[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 9 (Monday, February 7, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S349-S355]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GUN CONTROL
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, unfortunately, one of the issues that
continues to show up and seems to have nine lives--or more than nine,
is the matter of gun control. We have seen it every session a number of
times. I am sure we will see it again. I think it is something about
which we ought to talk. I believe most people have come to the
conclusion that the passage of additional laws is not going to make a
great deal of difference in the behavior of criminals. Sadly, law
abiding citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights are the
ones who will be impacted by additional gun control laws. But it would
not affect those who do not intend to abide by the law. Therefore, the
idea of additional laws certainly is questionable.
In my mind, it is not the direction we ought to take. Fortunately, I
think the majority of people in this country also believed the passage
of new laws is not the solution. We need to enforce the numerous gun
laws that are on the books.
Thankfully for our country, the President has not been able to carry
out his continuing agenda of wanting more and more gun laws. But,
regrettably, he has not been able to make enforcement more effective.
More laws are not going to keep those who are willing to break the law
from doing things illegally. Stronger enforcement of existing laws is
the answer. The administration, however, has not presented such a
program. Certainly, we need to move in that direction.
When tragedies occur, as they did in Colorado and a number of other
places, of course all of us wonder what we can do to ensure that these
tragedies do not happen again. The first impulse in a legislative body
is to pass more laws.
Unfortunately, that is often the most political thing to do. But the
fact of the matter is, in almost every instance numerous gun laws were
broken when these terrible acts were committed. One might say, what
advantage is there in passing more? Indeed, what we ought to be doing
is talking about enforcement.
As many of you know, the administration has been busy developing new
gun control initiatives and additional laws--everything from
threatening gun manufacturers with Federal lawsuits to mandatory
licensing of new handgun purchases. Currently, there are 26
municipalities that have filed lawsuits against the gun industry, and
they are shown on this chart. These lawsuits seek to make gun
manufacturers liable for the criminal misuse of firearms. Interestingly
enough, three cases have been thrown out by judges in Cincinnati, OH,
Bridgeport, CT, and Miami-Dade County, FL.
These cases are interesting. For instance these judges noted:
. . . the City's complaint is an improper attempt to have
this Court substitute its judgment for that of the
legislature[.] Only the legislature has the power to engage
in the type of regulation. . . .
The city of Cincinnati.
The plaintiffs have no statutory of common law basis to
recoup their expenditures. . . .
The city of Bridgeport.
. . . the Plaintiffs have not directed this Court to any
statute or case that would allow a city or county to proceed
against a group of manufacturers. . . .
Miami-Dade County, FL.
The courts have pointed out municipal lawsuits are not the answer.
Interestingly enough, the President has announced the Justice
Department will pursue a similar lawsuit against the gun manufacturers
on behalf of HUD. Basically, the Federal Government is trying to
pressure gun manufacturers into settling their current cases.
Once again, the action highlights the President's failure to pass gun
control legislation. Instead of bringing forth legislation, he is
seeking to go through the judiciary to do what he has been unable to
accomplish in Congress.
This next graph shows the results of a poll taken recently by CNN and
USA Today. It was conducted between December 9 and 12 of last year. Let
me read it:
As you may know, the U.S. Justice Department is considering
filing a lawsuit against the gun manufacture industry seeking
to recover the costs associated with gun-related crimes. The
companies that manufacture guns in the U.S. have stated the
charges have no merit. Which side do you agree with more in
this dispute: the Justice Department (or) the gun
manufacturers?
The result was, those who agreed with the lawsuit by Justice were 28
percent, and those who agreed the lawsuit had little merit were 67
percent. I really believe this poll reflects how American's feel about
a government lawsuit against the gun industry.
In the President's State of the Union address he spoke about the idea
of having individual states regulate the sale of handguns by requiring
a photo ID and documentation of the successful completion of a safety
course--just to purchase a handgun. This is clearly another attempt by
the President to tighten gun laws on law-abiding citizens. Of course,
criminals do not register their guns. Enforcement, however, is how we
get guns out of the hands of the criminals. Republicans have continued
to support law enforcement efforts.
Project Exile, for example, which has been put into place around the
country, has dropped the murder rate in Richmond, Virginia by 30
percent each year that it has been in place.
Unfortunately, President Clinton cannot say the same for his gun
control efforts. This is a graph of ATF gun referrals, prosecutions,
and convictions in 1992 and 1998. Between 1992 and 1998 ATF referrals
for prosecution went down by 5,500 or 44 percent; prosecutions have
dropped 40 percent; and, finally, convictions have dropped 31 percent.
This graph shows just how tough the administration has been since
1992 regarding the enforcement of existing federal gun laws.
Last year, I asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to conduct an
audit of the National Instant Check System (NICS). The system was put
in place in November 1998 as phase 2 of the Brady Act. I asked the GAO
for an audit to see if, indeed, it is operating as Congress intended it
to. I am confident when the report is released--and it has not yet been
released but will be very soon--we will have results that show the NICS
has not been as effective as we hoped it would be.
Lastly, since last November, there have been numerous news articles
from around the country that highlight the publics disfavor with
attempts by the President to add more gun control laws. I want to take
a minute to highlight a couple of these. One is titled, it is the
``Wrong Approach,'' by the Cheyenne Tribune Eagle, which suggests:
Since the President has been unable to ban individuals from
owning guns, Mr. Clinton has decided to do an end run around
the Constitution.
That is the point of view of that particular paper.
Another is titled, ``Gun Deaths, Injuries on Decline.'' This article
speaks about a government study which shows that gun deaths have
declined since the late 1960's.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print these articles in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Cheyenne Tribune Eagle, Dec. 16, 1999]
Wrong Approach--Federal Lawsuit Ignores Rights of Gun Makers
Once again, President Bill Clinton, our national
embarrassment, is showing utter contempt for our Constitution
as well as for the basic rights of the individual and the
concept of freedom.
