[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 37 (Wednesday, March 29, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H1294-H1295]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               FIREARMS CORRECTIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. McCARTHY. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Judiciary Committee held a 
hearing on H.R. 5005, the Firearms Corrections and Improvement Act. But 
I don't want to let the name of this legislation fool you. This bill 
only serves to improve the chances of somebody getting away with a gun 
crime.
  This bill proposes changes that will undermine Federal law and 
endanger public safety. These are not mere technical corrections, but a 
blatant attempt to restrict use of the ATF's National Trace Center's 
database. Previously, the NRA's friends in Congress have inserted 
language into appropriation bills to restrict access to some important 
ballistic information.
  H.R. 5005 will make restriction access the law. The ATF's gun tracing 
program helps local police solve gun crimes by analyzing the unique 
marks made on bullets and cartridges and cases when guns are fired. The 
images of these markings can be compared with other images in more than 
200 Federal, State and local law enforcement laboratories.
  But H.R. 5005 would make it a crime for police departments to share 
information from the database of other departments. Say a police 
department in my district on Long Island obtains ballistic information 
from the ATF and a similar shooting occurs in New York City, the Long 
Island department wouldn't be able to share that information.
  In fact, the officer who did share this information could be 
arrested. That is absolutely insane. Instead of cracking down on 
criminals using guns, this bill treats police officers like criminals.
  Since 9/11, responders in New York and throughout the Nation have 
gone to great lengths to increase interoperability and information 
sharing, and now H.R. 5005 comes along and makes information sharing 
between police departments a crime. Again, some Members of this body 
put their allegiance to the NRA above common sense.
  The tracing program provides law enforcement agencies with valuable 
information about gun trafficking that can prevent crimes from 
happening. Tracing helps the public identify gun dealers and 
traffickers who are supplying illegal guns in our communities, but this 
legislation would prevent the use of trace data as evidence in any 
State or Federal court or any non-ATF administrative proceedings.
  This bill cuts local law enforcement out of the loop. Without this 
tracing data local law enforcement officers will not be able to pursue 
civil action on suppliers that have been implicated in crimes without 
the ATF's involvement. We all know the ATF doesn't get the resources to 
get involved in every civil issue regarding gun crimes, but H.R. 5005 
does not stop at limiting access to tracing the database. The 
legislation also makes it more difficult for local police to receive 
reports of multiple gun purchases. Law enforcement can use these 
reports to discover whether straw purchasers or gun traffickers are 
replenishing their inventory. But if this bill becomes law, police will 
no longer be able to access this information.
  The bill also prevents the ATF from maintaining a database of firearm 
purchase information. This provision would hurt investigations by local 
law enforcement to determine the point of sale origin of firearms that 
can help locate an assailant.
  As New York City Mayor Bloomberg pointed out in his testimony 
yesterday, if police can crack down on taverns that serve under-aged 
drinkers, why can't they go after gun dealers who knowingly sell to 
criminals?
  And since 1 percent of the gun dealers sell 57 percent of the guns 
used in crimes, this information is vital for police to conduct 
investigations and root out dishonest gun dealers. This bill is the 
latest in a long line of misguided legislation that puts protecting the 
gun industry before keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. No 
other industry in the country has this kind of protection.
  The gun industry already has immunity from litigation resulting from 
its negligence over incompetence. The industry can now sell military 
assault weapons to the general public. But now this legislation would 
protect the 1 percent of dishonest gun dealers who are fueling gun 
violence throughout this country with their irresponsible business 
practices. This legislation does nothing to protect the second 
amendment rights. Nothing in this legislation makes it any easier to 
hunt or defend themselves using a firearm.
  Simply put, H.R. 5005 does more to promote gun crimes than gun 
rights.
  I hope yesterday's hearings showed the public what a bad bill H.R. 
5005 really is. I would like to thank Mayor Bloomberg for his 
opposition to this

