[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 79 (Monday, June 7, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H3746-H3752]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            TIME TO PASS COMMONSENSE GUN SAFETY LEGISLATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Green of Wisconsin). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentlewoman from Connecticut 
(Ms. DeLauro) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
minority leader.


              The White House Conference on Mental Health

  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, before we begin our commentary this 
evening, I want to congratulate my colleague, the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) and my colleague from California who spoke 
earlier about the White House Conference on Mental Health.
  I had the honor to participate in that event as well today, and just 
very, very quickly, I think it is clear that we need to focus on the 
issue of mental health. It is so critical in our society.
  One, we cannot divorce the head from the rest of the body. We need to 
have the recognition that mental illness is an illness like other 
physical illnesses that people have. We need to destigmatize it.
  We need to provide, most essentially, insurance coverage in the same 
way that we provide insurance coverage for physical illnesses. There 
needs to be parity for mental illnesses. We should consider that good 
mental health is good public health, and we need to promote that 
effort. So I compliment my colleague on her comments.
  Mr. Speaker, this evening I am pleased to join with other colleagues, 
because we recognize that this is an important week for this Congress. 
Two weeks ago the United States Senate did the right thing. It is now 
time for the House of Representatives to do the right thing. That is to 
pass gun safety legislation for children in our country.
  Thirteen children every single day are killed by guns in America. By 
comparison, there was an interesting statistic, that we lose one police 
officer every other day. That means it is more dangerous to be a child 
in America than it is to be a law enforcement officer. That is wrong. 
We need to pass commonsense gun safety laws in order to protect the 
children in this country.
  Democrats in this body are a minority. We need votes from 
Republicans, from the other side of the aisle, to pass any piece of 
legislation. I believe that 85 percent of the Democrats in this body 
will vote for commonsense gun safety legislation to protect our 
youngsters. We need 20 percent of our Republican colleagues in the 
House to say no to their leadership and to join us to try to do the 
right thing.
  We can in fact pass strong bipartisan gun safety legislation for 
children in this body. That has been the historical past. In 1995 with 
the Brady Bill, with an assault weapons ban, these pieces of 
legislation happened because thoughtful, reflective people came 
together on both sides of the aisle to say that this makes sense for 
our country. We have the opportunity to do that again this week. I 
happen to believe that American families and American children are 
counting on us to do our jobs.
  What we have seen in the last couple of weeks, there were a number of 
us who wanted to try to pass this legislation before we left for the 
Memorial Day break, but we were told that we needed to come back to 
have hearings, that there needed to be a more thoughtful approach to 
how we dealt with this.

[[Page H3747]]

  What has happened in the interim, and I think it is important to note 
this, unfortunately, the National Rifle Association, they asked for 
this delay and they received a two-week delay from the Republican 
leadership in this House.
  That was designed to give the NRA time to generate a campaign of fear 
in an attempt to influence this vote, to water down the provisions that 
were passed by the United States Senate around which there was 
agreement that these were good pieces that everyone could agree to.
  The NRA has generated that campaign of fear. That is what they have 
been doing. I just want to read briefly from a letter that was sent out 
over the weekend from the NRA. It is an astounding example of big money 
propaganda, but it has little relationship to the truth.
  If I can just read one or two excerpts, and I quote, ``What the 
Clinton-Gore-Lautenberg-Schumer legislation would do is to impose a 
cradle-to-grave massive Federal regulatory scheme on gun owners 
throughout America, and that is no exaggeration.''
  The second item, this legislation, ``It gives the Federal Government 
open-ended authority to issue phone-book sized volumes of new Federal 
red tape on Americans who buy and sell firearms. It gives the Federal 
Government authority to keep names and addresses of citizens in FBI 
files, even after they are cleared as honest people entitled to buy 
firearms. It imposes virtually unlimited Federal fees across the board, 
whether you are selling guns, buying guns, or organizing or attending a 
gun show.''
  The final item, again I quote, ``None of this has a thing to do with 
the Littleton or Georgia school attacks or any violent crime anywhere 
in America. It has everything to do with an attempt by gun haters and 
the enemies of your Second Amendment freedoms to dismantle the Second 
Amendment, one step at a time.''
  That they could comment to say that the Nation has not focused its 
mind, hearts, and energy on what happened in Littleton, Colorado, or in 
Conyers, Georgia, this is mind-boggling. They say it has nothing to do 
with this event. It has nothing to do with Georgia?
  I say, I do not understand where these people come from. This has 
everything to do with Littleton, Colorado, and with Conyers, Georgia. 
This has everything to do with parents who today are afraid to send 
their children to schools. They are afraid of utilizing what has been 
the route to opportunity and success in this country, the classroom, 
the schoolroom.
  I heard a fifth-grader last night in Orange, Connecticut, say that 
schools used to be the safest place to be. She, this little mite of a 
person, was reading her little statement at a town meeting, and she 
said, ``I have had to ask myself and ask my classmates whether or not 
this could happen in my school. And I have to answer that yes. And it 
makes me sad and it makes me afraid.''