Since he has been unable to ban individuals from owning
guns, Mr. Clinton has decided to do an end-run around the
Constitution by threatening to sue gun manufacturers. Mr.
Clinton is exactly the type of despotic leader the Framers
had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment.
As Thomas Jefferson said, ``The strongest reason for the
people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a
last resort, to
[[Page S350]]
protect themselves against tyranny in government.''
But Mr. Clinton and his elk, meaning the liberals in
Congress and all who would idly sit back and allow government
to infringe upon a right our framers declared ``shall not be
infringed,'' are guilty of abridging our freedoms,
endangering our lives and threatening the future of the very
government they were elected to preserve.
Mr. Clinton has failed to get Congress to completely ignore
the Constitution and ban guns so now he has decided to turn
to the courts to get his way.
He said his administration would sue the gun manufacturers,
much in the same fashion as the administration sued the
tobacco industry, in order to force the private companies to
bend to Mr. Clinton's will and his socialistic and erroneous
world view.
The president's dubious claim is that the industry's
marketing and manufacturing methods are responsible for
violent crime at the nation's 3,000 public-housing
authorities.
What Clinton fails to comprehend is that government is
mostly responsible for the conditions that breed violent
crime in public housing.
If Mr. Clinton wishes to end violence in public-housing
complexes, he should end public housing. It is a drain on
society and ultimately harms the individuals government
purports to help. Besides, government has no Constitutional
authority to offer public housing.
Another government action that leads to unnecessary
violence is its war on drugs. Prohibiting individuals the
freedom to pursue drug use is also not authorized by the
Constitution. The decriminalization of drugs would have the
end result of lessening the burden on our prison system and
dramatically reducing violence, much like the repeal of the
prohibition against alcohol.
Ultimately, however, the criminal is the one to blame for
his actions. Just because a person uses a gun while
committing a crime is no reason to blame gun manufacturers.
That is tantamount to blaming automakers for every car
accident or burger joints for every heart attack.
Mr. Clinton knows he can cripple the gun makers by suing
them. Just the cost of defending against a government lawsuit
can be cost prohibitive. In effect, it is government banning
guns by economically destroying the makers in what can only
be termed thuggery. Already 24 cities, including Cincinnati
and Cleveland, and two states have filed lawsuits against gun
makers.
Hearings are expected to begin in January. We will be
watching this one closely.
____
[From the Washington Post, Nov. 19, 1999]
Gun Deaths, Injuries on Decline--1997 Fatalities Were Lowest Since
'60s; Many Reasons Cited
Atlanta, Nov. 18.--Gun deaths in the United States dropped
21 percent between 1993 and 1997 to the lowest level in more
than 30 years, and firearm-related injuries fell 41 percent,
the government reported yesterday.
Experts cited such reasons as tougher gun control laws, a
booming economy, better police work and gun safety courses.
The study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
looked at all gunshot wounds reported at emergency rooms,
whether they were intentional, accidental or self-inflicted.
The number of fatalities dropped from 39,595--15.4 gun
deaths per 100,000 people--in 1993, to 32,436--12.1 per
100,000--in 1997.
The rate ``is the lowest it's been since the mid-'60s,''
said J. Lee Annest, a CDC statistician. ``This progress is
really encouraging and really says that joint prevention
efforts of public health officials, legislators and law
enforcement should continue.''
The drop was not unexpected: Homicide rates in the 1990s
have fallen to levels not seen since the 1960s, and about
two-thirds of all homicides are committed with guns. But the
latest figures also include suicides and accidental deaths.
Moreover, nonfatal shootings fell from 104,390 to 64,207 in
the same period, or from 40.5 per 100,000 to 24.0.
Jim Manown, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association,
said the numbers prove that more gun laws are not needed,
only that the laws on the books need to be enforced.
``It is a fact that this substantial drop in gun violence
directly correlated to a big increase in gun enforcement by
police,'' said Lawrence W. Sherman, a University of
Pennsylvania professor who has studied gun policy. ``Police
were not treating guns in a preventive sense prior to 1993
and now they are.''
Some experts also credit a strong economy that has helped
reduce overall crime rates and suicide attempts. Margaret A.
Zahn, a North Carolina State University criminology
professor, said prosperity has also allowed governments to
spend more on services that prevent gun violence, such as
domestic violence shelters and youth recreation programs.
The CDC also listed such possible factors as an aging
population, increased gun safety measures and the waning of
the crack trade.
Gun control advocates said they are encouraged, but pointed
out that even so, an average of 265 people a day were shot in
1997.
``People shouldn't be satisfied,'' said Nancy Hwa,
spokeswoman for Handgun Control and the Center to Prevent
Handgun Violence. ``Everybody is still at risk, and the
presence of guns should still be a major concern.''
____
[From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 12, 2000]
Don't Democrats Believe in Democracy?
(By Robert B. Reich)
If I had my way there would be laws restricting cigarettes
and handguns. But Congress won't even pass halfway measures.
Cigarette companies have admitted they produce death sticks,
yet Congress won't lift a finger to stub them out. Teenage
boys continue to shoot up high schools, yet Congress won't
pass stricter gun controls. The politically potent cigarette
and gun industries have got what they wanted: no action.
Almost makes you lose faith in democracy, doesn't it?
Apparently that's exactly what's happened to the Clinton
administration. Fed up with trying to move legislation, the
White House is launching lawsuits to succeed where
legislation failed. The strategy may work, but at the cost of
making our frail democracy even weaker.
