[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 41 (Thursday, March 8, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1496-H1498]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THE SECOND AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GALLEGO. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Raskin).
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to bring the good news to Congress 
about where we are on the gun violence debate because I know there have 
been a lot of accusations flying back and forth. I want us to look for 
the common ground. I want to bring the good news today.

[[Page H1497]]

  The good news is that we actually have an overwhelming policy 
consensus in America as to what we need to do about gun violence, and 
we have an overwhelming--indeed, a unanimous--judicial consensus about 
what is constitutional to do.
  I want us to focus on that, and then that will allow us to isolate 
what the problem is in dislodging the paralysis in Washington today. 
But let's start with the overwhelming policy consensus that has emerged 
in the wake of a sequence of massacres, and it is enough to invoke 
their names to remind people of the bloodshed that is engulfing our 
society in Parkland, Florida; in San Bernardino, California; in Las 
Vegas; in Texas; at Virginia Tech; at Sandy Hook in Newtown, 
Connecticut; and so on. In the wake of all these massacres, America is 
demanding action.
  But here is the good news. Everybody has agreed. As close to a 
unanimous agreement as you are ever going to find in the United States 
of America has emerged: 97 percent of the American people favor a 
universal criminal and mental background check on all firearm purchases 
in America.
  That is the overwhelming majority of Democrats, the overwhelming 
majority of Republicans, the overwhelming majority of Independents, the 
overwhelming majority of gun owners, and the overwhelming majority of 
non-gun owners. Almost everyone in America, 97 out of 100 people--and 
if you take the margin of error, it might be 99 out of 100 people--
agree that firearms should not be sold without a background check so 
that criminals, gang members, and terrorists can't go to a gun show and 
acquire a weapon of war and then use it in our schools, in our movie 
theaters, in our churches, and in the public square.
  So we have got virtually unanimous public consensus on that. Every 
public opinion poll is showing the same thing, except the numbers 
continue to go up.
  Now, some people will say in response to this: Aha, but the Second 
Amendment won't allow us to do anything.
  There are a lot of people in this debate who are now wrapping 
themselves in the flag of the Second Amendment and saying that the 
Second Amendment prohibits us from implementing this overwhelming 
public mandate for a universal criminal and mental background check; 
but they are wrong, and we know that they are wrong.
  The Supreme Court, in 2008, in the District of Columbia v. Heller 
case, interpreted the Second Amendment definitively for us, at least 
sufficiently for us to understand that a background check is perfectly 
constitutional.
  In the Heller case, the Supreme Court first divided over the question 
of whether or not the Second Amendment confers a collective militia-
based right or an individual right. Four Justices said that the text of 
the Second Amendment means that you only have a right to a firearm in 
connection with militia service, which today we would call National 
Guard service.
  You will recall the language of the Second Amendment is: ``A well 
regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the 
right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.''
  Four Justices suggested that your right to bear and keep an arm is 
tethered to service in the militia. But that view lost. Five Justices 
took the individual rights view that the so-called prefatory clause 
just announces the purpose of the Second Amendment, but it defines an 
individual right.
  But nine Justices, the entire Supreme Court, agreed that, whether the 
right was collective or individual in nature, that right is subject to 
reasonable regulation by Congress and by the States. Of course, that 
has got to be right. Every right, all fundamental rights, are subject 
to reasonable regulation by the government.
  Think about the First Amendment, which guarantees the right of free 
speech. It gives you the right to go out and march in front of the 
White House, but does it give you the right to march in front of the 
White House at 2 o'clock in the morning with bullhorns and to wake up 
the President's family? Of course not.
  The First Amendment is conditioned on reasonable time, place, and 
manner restrictions the Supreme Court held in a case called Ward v. 
Rock Against Racism, where the Court said it was perfectly fine for New 
York City to turn the sound down when they have a concert in 
Central Park because there are other social activities taking place.