  All we are asking for in this body, again, on this side of the aisle, 
is let us pay attention to the hue and cry of the American public in 
asking us to try to do something to bring some sense out of fear and 
some sense out of chaos. Parents and teachers are pleading with us to 
respond. We are in the midst of a national crisis.
  Frankly, in my view there is no need for this kind of propaganda 
where the safety of our kids is concerned. We do not need to be engaged 
in hyperbole. We need to be very careful about this issue. We need to 
be very thoughtful and reflective about this issue.
  Our message to the NRA is that this is the people's House. This is 
not their House. The American people desperately want to see gun safety 
legislation for their children, and those of us who are charged with 
the responsibility of bringing their voices to this people's House have 
an obligation to try to do the will of the public. We should heed their 
voices this week.
  I am optimistic that we will pass good gun safety legislation, 
because while the NRA was generating this campaign over the last few 
weeks, there was another campaign that was going on in this country, a 
campaign by moms and dads, and teachers and grandparents, a grass roots 
campaign in America, people writing, calling, and having town meetings 
like the one that I went to last night on a beautiful Sunday evening in 
Connecticut, in Orange, Connecticut; 200 people willing to sit for 
almost 3 hours to express their views on how we try to deal with youth 
violence in this country.
  Everywhere that I go these days people come up and they ask me, what 
is Congress doing to try to address this issue of gun violence? I went 
to a meeting where I was talking about social security and Medicare, 
and a woman stopped me as I was leaving. She grabbed my arm and she 
said to me, Rosa, she says, you are going back to Congress next week. 
Is there anything that is going to be done about the violence? She 
says, can you do something about gun legislation?
  She says, I have two grandchildren. Both of them were forced to leave 
school 2 weeks ago because they had to be evacuated out of school in 
Indiana. She lives in Connecticut, her grandchildren are in Indiana, 
scared to death because these kids had to be evacuated from their 
classroom because of the fear that is out there.
  I remember reading a story in the wake of the Littleton shooting 
where a Colorado parent said that his 5-year-old asked him, and I 
quote, ``Dad, are they just shooting the big kids, or are they shooting 
the little kids, too?'' Do we want to live in a country where 5-year-
olds fear for their lives? Our 5-year-olds should be learning the ABCs. 
They should be playing outside at recess. They should not be worrying 
about gun violence.
  I view this week as a test for this institution as to whether or not 
we have the courage to act. We have a chance to make such a difference 
in peoples' lives, to do the right thing, to allay some of those fears 
of parents, to begin to make a difference in keeping guns out of the 
hands of young people. But it must be a real deal, commonsense gun 
safety legislation, not watered-down legislation that is filled with 
loopholes.
  We could make some very small changes in our laws that could make a 
big difference in people's lives: Close the gun show loophole and apply 
the Brady background checks at gun shows, require child safety locks to 
be sold with every gun, raise the eligibility age for owning a firearm 
from 18 to 21, and ban the sale of high capacity ammunition clips.
  The issue of youth violence is not an easy one, it is a complex one. 
We need to have parents take greater responsibility for their children. 
We need the entertainment industry to take responsibility for its 
products. We need to ensure that our children have access to the mental 
health care that they need, that we talked about today at this 
conference.
  But we must also curb our children's access to guns. We should pass 
this commonsense gun safety legislation this week. The American people 
I believe are depending on us.
  Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy) is someone 
who is truly a leader in this House of Representatives on this issue, 
someone for whom we have in this body, all of us, a tremendous amount 
of admiration; a woman who has demonstrated such unbelievable courage 
in the face of tragedy in her own life, who has taken on this issue of 
gun safety, and taken her own personal experience and turned it in a 
way to drive energy and vision and inspiration to trying to bring some 
sense to this issue of gun safety.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague, the gentlewoman from New York 
(Mrs. Carolyn McCarthy).
  Mrs. McCARTHY of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for 
yielding to me.
  Mr. Speaker, my good colleague, the gentlewoman from Connecticut, 
mentioned that I came here to Congress to try and make a difference in 
people's lives. Six years ago I used to work in my garden a lot. I 
worked as a nurse. My husband and I used to go skiing in the winter, 
and my son was starting a new job. Then, on December 7th, Pearl Harbor 
Day, an incident happened on Long Island which certainly affected my 
life and many lives on Long Island.