The Justice Department is going after the tobacco companies
with a law designed to fight mobsters--the 1970 Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations chapter of the Organized
Crime Control Act. Justice alleges that the tobacco companies
violated RICO by conspiring to create an illegal enterprise.
They did this by agreeing to a ``concerted public-relations
campaign'' to deny any link between smoking and disease,
suppress internal research and engage in 116 ``racketeering
acts'' of mail and wire fraud, which included advertisements
and press releases the companies knew to be false.
A few weeks ago, the administration announced another large
lawsuit, this one against America's gun manufacturers,
Justice couldn't argue that the gun makers had conspired to
mislead the public about the danger of their products, so it
decided against using RICO in favor of offering ``legal
advice'' to public housing authorities organized under the
Department of Housing and Urban Development, who are suing
the gun makers on behalf of their three million tenants. The
basis of this case is strict liability and negligence. The
gun makers allegedly sold defective products, or products
they knew or should have known would harm people.
Both of these legal grounds--the mobster-like conspiracy of
cigarette manufacturers to mislead the public, and the
defective aspects of guns or the negligence of their
manufacturers--are stretches, to say the least. If any
agreement to mislead any segment of the public is a
``conspiracy'' under RICO, then America's entire advertising
industry is in deep trouble, not to mention health-
maintenance organizations, the legal profession, automobile
dealers and the Pentagon. And if every product that might
result in death or serious injury is ``defective,'' you might
as well say good-bye to liquor and beer, fatty foods and
sharp cooking utensils.
These two novel legal theories give the administration
extraordinary discretion to decide who's misleading the
public and whose products are defective. You might approve
the outcomes in these two cases, but they establish
precedents for other cases you might find wildly unjust.
Worse, no judge will ever scrutinize these theories. The
administration has no intention of seeing these lawsuits
through to final verdicts. The goal of both efforts is to
threaten the industries with such large penalties that
they'll agree to a deal--for the cigarette makers, to pay a
large amount of money to the Federal Government, coupled
perhaps with a steep increase in the price of a pack of
cigarettes: and for the gun makers, to limit bulk purchases
and put more safety devices on guns. In announcing the
lawsuit against the gun makers HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo
assured the press that the whole effort was just a bargaining
ploy: ``If all parties act in good faith we'll stay at the
negotiating table.''
But the biggest problem is that these lawsuits are end runs
around the democratic process. We used to be a nation of
laws, but this new strategy presents novel means of
legislating--within settlement negotiations of large civil
lawsuits initiated by the executive branch. This is faux
legislation, which sacrifices democracy to the discretion of
administration officials operating in secrecy.
It's one thing for cities and states to go to court (big
tobacco has already agreed to pay the states $246 billion to
settle state Medicaid suits, and 28 cities along with New
York state and Connecticut are now suing the gun
manufacturers); it's quite another for the feds to bring to
bear the entire weight of the nation. New York state isn't
exactly a pushover, but its attorney general, Eliot Spitzer,
says the federal lawsuit will finally pressure gun makers to
settle. New York's lawsuit is a small dagger, he says. ``the
feds' is a meat ax.''
The feds' meat ax may be a good way to get an industry to
shape up, but it's a bad way to get democracy to shape up.
Yes, American politics is rotting. Special-interest money is
oozing over Capitol Hill. The makers of cigarettes and guns
have enormous clout in Washington, and they are bribing our
elected representatives to turn their backs on these
problems.
But the way to fix everything isn't to turn our backs on
the democratic process and pursue litigation; as the
administration is doing. It's to campaign for people who
promise to take action against cigarettes and guns, and
against the re-election of House and Senate members who
won't. And to fight like hell for campaign finance reform. In
[[Page S351]]
short, the answer is to make democracy work better, not to
give up on it.
____
[From the Wall Street Journal, Nov. 22, 1999]
Liberals Have Second Thoughts on the Second Amendment
(By Collin Levey)
It's the year of Littleton, ``smart guns'' and city
lawsuits against gun makers. So where are the law professors
speaking up for gun control? In the past few years, many of
the premier constitutional experts of the left have come to a
shocking conclusion: The Second Amendment must be taken
seriously.
Back in 1989, the University of Tennessee's Sanford
Levinson became something of a maverick by writing an article
in the Yale Law Journal called ``The Embarrassing Second
Amendment,'' in which he maintained that the amendment
guaranteed an individual right to own guns. Mr. Levinson's
argument flew in the face of the interpretation that had
prevailed since a 1939 Supreme Court ruling, which held that
the amendment's reference to a ``well-regulated militia''
meant it only guaranteed a ``collective'' right to bear arms.
Until recently, few legal scholars had done much research
on the Second Amendment. ``One came up knowing it was a
collective right--not because we learned about it in law
school, but because we read the occasional op-ed,'' says Dan
Polsby of Virginia's George Mason Law School. ``Sandy
Levinson made it respectable to think that heterodoxy might
be possible.''
The most prominent of the converts is Harvard's Laurence
Tribe, once touted as a potential Supreme Court appointee in
a Democratic administration. Mr. Tribe surprised many of his
fellow liberals when the latest edition of his widely used
textbook, ``American Constitutional Law,'' appeared this
year. Previous versions had virtually ignored the Second
Amendment. The new one gives it a full work-up--and comes
down on the side of Mr. Levinson.
Mr. Tribe believes the right to bear arms is limited,
subject to ``reasonable regulation in the interest of public
safety,'' as he and Yale Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar wrote
in the New York Times last month. But Mr. Tribe has written
that people on both sides of the policy divide face an
``inescapable tension . . . between the reading of the Second
Amendment that would advance the policies they favor and the
reading of the Second Amendment to which intellectual
honesty, and their own theories of Constitutional
interpretation, would drive them.''
