[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 50 (Thursday, March 22, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H2037-H2040]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Estes of Kansas). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is always an honor to address this 
Hallowed Hall, sometimes more hallowed than others, but today was a bit 
of a sad day for some of us. The Federalist reported the headline: 
Congress Rushes Towards Spending Vote to Prevent a Shutdown.
  ``Congressional leaders released a $1.3 trillion government spending 
plan for the rest of the fiscal year and asked lawmakers to begin 
voting on it with only hours to read and analyze the 2,232-page text.
  ``The measure is wide ranging, with funds for fencing on the U.S.-
Mexico border, combating opioid addiction and building new roads, along 
with incentives to bolster reporting to a database for gun-buyer 
background checks.''
  I have got to assert, Mr. Speaker, that this fix NICS bill, as it's 
been called, leaves in place a practice that has been going on. It 
grieved me greatly that Republicans would rush to embrace this thing, 
which allows the practice that the Obama administration started that 
administrative procedures by unelected, unaccountable-to-voters 
bureaucrats could decide people were not, in their opinion, entitled to 
have their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
  We have heard accounts of people who didn't realize that they were 
being questioned in a way that would be used to take their guns away 
and their right to keep and bear arms to protect themselves, to engage 
in self-defense, and the VA is the most notorious. Simply asking a 
question like, ``Who takes care of your checkbook finances?'' and 
answer anything like, ``Oh, my wife takes care of that,'' then a matter 
of weeks later, a letter is received saying you don't have a right to 
have a gun.
  It is amazing that the Obama administration would start such an 
unconstitutional practice, and it is, to me, even more grievous that 
Republicans would participate in a bill that says it is going to 
correct a problem and make America safer when, actually, what it does 
will not make a difference in the mass shootings that have occurred.
  But in the tradition of Congress, if there is a problem, too often 
people in this body feel it is not important that we do something that 
will make a difference; it is just important that we look like we are 
doing something. That is really where the fix NICS bill came into play.
  It really wouldn't make people safer. It will add some 
restrictiveness, and it allows this heinous practice of having some 
bureaucrat at the VA just decide that a veteran who served his or her

[[Page H2038]]

Nation valiantly, qualified to use a weapon, can't have a weapon.