[[Page H1295]]

legislation, and I would like to enter this testimony from yesterday 
into the Record.
  I will work with Mayor Bloomberg and others from both parties to 
prevent the bill from becoming law. I wish I had had the time to read 
the mayor's full testimony, but I will say that I will use the last 
sentence. ``On behalf of the members of the New York City Police 
Department, their families and all New Yorkers, I am urging you,'' and 
that is the Judiciary Committee, ``in the strongest possible terms to 
reject this God-awful piece of legislation.''
  What we are doing here in Congress a little bit too often is taking 
away the rights of our police officers, taking away the rights of our 
criminal investigators to cut down on crimes. New York City has done an 
excellent job on cutting down on crime. We are actually one of the 
safest cities, and yet the guns that are coming from the outside of our 
city and being sold in our city that are totally illegal, we will be 
taking away that tool. That is wrong.
  We as Americans should be protecting each other. Whether you live in 
a city, whether you live in a suburban area, whether you live in a 
suburban urban area, we have to do more. We need to change the rhetoric 
that is going on here. We need to protect people. And I will bring up 
over and over again what we can do to bring down gun crime in this 
country, certainly by saving people from dying but also reducing the 
health care costs that are in this Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, the material I referred to previously is as follows:
                                             The City of New York,


                                          Office of the Mayor,

                                     New York, NY, March 28, 2006.

 Mayor Bloomberg Testifies Before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on 
                 Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security

       Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Scott, Members of the 
     Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before 
     you and give testimony on H.R. 5005--the misnamed Firearms 
     Corrections and Improvements Act. My name is Michael 
     Bloomberg, and I am the Mayor of the City of New York.
       I want to be very clear that I am not here today to engage 
     in an ideological debate. H.R. 5005 has nothing to do with 
     the 2nd Amendment and the right to bear arms, but it has 
     everything to do with illegal guns and the dangers they pose 
     to our police officers and citizens.
       That's why I am here--because the bill this Subcommittee is 
     considering would explicitly impinge on our ability to fight 
     illegal gun trafficking, and it would result in the shooting 
     deaths of innocent people.
       I urge you in the strongest possible terms to reject it--
     and I am submitting letters from mayors around the nation, as 
     well as from the former Chief of the ATF's Crime Gun Analysis 
     Branch, who join me in opposing this legislation.
       Why do New Yorkers care about illegal gun sales in other 
     states? It's true that New York is the safest big city in 
     America, and I'm very proud that we have reduced major crime 
     by nearly 25 percent compared to 5 years ago.
       But the harsh reality is that far too many people continue 
     to be killed with illegal guns--and nearly all of those guns 
     are purchased outside of New York State. Last year, illegal 
     guns were used to take the lives of more than 300 people in 
     our city.
       To protect all New Yorkers, we must not only root out and 
     punish those who possess, use, and sell illegal weapons--and 
     we are doing that more effectively than ever--we must also do 
     everything in our power to keep guns out of the hands of 
     those criminals in the first place. This requires us to look 
     beyond our borders, because 82 percent of the guns used in 
     crimes in New York City were purchased outside of New York 
     State.
       H.R. 5005 would make it immeasurably harder to stop the 
     flow of illegal guns across our borders and into the hands of 
     criminals by offering extraordinary protections to gun 
     dealers who knowingly sell guns to criminals, and depriving 
     local governments and their law enforcement agencies of the 
     tools they need to hold dealers accountable.
       Specifically, these obstacles would take the form of severe 
     restrictions on our use of ATF trace data, which is perhaps 
     the most effective tool we have in combating illegal gun 
     trafficking.
       Without question, the vast majority of gun dealers are law-
     abiding businesses--and we have no quarrel with them. Most 
     dealers follow the law and take every precaution to ensure 
     that their products do not fall into the hands of criminals.
       But there is a very small group of bad apples--about 1 
     percent of all gun dealers--who account for almost 60 percent 
     of all crime guns nationwide. That's an astounding statistic.
       Imagine if 60 percent of all crimes in a city were 
     committed on one block--would you pass a law that effectively 
     prevented the police department from using every tool at its 
     disposal to crack down on that block? Of course not! Yet H.R. 
     5005 would effectively prevent cities like ours from holding 
     the 1 percent of bad gun dealers fully accountable for their 
     actions. And that makes no sense.
       When rogue gun dealers break the law, and their guns cause 
     injury or death to innocent people, they should be compelled 
     to answer for their conduct in a court of law--just as any 
     other lawbreaker would. And when they hold licenses issued by 
     state or local authorities, they should be called to account 
     in administrative proceedings to revoke their licenses.
       This is what happens to businesses in other industries when 
     they act irresponsibly--think of a tavern that sells alcohol 
     to teenagers and, as a result, loses its license. Why should 
     an irresponsible firearms dealer--which poses a far greater 
     threat to the overall safety of our citizens--be given 
     special protections from state and local authorities?
       In non-criminal proceedings to revoke a rogue gun dealer's 
     license, trace data is the single most powerful way to 
     demonstrate unmistakable patterns of illegal conduct. It's 
     pretty simple: Gun dealers with inordinately large numbers of 
     traces to crime guns are gun dealers that make it their 
     practice to sell to straw purchasers. Yet H.R. 5005 would 
     ensure that this devastating evidence never sees the light of 
     day. Studies show that when dealers are subject to 
     enforcement efforts, or even if they suspect enforcement 
     efforts, the number of crime guns later traced to those 
     dealers falls off sharply.
       Yet by forbidding the use of trace data in civil and 
     administrative proceedings, H.R. 5005 would make it far more 
     difficult to bring civil suits against rogue gun dealers, and 
     far more difficult to bring administrative actions to revoke 
     their licenses.
       And my question to you is--why? Why is this in the best 
     interest of the American people? Why is this in the best 
     interests of your constituents? Why would Congress protect 
     the irresponsible gun dealers who help criminals get guns? 
     Why is it good public policy to make cities fight the war 
     against gun violence with one hand tied behind their backs?
       Is it to benefit special interest groups? Or the one-in-a-
     million person who is prosecuted for a purchase that is 
     negligent but not criminal? Is it for these few ideologues 
     and extraordinarily unusual cases that you are willing to 
     facilitate the shooting deaths of thousands of innocent 
     Americans across this country every year?
       I cannot believe so. Nor can I take those answers back to 
     the parents of the slain members of the New York City Police 
     Department, including the families of Detectives James 
     Nemorin and Rodney Andrews, who were murdered three years ago 
     this month during one of the hundreds of `buy and busts' that 
     the NYPD carries out every year to take illegal guns off our 
     streets.
       Finally, of the other retrograde provisions in H.R. 5005, 
     the worst of all is the provision that would actually treat 
     police officers like criminals.
       Under the terms of H.R. 5005, a detective who shares ATF 
     trace information with another state government for use in a 
     license revocation hearing against a rogue dealer would be 
     committing a federal felony--a crime punishable by up to five 
     years in prison. In other words, if an NYPD Detective talks 
     to a New Jersey State Trooper about a problem gun dealer 
     problem, that Detective could go to jail.
       I would not expect that I would need to remind Congress of 
     the horrific consequences that this country, and particularly 
     New York City, suffered as a result of the federal 
     government's failure to share information among law 
     enforcement agencies, and to work together to ``connect the 
     dots'' in order to establish patterns of criminality and 
     threats of danger.
       Yet incredibly, instead of demanding that our law 
     enforcement agencies share information, Congress is 
     considering making it a crime. As absurd as it sounds, this 
     bill would not only erect new barriers to information, it 
     could send police officers to prison in order to prevent them 
     from holding the worst gun dealers accountable for their 
     potentially dangerous actions. How in the world would you 
     explain that to the public?
       Members of the Subcommittee, I have been to too many police 
     officers' funerals to believe this bill actually has a 
     prayer's chance in hell.
       But if it does pass, the next time an officer is attacked 
     by an illegal gun--and I say `next time' because until 
     Congress gets serious about illegal guns, more police 
     officers and many more citizens will be murdered--there can 
     be no denying that all who vote for this bill will bear some 
     of the responsibility.
       That may sound harsh to you, but I'm not going to sugarcoat 
     my words when discussing a bill that coddles criminals and 
     endangers police officers and citizens--not only in New York 
     City, but across this nation.
       On behalf of the members of the NYPD, their families, and 
     all New Yorkers, I am urging you in the strongest possible 
     terms to reject this God-awful piece of legislation.
       Thank you very much, and I would be happy to answer any 
     questions you may have.

                          ____________________