Journalist Daniel Lazare, a liberal gun-control advocate,
acknowledges the tension, writing in Harper's: ``The truth
about the Second Amendment is something that liberals cannot
bear to admit: The right wing is right.'' Mr. Lazare argues
for amending the Constitution to repeal the Second Amendment.
What accounts for the change in Second Amendment
interpretation? One of the catalysts has been a recently
unearthed series of clues to the Framers' intentions. These
include early drafts of the amendment penned by James Madison
in 1789. In his original version he made ``The right of the
people'' the first clause, indicating his belief that it is
the right of the people to keep and bear arms that makes a
well-regulated militia possible. State constitutions of the
era confirm this interpretation: Pennsylvania accorded its
citizens the ``right to bear arms for the defense of
themselves and the state.''
In a letter to English Whig John Cartwright, Thomas
Jefferson wrote that ``the constitutions of most of our
states assert, that all power is inherent in the people; . .
. that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.''
These cross-Atlantic discussions are important, since the
Framers were distinguishing the right of Americans to bear
arms from English law's treatment of the question. Joyce Lee
Malcolm, a professor at Bentley College, has examined the
Second Amendment in light of English law. She concludes that
the Colonists had intended to adopt basic ideas of English
governance but to strengthen the people's rights. A right to
``keep and bear'' was seen as a bulwark against oppressive
government.
Other scholars have found supporting evidence in the 14th
Amendment, which bars states, in addition to the federal
government, from restricting certain rights of citizens.
According to Robert Cottrell of George Washington University,
in the aftermath of slavery, with no real police presence,
this protection was critical to preventing the monopoly of
guns from resting in the hands of white officials, many of
whom moonlighted in white hoods. The 14th Amendment has been
a powerful force in constitutional law, playing a key role in
the development of free-speech jurisprudence.
``The emaciated condition of the Second Amendment now is
very similar to the condition of the First Amendment in
1908,'' says Duke University Law professor William Van
Alstyne. In the aftermath of World War I, Supreme Court
Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis began
writing dissents in favor of a broader reading of the First
Amendment. But not until the 1930s did courts begin adopting
their arguments.
The new reading of the Second Amendment may get a hearing
if a gun control case, Emerson v. Texas, makes it to the
Supreme Court. In a divorce proceeding, Timothy Joe Emerson
was issued what's been called a ``y'all be civil''
restraining order--routine in Texas divorce cases. Unknown to
him, one provision barred him from possessing a gun. When he
took his 9mm Beretta out of a desk drawer during an argument
with his wife, he was charged with violation of a federal gun
control law.
U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings ruled that the order
violated Mr. Emerson's Second Amendment rights. As Mr. Polsby
puts it, ``If you're simply attaching a firearms forfeiture
to a person who has no such designation as a dangerous
person, that's not acceptable if the Second Amendment means
anything.''
The state of Texas has appealed to the Fifth U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals. If that court's ruling makes it to the
Supreme Court, it would be the first gun-control case heard
by the justices since 1939's U.S. v. Miller, which set the
precedent for the collective-right interpretation. In that
case, the Supreme Court held that a bootlegger was rightly
convicted of transporting a sawed-off shotgun across state
lines, on the grounds that the weapon had no legitimate use
in a militia.
Today, two Supreme Court justices have suggested interest
in a reading of the Second Amendment as guaranteeing an
individual right. Clarence Thomas has noted the law-review
articles piling up on the side of an expanded interpretation,
suggesting it may be time to reconsider Miller. And Antonin
Scalia, in a decision on an unrelated matter, referred to ``
`the people' protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the
First and Second Amendments.''
``As a liberal and a humanist,'' Prof. Tribe says today,
``people thought I was betraying them by saying that the
Second Amendment is part of the Constitution.'' But, he adds,
``what is being knocked away now is a phony pillar and a
mirage.''
____
[From the Washington Post, Aug. 29, 1999]
ATF Firearms Prosecution Referrals Drop--Study Says Criminal Cases Have
Fallen Since 1992, But Picked Up Last Year
(By Edward Walsh)
There has been a steady decline during the Clinton
administration in the number of weapons-related criminal
cases that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
has turned over to federal prosecutors for legal action
according to a new study made public yesterday.
The study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
(TRAC) at Syracuse University, which analyzes law enforcement
data, said the number of ATF referrals to federal prosecutors
has dropped by 44 percent since 1992, when there were 9,885
referrals. Last year, the agency charged with enforcing
federal firearms laws referred 5,510 cases to federal
prosecutors, according to TRAC. Most ATF referrals to federal
prosecutors involve alleged weapons offenses.
It also said that until last year there has been a matching
decline in the number of federal prosecutions of ATF weapons
cases, which fell from 4,108 in 1992 to 2,165 in 1997. But in
1998, that trend was reversed with the prosecution of 2,710
ATF weapons cases, a 25 percent increase over the previous
year, the report said.
The TRAC researchers, who analyzed data from the Justice
Department, the Office of Personnel Management and ATF, said
one reason there may be fewer criminal referrals is that
ATF's work force is smaller now than it was earlier in the
decade. The agency's total force has declined by 8 percent
since 1992 and there has been an even sharper drop of 14
percent in the number of its criminal investigators. ATF had
2,072 criminal investigators in 1992 and 1,779 last year,
according to the report.
The findings are likely to fuel the gun control debate in
Congress, where opponents, such as the National Rifle
Association, argue that there is no need for new gun control
laws and that the administration should concentrate on
enforcing existing laws.
Administration officials did not dispute the trend toward
fewer federal prosecutions, but said part of this was due to
a decision by ATF to concentrate more of its resources on
complex investigations of major gun traffickers and less on
individual firearms law violations.