                              {time}  1445

  Forget the Constitution. We are the VA, and we decide you don't get 
one. Rather egregious.
  But most egregious of all, we have about half a year to go, and we 
just voted $1.3 trillion to be spent between now and the end of the 
fiscal year, which ends midnight September 30. Quite tragic.
  And we are told, over and over, by pollsters that the American public 
doesn't want to hear about process, how laws are made, or if some rules 
are violated. They don't care about those things.
  But the fact is, just like America and each State has laws, and if 
those laws are not observed, we hasten the demise of a Democratic 
Republic, this little experiment in self-government.
  And when it comes to the rules of the House, when we don't go through 
the normal regular orders, it is called, which just means following the 
rules for how we pass a law, then the product is not going to be nearly 
as good.
  And that is what we have in the bill that was passed today. It is 
really immoral. Going back as far as we are aware in North America, 
parents have traditionally wanted for their child or their children 
more opportunity, better opportunity, a better life, than the parent 
had growing up and going forward.
  Yet, now for the last 50 years, we have had generations engaged in 
being all about themselves, and that includes my generation. Not all of 
us, but enough that we could pass a bill a month or so ago and then 
pass another one today that heaps hundreds of billions of dollars of 
debt onto our children, our grandchildren, that they didn't run up.
  This is totally different. It is so immoral. It is totally different 
from what generations of Americans have wanted: something better for 
their kids.
  Yet here we are. It is as if we go into a bank and say: I need a 
loan. Well, what is your collateral? How are you going to pay? Oh, I am 
not going to pay. I can't pay. But I have got all my children, got some 
grandchildren someday, and they will pay.
  Well, what do you need the money for? Because I can't stop spending 
money. I just can't control myself. So I am going to have my kids and 
grandkids pay someday, because all I can do is spend, and that is where 
we are.
  There is an obligation for each generation to be accountable for 
their actions to future generations. And there has been so much debt 
run up.
  Of course, when I got here 13 years ago, we had crossed over into $10 
trillion in debt, $11 trillion, and all of a sudden, in 8 years, we hit 
$20 trillion. It was incredible.
  The biggest part of that hit during the 4 years where the Democratic 
majority controlled the House and the Senate, and those 2 years in 
which the Democrat majority in the House and Senate was also linked up 
with President Obama, a Democrat in the White House, and the debt 
exploded.
  But when we bring a bill to the floor like came today, didn't go 
through regular order, it did not go through committee process, and I 
can't know for sure, I heard there were two, I heard there were four 
people negotiating. I heard that it was staff members who were doing 
the negotiation. And for heaven's sake, if we are going to have staff 
members negotiating numbers that involve $1 trillion that our children 
and grandchildren will have to pay, let's at least get better staff 
members to do the negotiation for the sake of our kids. It is really 
tragic what has been going on.
  I was just reading an article a moment ago with a statement from 
Minority Leader Pelosi, in which she indicated they had won the 
negotiation, they got lots more of what they wanted than did those in 
the majority and than did the President himself.
  Unfortunately, though the President is an amazing negotiator, he 
graciously allowed the House leaders and the Democratic leaders to do 
the negotiating. And I would encourage the President, I know he wants 
better deals than this atrocity, but we need his negotiating skills 
involved to get a better product.
  This article from Chad Pergram says: ``With $1.2 trillion omnibus 
bill topping 2,200 pages, Congress needs CliffsNotes.''
  I have another from Jacob Sullum: ``Fix NICS bill would help block 
gun sales to peaceful people.'' And Jacob Sullum is right about that.
  This from August 11, 2016, they are pointing out that the background 
checks, which were proposed in part of this bill that passed in the 
House today, would not be effective. The headline says: ``Background 
Checks: Ineffective, unconstitutional, and dangerous.''
  It says: ``Background checks were sold to gun owners as a bill of 
goods in the 1990s. But consider how ineffective, and dangerous, they 
have become to our Second Amendment rights:
  ``Number 1, roughly 95 percent of NICS denials are `false positives,' 
which means most of the people who are being denied are not the people 
that want to hold up the neighborhood grocery store.
  ``Number 2, for the last year on record, only 13 prohibited persons 
were convicted for trying to illegally purchase a gun--when more than 
10 million guns were sold.''
  Pretty amazing. Only 13. And this was back in the Obama 
administration. Of course, we know they weren't enforcing the law. They 
had the weakest gun violation enforcement of any administration in the 
last 50 years, all the while demanding tougher laws, gun laws and gun 
restrictions, when they were doing the worst job of just enforcing the 
laws we had.
  So out of 10 million guns that had background checks and were 
approved for sale, only 13 were convicted of trying to illegally 
purchase a gun.
  The article continues: ``And the inspector general's report in 2016 
found that the Justice Department''--and again, this is during the 
Obama administration--``only refers an average of 32 prosecutions per 
year under the Brady Law.''
  ``That is not surprising, since good people can be denied their 
Second Amendment rights for outstanding traffic tickets, that result in 
a bench warrant . . . for having the same name as a bad guy . . . or 
for having engaged in a bar fight 50 years ago.

