhood with guns at a hefty 
     profit. And the public knows that criminals will still take 
     the easiest route to a gun--and right now, that route is the 
     illegal gun trafficker who buys 20, 30 or 40 guns a month.
       Five years ago, during the debate over Virginia's proposed 
     law, NRA Executive Director Wayne LaPierre acknowledged that 
     ``not many law-abiding Virginians purchase more than one gun 
     a month.'' Well, of course they don't, Wayne. Given the high 
     cost of a quality firearm, most people don't want or need to 
     buy more than one gun a month--it's like buying four or five 
     televisions or refrigerators in a month. Twelve guns a year 
     is more than enough to give any law-abiding sportsman the 
     arsenal of his dreams--and to prevent those with other 
     objectives from getting the firepower they need to rob, to 
     rape and to murder.
       We have waited long enough for a sensible solution to this 
     nation's crime and gun problem to be implemented. Let's start 
     preventing some of the crimes we are spending hundreds of 
     millions of dollars to punish. Let's make this Congress pass 
     a real and common-sense achievement for our nation's well-
     being and public safety, and pass this long-overdue anti-gun 
     trafficking measure.
       Thank you.
                                  ____


              Testimony of James Brady, September 2, 1998

       As a life-long Republican, I have always been a champion of 
     small business. But there is one small businessman that 
     should be put out of business and that's the professional gun 
     trafficker. Professional gun traffickers, like other 
     businessmen, have to make a living, and you don't make a 
     living by selling just one handgun per month. If you are a 
     professional gun trafficker, you have to buy and sell in 
     volume.
       Let me give you a few examples:
       In December 1997, three police officers were shot with one 
     of the many guns supplied by Michael Cartier, who pleaded 
     guilty to firearms trafficking in a federal court on August

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     5, 1998. Cartier admitted that he bought 11 guns in one day 
     in Alabama, to be sold in Rochester, New York. He also 
     admitted that he dealt firearms in Western New York without a 
     license between June 20, 1997 and February 14, 1998, and that 
     he purchased 28 other firearms before February 14.
       In March 1996, Bronx police officer Kevin Gillespie was 
     fatally shot while attempting to intercept a carjacking. An 
     investigation of four handguns found at the scene uncovered a 
     nationwide gun trafficking ring reaching from Houston, Texas 
     to Columbus, Ohio, to Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The New 
     York Times reported that 14 high-powered handguns sold by the 
     smugglers were purchased from one Ohio gun store during a 
     three-month period. Many of those guns were recovered by 
     police in drug dens and at other crime scenes.
       In April of 1995, a notorious gang member attempted to 
     murder a Los Angeles police detective. The handgun he used 
     was traced to a gun-trafficking ring that had purchased at 
     least 1,000 firearms in Phoenix and sold them to Los Angeles-
     area gangs.
       By passing a law limiting handgun purchases to one handgun 
     a month, you will be putting professional gun traffickers, 
     like those I just mentioned, out of business. With all due 
     respect to you, Senator Lautenberg, I think you should choose 
     a different name for this legislation. I would suggest you 
     call it, ``The Gun Trafficker's Unemployment Act of 1998.'' 
     Take it from me: this is one business we don't need.
       Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

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