A Justice Department spokeswoman, who declined to be
identified, also disputed the accuracy of some of the numbers
in the TRAC report. The report said that in 1998 there were
2,528 federal prosecutions under two frequently used federal
firearms laws, but Justice Department records show that 5,876
defendants were prosecuted under those laws that year, she
said.
She said the number of federal firearms violators who have
received sentences of more than five years in prison has
increased by more than 25 percent since 1992, reflecting
ATF's decision to focus more on gun traffickers.
``There is a decline in those [firearms] charges, but it is
not as dramatic as portrayed here, the spokeswoman said.
``The number of low-end federal offenders is down because
the ATF is strapped for resources and made a conscious
decision to focus on traffickers and because the states are
doing a better job so we don't have to do those cases.''
An ATF spokeswoman, who also did not want her name used,
said the agency experienced a 20 percent reduction in field
agents between 1993 and 1997, losing some of its most
experienced agents to retirement. ATF is now aggressively
hiring agents, she said,
[[Page S352]]
but it will take time to train them and get them in the
field.
The ATF spokeswoman also said that statistics on
prosecutions do not reflect all of the agency's activities,
which in the 1990s have included major investigations of the
bombings of the World Trade Center in New York and the
federal building in Oklahoma City.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I believe all of us want to find a better
solution to illegal gun use. We intend to do that. People in my State
believe more laws are not the answer, that, indeed, the enforcement of
gun laws is the answer. We are pleased to see that the administration
has finally added increased funding for the enforcement of existing gun
laws--something we have been talking about over the last 7 years. The
dollars alone, however, will not do it. There has to be some oversight.
We have to make sure there is an effective use of law enforcement.
Mr. President, I yield time to my friend from Idaho.
Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator from Wyoming yield?
Mr. THOMAS. Absolutely.
Mr. GREGG. I understand the Senator from Wyoming controls the time. I
wonder if, after the Senator from Idaho speaks for 5 or 10 minutes, the
Senator will be willing to give me 5 or 10 minutes on a separate
subject.
Mr. THOMAS. Will it be possible to let Senator Smith speak for a
couple of minutes and then Senator Gregg can wind up our hour? Mr.
President, will that be all right?
Mr. GREGG. That will be fine.
Mr. THOMAS. That way, we will hear from the Senator from Idaho, the
Senator from New Hampshire, Mr. Smith, and the Senator from New
Hampshire, Mr. Gregg.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Before the Senator from Idaho begins, has the
Senator from Wyoming propounded a unanimous consent request?
Mr. THOMAS. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Idaho be
allowed to speak and then the Senator from New Hampshire, Mr. Smith,
and then the Senator from New Hampshire, Mr. Gregg, in that order.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Senator Gregg from New Hampshire being the
third speaker.
Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object, I simply ask the Senator
from Wyoming if I may be reserved 10 minutes within that timeframe.
Mr. THOMAS. Absolutely.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Idaho is recognized.
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Craig
Thomas, for coming to the floor today once again to shape and clarify
some of these issues that are going to be front and center before this
Congress and this Senate over the coming months as we deal with
Presidential initiatives, Presidential budgets, and some of the issues
that are going to be, by fall and November, election-time issues.
Last week, I took issue with the President's State of the Union
Address in a broad sense as it related to the budget and some of the
initiatives he propounded within the State of the Union. Today, I will
focus, as my colleague from Wyoming has focused, on the element in the
President's speech dealing with guns and gun violence.
Last November, the Centers for Disease Control reported 34,000
Americans die every year from firearm injuries. If there is good news
to be found in that terrible statistic, it is that the number has
declined every year for the last 4 years. It is fewer than the 43,000
Americans who die every year from motor vehicle accidents. And yet when
we have some of our colleagues on the floor pounding their podiums and
saying how terrible it is--and it is terrible--they forget to put it in
relation to other kinds of accidents and/or intentional acts that
produce deaths among the American citizenry.
That figure of 34,000 is far less than the 44,000 to 98,000 patients
who die every year by medical error. That is right. I am talking about
errors made in the delivery of medicine. It is estimated that 44,000 to
98,000 patients die every year by medical error--that is a statistic
which comes from the Institute of Medicine--and yet somehow when such a
tragedy happens, it does not make the headline in the paper; it simply
makes the obituary page.
When we consider there are over 200 million privately owned guns in
the United States, we cannot escape the conclusion that the
overwhelming majority of America's 80 million gun owners are peaceful
and extremely responsible and using their constitutional rights in a
responsible-citizen way. There are 80 million gun owners and 200
million privately owned guns in America.
We in the Government are charged with the responsibility of seeing
that guns are used appropriately within the Constitution. That is, in
part, our job. It is an American right and responsibility of all
Americans, should they wish to exercise it. We are here to deal with
those who use guns to intimidate, to steal, to rape, to murder. That is
what the Government is for. That is our job, not to restrict or control
the right of the free citizen in the exercise of his or her
constitutional right, but to go at those who do the opposite, who use
the right in the wrong way--to steal, to rape, or to murder. This duty
comes before any other matter that we would want or should want to
consider on the issue of guns.
We know when the Government takes this responsibility seriously, we
save lives. You can come to the floor and pass all of the politically
driven bills that you want to, but if they are not enforced or not
enforceable, then it is a political statement, not a responsible act of
our Government.
In Richmond, VA, a Republican initiative called Project Exile has
stepped up and prosecuted the gun-toting criminals and cut the murder
rate by 30 percent every year since it was enacted in 1997. That is in
Richmond, VA. In fact, it is said in Richmond that a man walked into a
7-Eleven with a baseball bat to rob it. They caught him. They said: Why
didn't you use a gun? He said: You get locked up if you use a gun.