  ``Number 3, because of the NICS system, there are now more than 
250,000 military veterans who cannot purchase firearms from a gun 
dealer--and the Obama administration tried to disqualify tens of 
thousands of otherwise law-abiding seniors in similar fashion.''
  I want to inject here. Just because a senior citizen has his or her 
adult child take care of their checkbook, it does not mean that that 
senior citizen does not know when their home is being broken into and 
they need to protect themselves.
  Number 4 in this article says: ``And what if you're blocked from 
buying a gun because you're illegitimately denied by the NICS check? 
Well, according to USA Today, the Obama administration illegally 
diverted every single one of its FBI appeal examiners to other duties, 
making it impossible for the agency to overturn people's denials and 
creating a huge backlog.
  ``Number 5, every time a gun dealer contacts the NICS system and a 
background check is conducted, there is the potential that gun buyers' 
names will be retained--despite prohibitions to the contrary. This data 
retention and the potential for gun owner registration is a constant 
concern for gun owners, given the expansive backup system at the FBI. 
Not only that, the General Accounting Office found in 2016 that the ATF 
had illegally retained the names of thousands of gun owners.
  ``Number 6, forcing law-abiding citizens to get `permission' to 
exercise a constitutionally protected right can result in harmful 
delays--and even death. Consider Carol Bowne of New Jersey who tried to 
get a gun for protection . . . was forced to wait several weeks during 
the screening process . . . and was ultimately stabbed to death by the 
man she wanted to defend herself against.
  ``Gun control is denying the rights of law-abiding Americans, while 
not making us any safer.''
  And that is the thing. We hear these constant proposals for more 
background checks. A proposal that is being pushed, we have got to have 
background checks when someone gives or sells a gun to another 
individual when that person selling or giving the gun is not a firearms 
dealer, they are not in the business, which means a father to a

[[Page H2039]]

son, or a mother to a daughter. This push to get background checks 
when, as my friend John Lott's research has shown not one mass shooting 
in the last 100 years has resulted from a gun that was given or 
purchased in a lawful transfer person to person. So that kind of idea 
wouldn't help save any lives.
  If we are going to do something, at least do something that saves 
lives, makes a difference.
  But we know that, in Rwanda, there was a horrendous period in which 
800,000 human beings were slaughtered with machetes. We know that the 
worst attack with the most horrendous murders in our U.S. history, on 
our soil, happened on September 11, 2001, and the weapon that was used 
was a box cutter.
  We know that the Boston Marathon bombing, in which people were killed 
and maimed, a pressure cooker was used.
  We know that in Austin, Texas, a sick criminal mind killed two people 
and wounded a number of others.
  There is a lot of talk about ending gun violence without a thought 
about ending violence.
  Oklahoma City, that was ammonium nitrate, that was fertilizer, used 
as a bomb.
  I keep coming back to the quote of President John Adams in 1798, when 
he said so prophetically and analytically: ``Our Constitution was made 
only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the 
government of any other.''