                              {time}  1945

  That day I lost my husband. That day my son almost died, and my world 
became upside down.
  It is almost 6 years now, and I take this issue of gun safety very, 
very personally because, as my son started to

[[Page H3748]]

recover, he said, ``Mom, what is going on out there? Why are people 
shooting each other?'' It was at that point that I vowed that I would 
try and make a difference. It was at that point that I vowed that, if I 
could save one family going through what we on Long Island went 
through, then that would be my job.
  As a nurse, I have always looked at things as holistic. I have always 
looked at things as common sense. I said, well, obviously we have just 
got to tell the story, obviously we have just got to reach out to the 
American people and say, listen, we can make a difference out here. We 
can save people's lives. Never once did I ever think of taking away the 
right of someone to own a gun that never came into my mind.
  But there was more that we could do to make sure that criminals did 
not get their guns. There was more that we could do so that children 
did not accidently find a gun and use it. There was more that we could 
do to save families from going through the pain that we all did.
  Then in 1996, my Representative decided to vote to repeal the assault 
weapons bill. But what people did not realize is how hard I fought to 
make sure that large capacity clips could not be used in this country. 
People said, well, that would not have made any difference in the Long 
Island railroad shooting. It would not have helped my husband, and it 
would not have helped my son, and it would not have helped the people 
in the beginning of the car.
  But I would have to say it would have helped three young people on 
the other end of the car because Colin Ferguson used a clip that had 15 
bullets in it. He was able to get two clips off before courageous 
people were able to tackle him. With the assault weapons bill, we 
brought that down to 10 bullets a clip.
  I will be very honest with my colleagues, I did not know enough about 
guns, I did not know enough about what was going on out there. But one 
of the things I did find out from asking my hunters, ``Do you use these 
large capacity clips? Do you use these to go hunting?'' They said ``Oh, 
absolutely not. You are not allowed to. You have to be a sportsman.'' I 
said, ``Well let me get this right. Large capacity clips, people can 
buy them up to 15, 30, sometimes 60, sometimes 90 clips in one round, 
but we will give the animals in the forest, we will give the birds a 
better chance than a human being.''
  I could not understand that. Why did we have to fight so hard to get 
it down to 10 clips? Colin Ferguson did not miss one person with the 
bullets that he used. If we had had that law passed then, maybe three 
young people on the other end of the train would have survived. We do 
not know. Because the good news is, once the law was passed, we do not 
have a count on how many people were saved because we do not have a 
statistic anymore.
  But I remember that debate back then, because I was part of it. I 
remember the NRA leadership at that time saying this is the slippery 
road. We are going to take away the right of everyone to own a gun. 
That has not happened. That was back in 1994. Now here we are in 1999. 
We have had eight shootings in our schools. We have lost too many 
children and too many were wounded.
  We should be focusing on so many different issues. The gentlewoman 
from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) talked about mental health. As a nurse, I 
can tell my colleagues that is something that we have to work with 
especially in our schools. Our children seem to be under so much 
pressure today. We have a lot of things that we can work on together, 
working with the parents, working with the schools, working with our 
community police to try and stop these tragedies. But people are 
forgetting because they do not make the newspapers. When we lose 13 
young people a day, that is a Littleton every single day. We cannot 
lose focus on that.
  But one of the things that upsets me, again, the NRA leadership. I 
keep saying the word ``leadership'' for a reason, because I have a lot 
of NRA members in my district. I talked to them, and I said, ``This is 
what we are trying to do. Do you see anything wrong with this? Is there 
anything wrong with a child safety lock?'' They said, ``Carolyn, we 
already store our guns correctly. We take those precautions.'' Do my 
colleagues know what, almost every hunter does.
  We are not concerned about those that actually know how to store 
their guns, but we have so many people today that just go out and buy a 
gun, do not learn how to use it, bring it home, and leave it in the 
home. That is inviting disaster. That is inviting disaster.
  What we are trying to do is modest, and they will say, the NRA 
leadership, that it is not going to save anyone's life. I have heard 
this debate for so long, and, yet, when I look at other countries, 
other countries that do not have the killings like we do, they have the 
same social problems as we do, they have drug problems, they have 
alcohol problems, they have mental health problems, and yet they are 
not losing over 30,000 people a year or they are not losing over 5,000 
children under the age of 18 every single year.
  There is something wrong here. All I am asking is for this House to 
put forward what the Senate put forward. All I am asking, let us try to 
see if we can bring gun violence down in this country. Let us see if we 
can do this.
  As I said, what the Senate has put forward are modest steps. Do I 
think that we should be able to do more? Yes. Will that debate 
hopefully come in the future? I hope so. But this week let us see where 
the House is, because a week ago Thursday, I sat with the gentlewoman 
from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) on the juvenile justice committee, and I 
sat there. I am usually a very optimistic person, but by the time we 
left that committee hearing, I said, oh, my God. We are not going to 
get anything done. The NRA leadership is going to come into this 
committee and water down those modest bills that were passed. Child 
safety locks. Closing the loopholes in our shows, our gun shows.
  Yet, if my colleagues listen to the NRA leadership, and unfortunately 
so many of their members will read this and get scared, they will get 
scared because they will say they are trying to take away my right to 
own a gun, there is nothing in the bills that we are trying to be 
passed, hopefully this week, that will take away the right of a legal 
citizen, a legal person to buy a gun.
  Will there be some inconveniences? Yes, there will be. But do my 
colleagues know what? Again, talking to gun owners, women gun owners, 
men gun owners, they are willing to take that inconvenience if it can 
save a child's life, if it can save someone's life.
  We see statistics that gun violence has come down in this country as 
far as homicides. What no one talks about is what it is costing this 
health care system, because medical technology, thank God, are saving 
people. That is not a statistic.
  My son is a statistic. He survived. He was not supposed to live. But 
there is no count on him and what it has cost this country to get him 
where he is today and the struggles that he has to go through on a 
daily basis to keep what he has worked so hard to get.
  People do not realize, when someone is injured as severely as Kevin 
was, he has to have physical therapy three times a week. He has to work 
out every single day. He is one person. Multiply that by all the 
accidents and certainly intentional shootings that happen in this 
country on a daily basis.