Isn't it amazing that the criminal element of our society will read
and respond to the effective and targeted enforcement of a law? As a
result of that, in a city that was plagued by what any person would
judge as a high rate of crime and murder, it has dropped that
precipitously, since the targeted direction of law enforcement not only
to arrest but to prosecute and lock up those who misuse their gun
rights.
How does the administration address the duty to the American people?
Over the past 7 years, the Clinton-Gore administration has cut the
ATF's pursuit of criminals who use guns by nearly half. The number of
prosecutions fell by nearly as much, and the number of gun-toting
criminals convicted fell by one-third. This isn't an NRA statistic;
this is an independent Syracuse University statistic. It is objective
by every politician's measurement.
This is how it profiles on a chart. Last year, in this Chamber, Vice
President Al Gore cast the tiebreaking vote in favor of interfering
with peaceful, law-abiding, responsible gun ownership--not criminals,
but responsible citizens exercising their right to go out and buy a
firearm for their personal ownership and possibly for their personal
protection.
It was quite a moment for the Vice President. There he sat in that
chair, the image of leadership. He was able to tell Americans how
concerned he was about gun violence because he had cast the tiebreaking
vote to impose greater restrictions on law-abiding Americans.
But I wonder, when this administration was gutting the enforcement of
laws against gun violence, was the Vice President casting his vote
then? No. Here is the Vice President's record, right here on this
chart. This is where he and the President took over the law enforcement
responsibilities of the Justice Department of this country.
Look what happened during the Reagan and the Bush years--aggressive
efforts to go at the criminals; arrests went up; crime began to go
down.
Here the Clinton-Gore administration backed off. They cut budgets.
You know the rest of the story. When this administration was letting
violent criminals off, I have a simple question to ask: Where was Al?
How many gun-toting criminals would be locked up today if the
Clinton-Gore administration had merely kept pace with the Reagan-Bush
administration's record portrayed on this chart? I would like to hear
the Vice President answer this question to American mothers. It is the
right question to ask. It is a response that all deserve.
[[Page S353]]
But there is more disturbing evidence that this administration does
not take seriously its duty in law enforcement.
The national instant check system is designed to immediately notify
the FBI if a criminal is trying to purchase a gun. I support that.
Every Senator supports the ability of someone going into a licensed
firearm dealer to buy a firearm immediately being checked, just like
swiping your credit card through a machine at any retail outlet in
America and instantly finding whether you have credit on your card so
you can make that purchase.
We want the same kind of response when it comes to the purchase of a
gun. We are nearly there. We have nudged, we have pushed, we have
cajoled this administration and their Justice Department until they
have finally done it--although they dragged their feet progressively
over the last 8 years.
According to a staff report of the Senate Judiciary Committee, since
November of 1998, this Republican initiative, started here on this
floor--the instant check system background check--has stopped over
100,000 criminals from purchasing guns. That represents an enormous
number of bad actors who need to be put back in jail. How many have the
administration put back in jail? To my knowledge, none.
You heard the President in the well of the House in the State of the
Union Address talk about all of these criminals detected and stopped
from buying a gun. If a criminal walks into a hardware store or a gun
shop and attempts to buy a gun over the counter from a licensed firearm
dealer, and his background is checked, and he is a felon with a record,
he has violated a law. He is in violation of the law. Yet the ATF has
referred only one-fifth of 1 percent of these criminals acting
illegally to the Justice Department for prosecution.
Mr. President, I am sorry. You can talk all you want about guns, but
your actions show you don't care. You only want the politics of it.
Last year, this Congress said: No. We do not want the politics of it.
We will not take that effort. We want substance. The administration
claims it has increased the referral of firearms cases back to the
States for prosecution. But that is the same as letting a criminal off
the hook.
That is not an accusation of the States. These are Federal firearms
violations. They deserve Federal prosecution. State prosecutors have
fewer resources than Federal prosecutors, and State firearm convictions
result in shorter sentences. Moreover, with a budget that grew 65
percent from 1992 to 1998, I am sorry, Janet Reno, we gave you the
money; you didn't do the job. That growth in budget was the Justice
Department.
The Clinton-Gore administration even lets convicted felons off the
hook. Last September, we came to the floor to speak about it. This
President, with his Executive power, granted clemency to 12 terrorists
convicted of 36 counts of violating Federal firearms laws. I am amazed
at you, Bill Clinton, that you can stand on the floor of the U.S. House
of Representatives and, with a straight face, talk about firearms
control, when you turned loose convicted felons, convicted of firearms
violations.
As recently as last year, the President said he would spend not more
than $5 million on the programs such as Project Exile, the kind I just
outlined used in Richmond, VA. We asked for $50 million. The President
largely got his way. The final figure was about $7 million. Sorry, Mr.
President. Last year at this time you didn't deserve credit for any of
it. Now you have stepped up. Now you are saying you want $280 million
to hire new investigators and prosecutors, both at the Federal and the
State level. I ask you why, Mr. President? I think I know the answer.
It is polling well. You went out and asked the question of the American
people about law enforcement, something every Senator knows about, and
it polled well. It got in the State of the Union.
It is far from clear that inadequate funding is the problem. The drop
in prosecutions we have seen under this administration cannot be
explained entirely by staff levels. The ATF observers at Syracuse
University attest, ``other unknown forces or policies changes are
apparently at work.'' Many observers believe the administration already
has the resources it needs to increase as dramatically as they want the
prosecutions necessary.
I ask unanimous consent to continue for 3 more minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CRAIG. One other issue I think is important: The President did
something the other night that is the most radical expression on gun
control by any President in the history of this country--I think that
is worth repeating--the most radical proposal on gun control by any
President in the history of this country. Here is what he said:
Every state in this country already requires . . .
automobile drivers to have a license. I think they ought to
do the same thing for handgun purchases.