  The Second Amendment is the exact same way, said the Supreme Court. 
You have the right to possess a handgun for self-defense. You have a 
right to possess a rifle for purposes of hunting and recreation. You 
don't have a right to a machine gun. There is no constitutional right 
to carry a sawed-off shotgun.
  There is no constitutional right to carry weapons of war in public 
places. There is no right to carry a firearm in public buildings, said 
Justice Scalia, into public schools and into the U.S. Congress. There 
is no constitutional right for that, and there is certainly no 
constitutional right for anybody to access a weapon without passing 
through the regulatory screen that the government sets up.
  That is the common sense of the American people, too. Thomas Paine, 
who wrote the pamphlet ``Common Sense,'' said that common sense is 
essential in a democracy because it is the sense that we have in 
common. The sense that we have in common today about guns that we need 
a universal criminal and mental background check is something that is 
nearly unanimously held, and it is something that clearly passes 
constitutional muster according to the Supreme Court's decision in the 
District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008.
  So we have got a public policy consensus, a popular consensus, and a 
constitutional juridical consensus about the right thing to do and the 
constitutional thing to do. Yet what do we have here in Congress? We 
have got paralysis. We have got absolute inaction in defiance of the 
public will.
  Why? Nobody really says. The GOP leaders, Mr. Speaker, simply refuse 
to bring a universal background check bill to the floor of Congress. 
They won't even permit a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee about 
it, despite the fact that that is what everybody wants and that is what 
the times demand right now.
  Why? Have we become a failed state?

                              {time}  1215

  Are we unable to govern?
  Does democracy not work anymore?
  Is that what we are saying?
  I hope not. I hope we have not become a failed State. I hope we are 
able to address the public safety needs of the people. I hope we are 
able to address the democratic will of the American public. I hope we 
are able to effectuate the majority will of Congress, because we know 
that, forced to a vote, a majority of Congress would support this.
  So what is going on?
  Well, James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, predicted it well 
when he talked about the problem of faction. He talked about a minority 
of people animated by some passion or some common interest that goes 
against the rights of the rest of the public and against the common 
good, against the general interest of the people.
  But our institutions have got to be set up to legislate over the 
demands of one small faction, the 2 or 3 percent of the people who 
don't want to see a universal background check because they spread the 
mythology that any gun safety regulation will lead to a confiscation of 
people's firearms, which is utterly absurd and ridiculous and 
demonstrably false.
  Yet, that tiny group of people, that tiny faction, has been allowed 
in this Congress to control the public agenda and to dictate to 
everybody else, when we have tens of thousands, and soon, on Saturday, 
March 24th, hundreds of thousands of young people marching for the most 
elementary rights of life in a civil society.
  And what is that?
  The right to security and safety--the whole reason we have got a 
social contract. If you read your Thomas Hobbes, you read your John 
Locke, you read your Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the whole basis of civil 
society is that we will be safer entering into the social contract than 
we would be if we stuck it out in the state of nature, which John Locke 
and Thomas Hobbes described as a war of all against all, where life is 
nasty, poor, brutish, and short.
  So we are asking for the leadership in Congress simply to act. Let us 
bring this bill to the floor of Congress, and

[[Page H1498]]