  We have estimates from $2 billion to $3 billion a year that it is 
costing our health care system, $2 billion to $3 billion a year. Gosh 
what we could do with that money. Gosh, we could push that into 
education. We could put that into our health care system. We could help 
our senior citizens. We could help our veterans. Yet, they do not want 
us to do anything.
  There are many Members here, good Members that are petrified of the 
NRA leadership, and they should be. They should be.
  What I am asking the American people, what I am asking every mother, 
every father, we need to hear from your voice starting now and going 
through until we get good legislation passed that could hopefully save 
a child's life, hopefully save a family from going through the grief 
that so many families go through, because I have to tell everyone I 
think, there are so many of us as victims that have been fighting so 
long for this, many victims before me, and the only reason we got 
involved is because we did not want another family to go through this.

[[Page H3749]]

  That is my job. That is why I am here. It is a job that I would love 
to be able to finish and go home to my garden, go home and maybe have 
some time to go skiing. But until that job is done, I am going to stay 
here, and I am going to fight tooth and nail, because that is what the 
people of my area voted me in for.
  We have a long way to go. I am asking those Members that I know will 
have a tough time to stand up. But if the American people do not stand 
with them, they are going to have too many Members here that are going 
to be afraid to vote on legislation that could save lives.
  Let us have a chance for a change, let us try and do the right thing 
for a change, let us see if we can do common sense legislation and 
maybe, and this is the good news, maybe we will see a drop, even more 
so in homicide. Maybe we will see a drop in suicides in our young 
people. Maybe we will see accidental deaths come down even more.
  But it will be amazing if we see a drop in the amount of money that 
is spent on health care on a daily basis for those that are surviving. 
We have an opportunity here. We have a moral obligation here. The women 
of this Congress have to stand up and stand together. But, again, the 
American people on a grassroots front have to have their voices heard, 
because I will tell them, the NRA leadership will win again; and we as 
Americans will actually be the losers.
  I thank my colleagues for taking this stand. I thank them for 
standing with us to try and make a difference.