Mr. President, it is obvious you don't understand.
What the President failed to grasp is that no State requires a
license to purchase a car. If you want to have it hauled home to your
ranch out in Wyoming and you stay on your ranch and you never get off
on the public road, you, Senator Craig Thomas, do not need a license to
own a car. You need a license to drive a car on a public right of way,
on a public road. States do not require a license to drive a car except
on public roads. That is the whole point the President made. The
average American scratches his head and says, yes, license cars,
license guns. But the President said you had to have a license to buy a
gun, a direct statement of violation of the second amendment of our
Constitution.
I can understand why Americans are frustrated, but I doubt the
President has had a driver's license, maybe a valid one, in a long
while. He has not needed one. I doubt he has ever waited in line at the
Department of Motor Vehicles to get a license or to take the test in a
long while. So if the President wants to license handguns like cars,
then he is talking about issuing licenses to take a firearm out in
public because it would be against the Constitution to require a
license to buy one, so he must be talking about taking a license out to
take a gun out in public. Well, we already do that. It is called
concealed carry permits. Thirty States already say you can get a
license to carry a gun in public, and it is called a concealed carry.
The State of Vermont doesn't require a license at all.
I regret to inform you, President Bill Clinton, that what you are
talking about is something I don't think you understand. No State
requires a person to have a driver's license to purchase a car, nor
should this Federal Government ever require a free citizen in our
country the need to have a license to purchase a gun.
Mr. President, are you then talking about a national concealed carry
law? That is probably a pretty good idea. For those who want to carry
in public, you could say you have to have a certain safety record and
safety standard and experience and all of those kinds of things if you
want--not to own, now, but to carry openly in public. I think that is
what the President is not talking about at all.
My time is up and there are a good many other facts to be dealt with.
In States that have concealed carry, crime drops; when the criminal
element knows that the citizen out there is armed for his or her self-
protection, for the protection of their private property and their
personal rights and their person itself.
Extensive study has also shown that when states begin issuing
concealed carry permits, murders drop by about 8 percent, rapes fall by
5 percent and aggravated assaults drop by 7 percent.
Moreover, as economist John Lott notes, states that began issuing
nondiscretionary permits between 1977 and 1992 ``virtually eliminated
mass public shootings after four or five years.''
Why does crime fall when citizens' right to bear arms is protected?
Because there is nothing a criminal fears more than a citizen who can
defend himself.
The President's comments were, of course, a plug for the Vice
President, who has been talking for some time about regulating guns
like cars.
I wonder if that's really what either of them wants. In the words of
second amendment scholar David Kopel, ``if Gore follows through on his
promise to treat guns like cars, he will oversee the most massive
decontrol of firearms in
[[Page S354]]
America since 1868, when the 14th Amendment abolished Southern states'
Black Codes, which prohibited freedmen from owning guns.''
Preserving and strengthening the second amendment would suit most
Americans just fine. I hope that's really what the President and Vice
President want. But I suspect it isn't. And I worry that if word gets
out, some poor White House speechwriter is going to lose his job.
These are issues we will debate at length on the floor of the Senate
over the coming months. I thought it was important to come to the floor
to begin to understand, to begin to explain so the American people can
more clearly understand the kind of irrational approach this
administration is currently proposing and certainly the less than
legitimate record they have in the area of law enforcement when it
comes to the use of a firearm.
I thank my colleague from Wyoming for taking out this time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from
Wyoming for yielding me the time, and I thank him for his leadership in
defense of the second amendment, as well as my colleague from the State
of Idaho, who has been a long-time advocate of the second amendment.
I regret I have to stand up here again with my colleagues and defend
the second amendment because we should not have to do that. I am
honored to do it, but it is one of our amendments. It is No. 2 in the
Constitution.
I find myself wondering why so many of our colleagues come here over
and over again to try to take second amendment rights away. The right
to keep and bear arms is one of the most fundamental rights we possess.
You can't pick and choose which amendment you support in the
Constitution, nor should you pick and choose what paragraph you support
in the Constitution. If it is in the Constitution, we ought to abide by
it and honor it.
The framers knew it, and that is why they placed the second amendment
right up there at No. 2 in the Bill of Rights. They did not want the
Federal Government to interfere with this basic right. It was part of
the Bill of Rights for the people, and it was No. 2.
I get a kick out of listening to so many of our colleagues on the
other side of the issue who, in their eloquence, can knock the second
amendment down. It is interesting, though, when we hear from the folks
who were actually on the scene when the second amendment was written,
folks such as Samuel Adams, who said:
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these--first,
the right to life; secondly to liberty; thirdly to property;
together with the right to defend them in the best manner
they can.
Basically talking about the right to bear arms. John Adams:
Arms in the hands of the citizens may be used at individual
discretion for the defense of the country, the overthrow of
tyranny or private self-defense.
These are the founders. Patrick Henry:
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty . . . The
great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able
may have a gun.
Thomas Jefferson:
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to
keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect
themselves against tyranny in government.
This is important business we are talking about. This was a basic
right. Noah Webster:
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be
disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The
Supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust by the sword
because the whole of the people are armed, and constitute a
force superior to any band of regular troops.
Richard Henry Lee:
To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of
the people always possess arms.
With all due respect to my colleagues who speak on this issue in
opposition to the second amendment, I don't think they are as eloquent
or as knowledgeable, and I know they weren't there. These guys knew
what they were talking about because they wrote it. So let's not talk
about revisiting the Constitution and being politically correct and
changing things we can't change.