                              {time}  1500

  That is really where we are. Do we want to end gun violence or do we 
want to end violence? Some of us would like to end violence. 800,000 
human beings that are killed with machetes are just as dead as 800,000 
killed with a bomb or a gun. Actually, they most likely suffered a 
great deal more than if they were killed with a gun.
  A gun is like the law itself. It can be used to protect. During my 4 
years in the Army, we were trained to use a weapon for protection of 
the United States and our Constitution. We took an oath to do that. We 
were never in combat in my 4 years, but that is what we were trained 
for. It was not an assault weapon. It was a protective weapon to 
protect our country.
  So when we hear all this talk that maybe it is time to again ban 
assault weapons, any weapon is an assault weapon. Any weapon is also a 
defensive weapon. It is all about the hands of those who are holding 
the weapon.
  We also know for a fact that the years in which so-called assault 
weapons were banned, it made absolutely no difference. We also know 
that in cities where there is the most strenuous gun laws, you often 
find the most violent number of gun attacks.
  The Wall Street Journal had an article some time back talking about 
the mentality of those who use a gun and kill and engage in a mass 
shooting. They said that almost invariably these are control freaks. 
Their idea, their thought is ``I have got to be in control,'' so they 
want to go to a place where no one else will have a gun. They 
intentionally want to be somewhere where nobody else has a gun. That is 
their mentality. They want to be in control.
  It is not uncommon to have happen what happened in Austin, when the 
bomber there was about to be captured, he took his own life because of 
the fear they are going to lose control, so they take that one last act 
of control and kill themselves.
  So will we save more lives if we let law-abiding people have guns and 
do what the Obama administration refused to do more than any other 
administration in modern history, and that is prosecute people who 
violate the law in trying to obtain a gun illegally? I submit to you 
that the latter is the best way to go. We are better off allowing law-
abiding citizens to have the guns just as the Constitution intended.
  Coming back again to John Adams' quote, we have suffered through a 
time in American history where people on the far left politically have 
been saying, in essence, there is no real right or wrong. What may be 
wrong for you may be right for somebody else, so it is all relative. 
There is no absolute right and wrong.
  C.S. Lewis pointed out that it is like music. Although some people 
will come closer to singing the proper note, just because many can't 
doesn't mean that note does not exist. The law does exist, and some 
will come closer to following the law more easily.
  The law exists, and it must be enforced. That is one of the things 
that has made the United States so successful, to become as it was, the 
greatest country in the history of the world--I would humbly submit, 
even greater than Solomon's Israel, because Americans had more 
freedoms, more opportunities, and more assets.
  This is the first time that I can find in history, anywhere, anytime, 
that the number one health problem for a nation's poor was obesity. 
That just doesn't happen through history, but it is happening here in 
the United States.
  If you go back to the founding, you had people, most of whom were 
Christians, but all of whom wanted to have a country where Christians 
were not persecuted for their Christian beliefs. Now we have had the 
Christian religion so slandered and defamed that, even by government 
entities, it has been called a hate group. Evangelical Christians--
which just means these are Christians who so love and honor God and 
believe they are going to Heaven when they die that they want others to 
have the opportunity to go to Heaven to be in paradise with Jesus. Yet 
in this perverse time, we have people belittling Christianity and 
Christian beliefs like has never happened in the history of this 
country.
  I think a majority of Americans believe we have been blessed beyond 
measure because a majority of Americans did have an abiding faith in 
God Almighty, and you had a majority that believed that Jesus was not a 
liar, that He was not a lunatic, but that He was the Lord just as He 
said:

       I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one goes to the 
     Father but by Me.

  So a believer in Christianity believes if you don't believe in Jesus 
Christ, you can't go to Heaven.
  So either Jesus meant what He said and He was the Son of God, or He 
was a lunatic, because that is a crazy statement if it is not true, or 
He is just a liar, like David Koresh.
  Yet now the perversion has come and the attack has come that this 
religion, the one religion that is completely and truly based on love, 
that God so loved the world He sent His Son, and His Son so loved the 
world He laid down His life so that anyone who believed in Him could be 
in paradise in the next life, that is being called a hate religion, and 
Christians are being persecuted.

  For the first time in American history, America doesn't seem to care 
about Christians being slaughtered and a type of genocide going on in 
the Middle East of Christians. The prior administration made very, very 
clear that their priority was not the Christians who were being 
slaughtered by the thousands in the Middle East; it was Muslim 
refugees. And that is why there was such a tiny, tiny percentage of 
Christian refugees who were allowed into the United States when 
compared to the percentage of Christians living in the Middle East 
where the refugees were coming from.
  It is a sobering time, and it only makes sense that, when we reach a 
time when Christianity is maligned, defamed, and persecuted, that it is 
a time the Bible talks about: Right is wrong; wrong is right. Those 
that try to hold to the right as God gives them to see the right, that, 
gee, those folks are said to be crazy, and if not crazy, hatemongers.
  They are not hatemongers. But when we get into that period of time, 
it made sense. Priorities are completely askew, and the generation in 
charge thinks of themselves and does not think about what is going to 
happen to that generation's children.
  When one thinks about it, and with the scientific advancements we 
have, we know that a heart is beating inside that little child in the 
mother's loving womb. It is a real person with a beating heart. Janet 
Porter and others have talked about, with regard to the Heartbeat bill: 
What happens if you see someone appearing to be unconscious, lying 
down? You run over and check: Is there a heartbeat? If there is a 
heartbeat, then you call the ambulance and you do everything you can to 
save that life.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a dangerous time, and it is time to become a moral 
nation again.

[[Page H2040]]

  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________