                              {time}  2000

  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I want to express my thanks to the 
gentlewoman. We thank her for her courage, we thank her for her 
optimism. She is truly an inspiration for all of us. And what she has 
said, I, too, and I know my other colleagues here tonight believe, as 
she does, that the American people will stand tall with us. They have 
to know we are willing to take that first step, and I believe that they 
will be with us.
  I want the gentlewoman to know that she gives us all really great 
courage to try to do the right thing and we thank her so very much.
  The gentlewoman also said one thing about inconvenience, and it will 
be an inconvenience in the same way that seat belts are an 
inconvenience in this country, the same way that metal detectors at 
airports are an inconvenience. But they happen to save lives, and so we 
swallow hard or we get annoyed, but we buckle up and we take whatever 
jewelry or change out of our pockets and we go through those metal 
detectors because it does make a difference.
  I thank the gentlewoman for making a difference.
  I would now like to recognize the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. 
Jackson-Lee). And as part of this debate and as part of this 
discussion, because some of us who are here tonight have been the 
subject of commentary that would say that the only thing that we 
believe as part of the issue of youth violence is gun legislation, and 
that is so totally not the case. There are a number of people who were 
at the mental health conference today and precisely there because there 
is an unbelievable need in our schools to integrate mental health 
services for our youngsters.
  That is part of this puzzle. That is so much a part of this puzzle of 
youth violence, of engaging teachers and administrators and law 
enforcement people to understand and to recognize signs of difficulty 
that students may be having and to help them to get the services that 
they need. And I know my colleague from Texas is a big proponent of 
that effort in the same way that she is a proponent of trying to do 
something about gun safety legislation in this country. We are not one-
dimensional people on the floor of this House tonight.
  And so I yield to my colleague from Texas.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut for her leadership and for the really smart and determined 
approach to the challenge that we have before us, allowing us to hear 
from the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy), a person who does 
not walk as a victim, although she has been a victim. She is a 
surviving victim who lost her husband and saw her son fight for his 
life. But I think what we have seen this evening is persistence.
  I spoke yesterday to a group of graduates, and I challenged them at 
the Morning Star Full Gospel Baptist Church as to whether or not they 
were a part of the membership or the movement. Many times Members of 
Congress are not perceived to be in a movement. In fact, some would 
argue that that is not a good forum to legislate, being in a movement, 
because it suggests that we only hear one side, that we are so single-
visioned or tunnel-visioned that we cannot see all shapes and sizes.
  But I think we have cause now to be in a movement around an issue 
that needs the energy of a collective group of individuals, Republicans 
and Democrats to say, now is the time to pass this legislation. Not 
because we have tunnel vision, because we do not want to look back over 
our shoulders and see any more violence that we might have prevented, 
such as that at Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado; Georgia, 
Jonesboro, Pennsylvania, and other places unnamed.
  My colleague is right. I think it is important for the American 
people to realize that we are not one-dimensional. And I mentioned the 
legislation, Give a Kid a Chance, the omnibus mental health services 
bill. And I am looking at it now, and it is 18 pages. We are not one-
dimensional. There is a need for comprehensive mental health services 
for children. There is a need for the entertainment industry to be 
responsible.
  I believe, as I see my colleague here from New York, that there is a 
need for us to be in a movement. And why is that? Because I grew up in 
the generation that saw John F. Kennedy shot dead with a gun, the same 
generation that saw Robert Kennedy shot dead with a gun, and then saw 
Martin Luther King shot dead with a gun. Yet I did not rise up and 
castigate the second amendment, as my friends in the National Rifle 
Association suggest that we have done.
  I did, as a council member, pass gun safety and responsibility 
legislation, holding adults responsible for not putting away their 
guns. And we saw a 50 percent drop in accidental shootings by children. 
Not one hunter in the State of Texas was prohibited from using his or 
her gun.
  And yesterday, again in another speech before the State Department of 
Corrections in the State of Texas, I challenged my fellow Texans. I 
said, I know we are known to love our guns here. I might have been on 
foreign ground, I said, but it is important for me to say to my fellow 
Texans that we in Congress are not taking away anyone's guns. We are 
not dismantling the Second Amendment. The Senate bill, the provisions 
that were passed and that will hopefully be passed in this House if we 
are part of a movement, has nothing to do with anyone's love and 
admiration for guns, anyone's gun collection, antique gun collection. 
What it has to do with is saving lives.
  I am really tired of hearing ``guns don't kill, people do.'' But 
people take guns and kill, and they do it dangerously, they do it 
criminally, but they also do it accidentally. They do it by way of the 
fact that there are 260 million guns in this country, even more than 
people in the United States, and children get guns. And I believe it is 
now imperative that we become part of a movement.
  I would almost say to the gentlewoman from Connecticut that we appear 
on this floor every single day and that we reach out to those who would 
come by train or bus, or however we do this, to be part of a movement, 
because I believe if we lose this time, all the work that I may do, 
that we may do collectively on mental health, with the entertainment 
industry, working with parents and teachers and providing more school 
counselors, which many of my colleagues have been involved in, along 
with the gentlewoman from Connecticut; people like the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Miller), so instrumental; the gentleman from Wisconsin 
(Mr. Obey); the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior); the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Frost), my colleague, we could call the role.
  So many of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have worked 
on

[[Page H3750]]

so many issues that I take great offense at hearing the term ``tunnel 
vision'' when there are so many things we are working on. But if we do 
not get to the gun issue, we are going to lose it and the multiple 
ammunition clip that was passed in the Senate. Yes, we did something 
back in 1993, but we left out all the used and secondhand ammunition 
clips that are still in the cycle of commerce.
  I just want to share with my colleagues, as I respond to a few points 
and as I move toward concluding, something about this thing called 
blindness to the fact that we have so many guns. Speaking to an 
undercover agent of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agency, and I 
spent a good few hours with the gentleman, he said he can buy guns on 
almost every street corner. Of course, they only have about 2,000 
agents. Not enough to do the job we need them to do.