These are the giants in history, the people who were there on the
scene. Yet, in the past year or so on this floor, I and many of my
colleagues hear over and over again: gun control, gun control, gun
control. Some of it is enacted, which infringes on the second amendment
of millions of law-abiding Americans. You cannot trample on the
Constitution of the United States and stand up there and take that oath
and say you are going to defend it. It is simply inconsistent.
Despite what history and the second amendment tell us, some keep
trying to come up with new and inventive ways to subvert that
Constitution. I don't hear any of these people coming down and saying
we are going to eliminate the first amendment, but I do hear them
saying we ought to eliminate the second amendment.
The gun control provisions in the juvenile justice bill that were
spurred on by the tragedy at Columbine used that tragedy, frankly.
There were already 20,000 existing gun laws when that happened, but the
killings were not stopped. Do we think more gun laws are going to stop
something such as that from happening?
There was a recent amendment to stop gun manufacturers from declaring
bankruptcy. Down the line they come, time after time again, singling
out one legal product for discrimination: guns. No other lawful
industry is treated so unfairly. Fortunately, my colleagues voted
overwhelmingly to reject that amendment.
The Clinton administration said it will file a Federal lawsuit
against gun manufacturers. Here is an article from the Washington
Post--it is interesting coming from the Washington Post--reporting how
two State courts dismissed lawsuits against gun manufacturers. I ask
unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, December 1999]
Firearms Makers Win Dismissal of Lawsuits in 2 States
In back-to-back victories for the firearms industry, judges
in two states have dismissed lawsuits against gun
manufacturers and dealers.
A state judge in Florida tossed out a suit by Miami-Dade
County yesterday, three days after a Connecticut state judge
dismissed a similar lawsuit brought by the mayor and city of
Bridgeport.
The two lawsuits mirror other suits filed by municipalities
that allege that guns have created a public nuisance,
threatening residents' health and safety, and that gun
manufacturers, like polluters, should have to pay for the
cleanup.
But in their separate decisions, the judges in Connecticut
and Florida reached the same conclusion: The governments lack
legal standing to sue.
``The plaintiffs have no statutory or common-law basis to
recoup their expenditures,'' ruled the judge in Bridgeport.
``Public nuisance does not apply to the design, manufacture,
and distribution of a lawful product,'' said the Florida
judge.
The mayors of Bridgeport and of Miami-Dade County sued the
firearms industry, claiming negligence, product liability and
public nuisance. Those mayors said that the industry was
responsible for the illegal flow of handguns into their
areas.
The mayors want to recover gun violence costs for police,
fire and emergency services. Bridgeport further sued to
recover money lost from depressed property values and
businesses that moved out of the city.
Bridgeport and Miami-Dade are among 29 cities and
counties--including Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles--
suing more than two dozen gun makers. In October, an Ohio
judge threw out a similar lawsuit filed by the city of
Cincinnati.
In one setback for the firearms industry, a state court
judge in Georgia earlier had ruled that Atlanta could pursue
its negligence claims against gun makers.
Last week, President Clinton said his administration is
thinking about filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of the 3
million people living in public housing. Clinton's move was
an attempt to force the industry into negotiations to settle
the municipalities' lawsuits.
Anne Kimball, a Chicago lawyer representing Smith & Wesson
Corp. and other gun makers, said the judges saw that the
actions of criminals cannot be controlled by the firearms
industry. ``There is no quarrel that everyone is concerned
about violence . . . The question is what to do about it. But
these lawsuits are wrong,'' she said.
Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. They are basically saying they are going
to throw these suits out. That is the gist of it. They are not
constitutional. The courts recognize that. The judges said they were
completely lacking any legal basis.
Now the President wants to license and register all guns, like
automobiles, as my colleague from Idaho referred to.
[[Page S355]]
The last time I checked, there wasn't a constitutional right to drive.
Does anybody know about that? I don't think they knew what a car was
when the Constitution was written. There is no comparison between the
two issues. I never heard anything from the Founding Fathers about the
right to wagons or horses during that time. I never heard Patrick Henry
say: Give me mobility or give me death. He said: Give me liberty or
give me death. That is because driving a car is a privilege, not a
right. It is a privilege. Gun owners would love to have guns treated as
cars, with no background checks, no waiting periods, no age limit; it
might be a good thing.
Tyranny isn't always obvious. It isn't always about killing and
communism and all that. Tyranny can be much more subtle, piecemeal,
gradual--like violating our oath of office and voting against our
constitutional rights. It happens all the time in this place. History
will judge us for it; it will judge us on the basis of how many times
we stood here after having taken the oath of office and then having
ignored that oath.
The second amendment guarantees that the right to keep and bear arms
shall not be infringed. If you are for gun control--and you have a
right to be--then you are against the Constitution of the United
States. Change the amendment if you think you can do it. But don't keep
passing gun control legislation time after time after time. That is
what we are doing in these proposals and laws. We are doing it quietly,
without violence, and with an air of respectability, which is what
troubles me--as if it is right to do it here because it is on the floor
of the Senate.
We are violating the constitutional rights of millions of law-abiding
American citizens across the country, and any way you slice it that is
still tyranny. That is why I am proud to stand here, as I have done
many times--and I will do it every day, if I have to, until the last
day I am in the Senate--in defense of the second amendment. I am
pleased and proud to support the second amendment.
At this point, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, the other Senator from New Hampshire will
be here shortly. I thank my friends for talking about the issue. I
think it is one that is clearly important to many of us. It is
constitutional. It is right. It is something we all support. It is
something, however, we don't want to constantly have before us as each
new issue comes up. This can be brought up as an amendment or as a way
of stalling going on to other things. I appreciate very much the
opportunity to do this.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagel). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
____________________