stop with the distractions and the deflections and the diversions. They 
can bring up 50 other things. The people of America know, with our 
common sense, that we need a universal criminal and mental background 
check for everyone.
  Mr. Speaker, I would love it if someone could explain why that 
legislation is not allowed to see the light of day on the floor of the 
House with not even a hearing or a vote in the House Judiciary 
Committee. This is a public emergency. The young people of America, 
beginning with the heroic kids, the survivors in Parkland, Florida, 
will not let us off the hook.
  One of them was asked the question: Well, why suddenly have you 
unleashed this revolution across the country against one minor faction 
control of all of Congress? Why did it happen now, but it didn't happen 
back at Sandy Hook?
  One of the young leaders said: ``At Sandy Hook, they assassinated 
first graders with an AR-15 at pointblank range; but in Parkland, 
Florida, they assassinated high school students. We are more educated 
and we have a voice and we know how social media works.''
  There is no putting the genie back in the bottle. There is going to 
be no avoiding this question. At the very least, we must have a vote on 
a universal criminal and mental background check for all firearm 
purchases in the United States of America. The people want it. The 
Supreme Court has made it clear that such legislation is 
constitutional.
  In Maryland, in 2013, we passed not only fingerprint licensing and 
universal background checks, we passed a ban on military-style assault 
weapons, a ban on high-capacity magazines. These are bans that are, 
again, favored by more than two-thirds of the American people.
  It was challenged in Federal district court in Maryland and it was 
upheld against Second Amendment attack. They appealed to the Fourth 
Circuit of Appeals. It was upheld against Second Amendment attack. They 
went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court let it stand.
  So within the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, within our circuit, we 
have already got all of the legislation upheld as constitutional, which 
some people are saying you can't do because of the Second Amendment.
  Stop hiding behind the Second Amendment. Stop hiding behind it. The 
Second Amendment is just like every other amendment. You can pass a 
reasonable regulation, as long as you don't destroy the underlying 
right itself.
  Nobody is trying to take away anyone's handgun for self-defense. No 
one is trying to take away anyone's rifle for hunting and recreational 
purposes. But you don't need an AR-15 in order to go hunting. Any real 
hunter will tell you.
  You certainly don't need to allow the sale of firearms in the United 
States of America to criminals and terrorists and gang members in order 
to support the Second Amendment. That is ludicrous. It is absurd. We 
should stop spreading that propaganda. I think it is just so important 
that we get this message out to the American public.
  Mr. GALLEGO. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to say that, for 242 years, 
whenever and wherever America's freedom has been threatened, we called 
in the Marines.
  A Marine Corps infantry platoon is trained to close with and destroy 
the enemy by firearm and maneuver. That is what we do. That is our 
purpose. Marines kick in the door and kill the bad guys. Period. I know 
because that is what I had to do in Iraq. My platoon fought door-to-
door against deadly insurgents. For this mission, the Marine Corps 
issued me an M-16 A4.
  The M-16 is a weapon designed with exquisite precision for the 
singular purpose of killing as many people as possible in the shortest 
amount of time. It is not for deer hunting. It is for killing people.
  The original M-16 was relentlessly refined to take enemy lives in 
combat. But you might know the version available in stores called an 
AR-15. Republicans and their bosses at the NRA believe almost anyone 
should be able to carry this weapon of war. That is right. Republicans 
honestly believe that this killing machine has a place in our 
communities. They think that a weapon very similar to one I carried in 
Al Anbar belongs on the streets of Phoenix.

  That is idiotic, and I will explain why.
  Republicans aren't just ignoring the voices of the thousands of 
victims. They are also denying basic physics. Because a round from an 
AR-15 is larger and leaves the muzzle traveling faster, it will impact 
the body without about three times more energy than a bullet from a 
handgun.
  Surgeons treating the Parkland victims described organs that looked 
like ``overripe melons smashed by a sledgehammer.'' They talk about 
exit wounds as big as oranges. They recount opening bodies of these 
children, hoping to stem the bleeding, and discovering that, as one 
doctor put it, ``there was nothing left to repair.''
  And here is the thing: that is not an unexpected outcome. Delivering 
fatal wounds that no surgeon can fix is the whole point of these 
weapons. That is precisely why they were given to us in combat.
  The AR-15 also has a standard magazine of 30 rounds. Those 30 rounds 
are necessary if you are putting down suppressive fire or engaging 
insurgents. They are not very useful when you are hunting deer.
  Mr. Speaker, I can confidently say that if you need more than a 
handful of shots to put down the deer, you are probably the problem, 
not the weapon.
  In addition, the AR-15 has a significantly faster effective rate of 
fire than a bolt-action hunting rifle or a handgun. That means you can 
shoot more people in less time. That means police officers responding 
to the scene of a shooting will be outgunned and outmatched. That means 
more children will die in the classrooms before help can arrive.
  I went through literally thousands of hours of training to become a 
marine. It was arduous and grueling. I was taught how to clean and care 
for my weapon. I had to pass a rigorous marksmanship test. I was only 
armed after I earned the privilege and responsibility for that weapon.
  In contrast, my Republican friends think anyone should be able to 
walk into a sporting goods store anywhere in America and walk out with 
an AR-15.
  When children are slaughtered in their classrooms, we respond with 
thoughts and prayers instead of smarter policies or stronger laws. We 
are asked to simply accept this bloodshed as an unavoidable fact of 
American life.
  Not anymore.
  How about this? Let's reform our background check system. Let's ban 
assault rifles and keep weapons of war out of our communities. Then, if 
people are truly desperate to fire those types of weapons, they can do 
what I did: go to www.marines.mil and enlist.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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