  But he went to one lady and said, ``I'm going east to shoot a police 
officer.'' And this is not something I would like to say, but she sold 
him a gun and she said, ``By the way, if you're going to do that, why 
don't you take a silencer. Make your job better. And if you get caught, 
don't remember my name.''
  This is someone purchasing a gun out of the back of a station wagon, 
someone's so-called personal collection. And that is the reason why we 
need regulation of our gun shows and we need to ensure there are 
instant gun checks, because probably if that person was not an 
undercover agent, as he was, an instant gun check might be able to find 
out that that is a criminal trying to do criminal acts. But we have 
refused to do that.
  And, yes, my colleague indicated that a week or so ago the 
Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary, of which I am 
a member, had a hearing in order to propel this legislation. I hope 
they were serious. I hope the chairman was serious about that hearing, 
because what that means is we should be prepared to mark up this 
legislation.
  And we had representation, in trying to fair, from the National Rifle 
Association. And, frankly, I am glad we did. I do not want anyone to 
suggest that in this movement that we have here on the floor of the 
House that we are not listening to everyone's claims in opposition. 
And, boy, did they have an opposition.
  The National Rifle Association thought almost everything we proposed 
was wrong. Unfortunately, they did not see the value in ensuring that 
guns should be kept out of the hands of children, that we should 
require people to have their guns locked up, that we should close the 
loophole on the gun show sales.
  I want to share with my colleagues briefly some of the things they 
believe, and they are sending out to their members, although I know a 
Captain Spivey of Harris County, a National Rifle Association member, 
and he stands with me, a constable, a police officer, and says, ``You 
are right. Pass those laws. I am with you, and I am an NRA member.''
  I wonder how many members of the NRA would step aside from their 
leadership and stand with us.
  Listen to some of these points that they are saying that our bill 
will do.
  The President, or Executive Director Wayne LaPierre, says that our 
legislation ``Can prevent your law-abiding son from inheriting his 
grandpa's shotgun collection.'' Our bill deals with selling them at 
events, not inheriting the legacy of someone's grandfather or father, 
their beautiful gun collection. That is not true.
  ``Considers legal guns in private hands subject to intrusive Federal 
regulation, even in the privacy of our your own home.'' I will stand 
here tonight and every night to say that we do nothing to go into an 
individual's home and take their guns. There is no one knocking on 
doors and asking people to dispose of all their guns. This is not true.
  So I would just simply say to my friends in the National Rifle 
Association, when they write someone like Michael, and I am reading a 
letter they have sent out across the country, that they should tell 
Michael the truth. When they send a letter to tell Michael that he 
needs to act immediately, and I am reading a letter from the National 
Rifle Association of America to Dear Michael. ``In the next 2 weeks 
your Congressman, Congresswoman is going to cast the most critical gun 
vote in over 5 years.''
  They name a few Senators. They throw the names of Bill Clinton and Al 
Gore in this letter to suggest that this is wrong. They lump in every 
gun ban group in America, saying they are all lumped together. Then 
they say, ``Don't let anyone tell you the vote that is going to take 
place in the House is about instant checks at gun shows. That is the 
party line, but don't buy it.
  ``What this legislation is about is, it will impose a cradle-to-grave 
massive Federal regulatory scheme on gun owners throughout America. And 
that is no exaggeration.''
  They tell their readers to read a fax sheet, and they say, ``We 
cannot beat this without you. But if you help now, it will be enough to 
win. The great thing about our country is when you call, when you 
write, and when you get your views heard, you have an enormous power, 
Michael. If you help us today, you can beat the national media, The New 
York Times, The Washington Post, and all the enemies of the Second 
Amendment who would dismantle the foundation of freedom in this 
country, brick by brick.''
  I love the Bill of Rights. We did a lot with it in this last session 
in the Committee on the Judiciary. We held the Constitution in our 
hands a lot in dealing with impeachment. But I would simply say to my 
colleagues that I would hope that we in America are better than this 
letter. I really hope we understand what the second amendment is all 
about. I hope we understand the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights, 
and I hope we understand the Declaration of Independence, that we all 
are created equal.
  I hope the National Rifle Association and its leadership will become 
part of a movement that says we count our children first. And that 
movement is to promote and care and love our children, that we are not 
putting our guns away to block our use of them and to strip us of the 
Second Amendment; we are putting our guns away to protect our children 
and give them a future and help them to have children and 
grandchildren.
  I think we need to be in this movement. My commitment is to join my 
colleagues as many times as we have to, to come to this floor and say 
that we will pass this legislation. And it will also be my commitment 
to address any member of the National Rifle Association with a cool 
head, warm heart, reasoned mind and ask them to join me to ensure that 
letters like this, scaring our decent Americans all over this country 
that love peace and freedom, should say what is really right: that they 
will join us and do the right thing.

