[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 7, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H715]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      CLOSE THE GUN SHOW LOOPHOLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I hope that the Congress was awake today 
when there was another shooting, making two shootings in a week, 
yesterday California at a public school, two dead, 13 injured; today a 
Catholic school. It appears that there is one injury.
  I am not sure if it takes these shootings to get congressional 
attention. I do give considerable credit to Senator McCain and Senator 
Lieberman who have been trying to close the gun gap since this Congress 
began, that is the gap that we left open at the end of the 106th 
Congress in spite of Colombine.
  The Million Moms are still organizing at the grass roots. Members 
should be wary of letting another year go by of shootings and no 
action. I will have a Mother's Day resolution on the floor and I 
challenge the Congress to close the loophole before that resolution and 
before Mother's Day. We have come so very close and we must ask 
ourselves what advantage is it to us and our constituents to give an 
advantage to gun shows over licensed dealers in our district? Why 
should licensed dealers not get the respect, they who pay taxes, over 
gun shows who go without the same regulations; and why oppose closing 
the loophole when 90 percent would pass instantly. This is a question 
of congressional will.
  I do not pretend that this is any panacea any more than the Brady 
Bill was, but everybody now knows what a considerable difference the 
Brady Bill made. It is some important difference that closing the 
loophole would make, and surely today we would recognize that with all 
of the rhetoric about protecting our children. This much we can do. We 
can close that loophole.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to lay the second amendment argument to 
rest once and more all. The Constitution does not bar reasonable 
regulation of gun ownership. How do I know that? In the District of 
Columbia and all over the United States, there are laws that forbid 
handguns altogether. Those laws were challenged decades ago and found 
constitutional. Why in the face of the fact that cities and localities 
regularly regulate guns do we hear constitutional arguments against 
closing the loophole. We need a national law. It is not good enough to 
have a law in New York and Atlanta and the District of Columbia because 
guns travel by interstate commerce like people, they travel on people 
and they travel in cars.
  We must not wait for the next shooting because we know it will come, 
and it may even come if we close the loophole. But to the extent that 
we save the life of one child, and there are two dead tonight, by a law 
that closes the gun show loophole, we shall have done what was 
necessary for Members of Congress to do.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask this body to act now, act before Mother's Day.

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