                              {time}  2015

  I thank the gentlewoman for allowing me to share with her. I also 
hope that we will pass all the mental health legislation and all of the 
regulations, if you will, fair regulations, on violence to our children 
in the media, fair, keeping in mind the First Amendment.
  I hope we will also work with law enforcement, everyone. But at the 
same time, we cannot ignore this crucial time now to pass gun 
legislation that will protect us now and in the future.
  I thank the gentlewoman for her leadership and her time.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. 
Jackson-Lee) for her eloquent words and for her leadership and for 
pointing out so clearly that the document from which she quoted in fact 
is a fund-raising letter. It is a letter prone to hyperbole in order, 
in fact, to scare people. It is a campaign of fear. It is a campaign of 
rhetoric.
  I, too, hope and believe that there are people out there even who 
receive that letter, who understand probably better than most about the 
necessity for safety and gun safety legislation, that they will 
understand the hyperbole, understand the rhetoric, but also understand 
that they are caring Americans and care about the safety of their 
families, which they do, and of other families.
  It gives me great pleasure to yield to the gentlewoman from New York 
(Mrs. Lowey). And I want to continue to emphasize the point that those 
of us who stand here tonight are not one-dimensional. We do not react 
to this issue of youth violence in a cavalier or knee-jerk way that 
says that the only resolve is gun legislation.

[[Page H3751]]

  The gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey) has spent her career 
fighting for lowering the blood alcohol level to lower the incidence of 
drunk driving. She works tirelessly on promoting after-school programs 
in our schools, which is part of this issue, so that young people have 
a place to go and a place to be during those hours where the greatest 
amount of crime occurs. She has spent time talking about lessening the 
size of our classrooms for safety and accountability in education and 
of providing safer schools for our youngsters so that they can, in 
fact, achieve their desires and their dreams.
  So as part of what she does on a daily basis to understand the 
complexity of the problem and knowing that we have to move on all of 
these areas, including the gun safety issue, I yield to the gentlewoman 
from New York (Mrs. Lowey).
  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) for ordering this special order this evening. 
It is truly an honor for me to spend some time with her and my good 
friend the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn McCarthy) and the 
gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Sheila Jackson-Lee) to talk about this very 
important legislation.
  And I am very glad that she mentioned that we work together on just a 
whole range of issues, education, health care, and we know that we have 
to address the violence in our society in just so many different ways, 
and my colleagues talked about it this evening, that this is not the 
only answer.
  But as I talk to people in my district, as I talk to the mothers, the 
fathers, the children who are afraid to go to school, I realize there 
is a madness in this country and we have to work on doing something 
about the guns.
  My colleagues and I have talked about how different it was when we 
were in elementary school. I do remember, a long time ago, when Ms. 
Margot in first grade would get upset when someone was chewing bubble 
gum and leave the classroom. These kids are going to school and worried 
about whether someone has a gun. This is madness. And so, as a 
grandmother and a mother, I feel it a personal obligation to represent 
all these families across America.
  Every once in a while in our congressional career we feel that there 
is an urgency to do something and do it now. I think of the pain of the 
gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn McCarthy) when she lost her 
husband, the pain of the gentlewoman from New York as she watches her 
son Kevin fight back, the pain of all those parents in Littleton, in 
Conyers, the pain of all those family members.
  Every day 13 youngsters are killed because of guns. We have a 
responsibility and an obligation to do something and to do it now. And 
each week and nearly every day since the tragic shootings in Littleton, 
Democrats have called for urgent passage of meaningful gun legislation. 
We filed discharge petitions. We held press conferences. We raised our 
voices loud and clear. The NRA just cannot be allowed to write our gun 
laws anymore.
  I want to assure my colleagues that I, along with my colleagues, the 
gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the gentlewoman from New 
York (Mrs. Carolyn McCarthy), the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Sheila 
Jackson-Lee) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Steny Hoyer), we are 
going to address this every moment we can.
  The gentlewoman and I and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) 
came prepared to offer gun control legislation to the Treasury, Postal 
Appropriations bill. It was hard to believe. We had on our desk the 
wires from Conyers that had just happened that morning. And yet the GOP 
leadership stalled. They did not act. They did not heed our calls. They 
did not take up the meaningful legislation that our Senate colleagues 
have passed. They even canceled the Treasury, Postal markup rather than 
consider our common sense gun control amendments.
  Hard to believe, is it not, that the GOP leadership could be more 
afraid of the NRA than they are of violence in our schools?
  Now the leadership's delay has given the NRA the chance to strategize 
and mobilize. My colleagues referred to the letter that the NRA sent to 
their members in a fund-raising drive. Undaunted, the NRA is back in 
full force. The letter says, and I quote, ``pulling out all the stops 
to win this battle.'' But we have news for them. We will not let them 
win. We will not back down. This battle is over the safety of our 
children at home, in our schools, on the playground, and it is a cause 
worth fighting for.
  Mr. Speaker, we cannot back down in the face of the NRA. We must 
stand firm. Like our Senate colleagues, we must have the courage to 
reach across the aisle and pass meaningful bipartisan gun control 
legislation. The American people want action now. We have got to get 
the guns off of our streets and away from our children.
  I cannot tell my colleagues how many people came up to me during this 
recent work period in our district and said, ``how could you not do 
something? You were elected to do something? Nita, I know you are a 
leader on modernizing our schools. I know you want to put computers on 
everyone's desk.'' And then they tell me that the kids are afraid to go 
to school.
  We are going to continue to make sure that we have after-school 
programs to tutor our youngsters to provide them with the academic 
support they need so they can be what they want to be, so they can 
reach for the sky and fulfill their dreams. But they are afraid to go 
to school. These kids have to go to school with gun detectors. This is 
madness.
  And we know we have to look at the whole picture, as my colleague 
mentioned. We really have to talk about why it has become such a 
violent culture, why the kids have to watch these violent episodes on 
TV and the movies and the Internet. We understand, as my colleague 
said, that this is not a one-dimensional issue.
  But there is a madness in this country. They should not be able to 
buy guns when they are a kid. I mean, how is it that they cannot go to 
a licensed gun dealer and buy a gun until they are 21 yet they can buy 
a gun from a secondhand dealer at a gun show? It does not make any 
sense.
  But we are not even talking now about the comprehensive bill of the 
gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn McCarthy). We want to work on 
that. What we are saying is the Senate passed common sense legislation. 
No one should be celebrating that. Because unless it passes our House 
and unless the President signs it, it is not law.
  So let us make sure that we pass the common sense legislation that 
passed the Senate. And as we are doing that, let us talk about the 
larger issue and pass more comprehensive legislation. But let us not 
wait.
  And I know that my colleague and I and the gentlewoman from New York 
(Mrs. Carolyn McCarthy) and the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-
Lee) and other members of our caucus are going to be speaking to 
mothers and fathers and families all around the country. And I hope 
they are listening tonight. Call your member of Congress. Tell them to 
pass the legislation now. We have the power to do it. We can do it. We 
must do it. We must save lives. Let us do this now.
  I want to thank my friend and colleague the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. Rosa DeLauro) for her leadership on just so many 
issues. I know how she cares about Head Start and pre-K and how she is 
fighting to make sure our young people are nurtured all the way 
through, and this is part of that great effort. Let us deal with this 
now.
  I thank my colleague again for leading us in this great effort.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. 
Lowey) for her comments. And I just want to highlight something that 
she said, which is the wonder of the body that we serve in and what can 
be done. She said that every now and again in our congressional career 
comes a moment where we have an opportunity to make a difference, to do 
something.
  I happen to view, as my colleague does, that this is an historic 
opportunity. We are not so glued and fixed in a calendar and in a 
schedule that we cannot move when a need arises in the country for us 
to move.
  Thirteen children dying every single day from gun violence is a 
national crisis. The kinds of unspeakable violence we have seen in 
school settings across

[[Page H3752]]

the country, the pleas from parents and grandparents, from children, to 
make our schools safe places to be in says to those of us who hold a 
public office we need to act and to move to try to help us with this 
problem.
  We cannot be so fixed in our own agenda, in our own schedule, in 
everything that only we concern ourselves with to say we cannot change 
what it is that we do here so that we can meet this challenge, meet 
this need, take this opportunity to say, yes, we can act and act in the 
best interest of the American public. And that is all we are talking 
about. We have this opportunity this week. We would be derelict in the 
responsibility that we have been entrusted with if we walk away from 
that responsibility.
  And again, my colleague said it, the Senate passed modest 
legislation, legislation that has consensus from the gun industry, from 
the sports councils, from others. Our duty and obligation is to pass 
that kind of legislation in this body.
  I thank the gentlewoman and I thank my colleagues for joining us 
tonight.

                          ____________________