[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 99 (Thursday, June 9, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H5433-H5438]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Rutherford), my friend.
  Mr. RUTHERFORD. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert), my good friend, for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about a major problem facing our 
communities, and that is human violence. I have four children and four 
beautiful grandchildren who are school-aged.
  Madam Speaker, I have to tell you, when I turned on the television 
set and saw what was going on in Uvalde, Texas, my heart sank. I saw my 
grandchildren in the faces of those children that I saw fleeing from 
that horrible violence that was being conducted that afternoon. It is 
too often that we turn on our TV sets and see images of schools locked 
down and grieving communities. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, we saw 
that unfold in Uvalde, Texas. Yet, every time tragedy strikes, we hear 
the same conversation, calls for bans on firearms, universal background 
checks, and red flag laws. That is how we spent the last two days in 
this Chamber, talking about partisan bills that are, number one, 
redundant--a lot of these laws already exist--or number two, they are 
laws that will infringe on the rights of law-abiding

[[Page H5434]]

American citizens. Ultimately, they won't fix the problem.
  Madam Speaker, the problem is not guns. It is not gun violence. The 
problem is human violence. When I was sheriff, I used to explain to my 
community occasionally, when gun violence--as they would call it--would 
erupt, and they would ask me to talk about it.
  Madam Speaker, I would tell the gentleman, Mr. Gohmert, I would 
always make the point to them that I could take that weapon off my hip, 
put it on that podium, and it would never, ever become violent. Now, 
some human may come along and pick it up and use it violently, but that 
is a human violence problem. It is not a gun violence problem.
  I carried a gun for 41 years. It never became violent. Yet, we see it 
over and over again. Humans are the cause of this violence. It is a 
cause of the grief that we are seeing today and feeling in Uvalde and 
Buffalo and so many other cities across America.
  We see it over and over again. A tragedy happens, a gunman is 
identified, and what do we learn? Then we learn that they showed all 
sorts of dangerous behavior and telltale signs of violence long before 
becoming a mass shooter, a murderer, killing animals, making threats, 
threatening words, self-harm, cutting themselves--the list goes on and 
on; mental health issues that should have been addressed long before 
they became an active shooter.
  Madam Speaker, but people don't want to talk about that in the wake 
of a tragedy. The fact is, we already have the tools to deal with these 
individuals once they are identified. We have the tools to stop these 
horrific events before they happen. One of the things, as sheriff, I 
used to tell my officers all the time is I don't want to be the best 
first responder to a mass casualty event. I want to prevent it before 
it occurs.
  Madam Speaker, I saw firsthand, countless times, when people were a 
danger, we stopped them before they could hurt others. We put them in 
jail. We arrested them for making threats. We identified them and we 
identified the threats that they were making, and we stopped them from 
acting on those threats.
  The challenge here, we must focus on identifying those who are a 
human threat to themselves and others and then intervene. Too many 
times after all of these events, we hear that conversation: Oh, I knew 
this guy. I am not surprised.

  Those are the conversations that we hear afterwards. We must identify 
those suffering from severe mental illness and formally adjudicate them 
so they cannot buy a firearm. That law already exists. We need to start 
adjudicating those who are mentally ill and a danger.
  And let me say this: Everyone that has a mental illness is not a 
danger. Many people suffer mental illness and are not a danger. But 
those that are, we need to adjudicate them as such so that they can't 
go down and buy a firearm. Those laws are already on the books, but our 
community must do a better job of identifying those who need help and 
then get them the services and treatment that they need and deserve.
  We could do this while also upholding basic due process rights. Our 
whole judicial process system is based on the assumption that people 
are innocent until proven guilty. But the ex-parte order issued through 
these red flag laws throws these fundamental rights out the window.
  Red flag laws take away a person's Second Amendment rights and a 
lower evidentiary standard without the opportunity to even defend 
themselves in court. Ex-parte is almost a secretive process. It is 
going on without the accused's knowledge. And we see how well the ex-
parte process worked in the FISA courts, didn't we?
  The reason our judicial system works is because it is adversarial. We 
have people on both sides of the issue who are fighting it out in 
court, discussing the facts. Ex-parte, you hear one side of the story. 
That is all. And they want to use that to take away your Second 
Amendment rights. Then once deprived of those rights, now we have to 
prove that we are innocent.
  This is backwards and ineffective at solving our violence problem. 
Before we quickly jump to pass bad legislation--like we just passed 
this afternoon--let's do a better job of enforcing the laws that are 
already on our books.
  Before we rehash the same talking points and debate partisan 
messaging bills, let's work together on the areas where we need change. 
Let's work together to bolster our mental health system so we can 
better identify people suffering from mental illness and adjudicate 
them if they are a danger and provide them the treatment they need and 
deserve.

                              {time}  1200

  Let's work together to strengthen penalties for those who steal and 
traffic in firearms. Let's work together to secure our schools and make 
sure that our kids have a safe place to learn.
  The STOP School Violence Act of 2018, which was signed into law by 
President Trump, when we drafted the language for that bill, the first 
concern that I had was identification of those who are a threat, and 
that is the first part of that law.
  The second part of that law now is CPTED, crime prevention through 
environmental design, how we can stop those who may be coming to our 
schools to commit violence.
  Let's work together to identify the signs of dangerous behavior and 
prevent these acts of violence before they even happen.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. I 
know my friend mentioned he had been a sheriff. He has great expertise 
in knowing what he is talking about, and I appreciate his insights as a 
lawman.
  Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure and honor to yield to the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Arrington), ambassador from Texas Tech University, 
where their slogan is ``Guns Up,'' not because they are violent, but I 
have always taken it to mean they were ready to preserve and protect if 
the need arose.
  Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Speaker, I have never been more proud to be a 
Red Raider than after that introduction, I can tell you that.
  I thank the gentleman, my fellow freedom-loving Texan, Representative 
Gohmert, for yielding me the time. We will miss Representative Gohmert 
in this Chamber and the fight that he brought every day for the people 
in this people's House.
  I will lend my thoughts and sentiments on this issue of violence. As 
my colleague from Florida mentioned, human violence, sometimes 
perpetrated with guns, is a human problem, a problem of the soul, a 
problem of society, the degradation of our culture and our families. 
These are issues far deeper than legislation can reach, I can assure 
you.
  I understand, because I am human, that we want to do something and 
that while that may be a human response, as lawmakers, we should ask 
the question not can we do something symbolic, can we do something to 
make the American people feel good, because that is not going to save a 
single elementary school child. We have to ask the question: What can 
we do that will actually work, and what can we do that will also 
preserve the rights of our citizens to protect themselves?
  I think we often forget and fail to start this conversation with the 
genesis and the fundamental rationale for the Second Amendment. Our 
Founders knew good and well the abuses, the corruption, and the 
tyrannical force from a coercive central government. They wanted to 
make sure that not only could we preserve our happiness and our life 
and liberty from the crazy and the criminal; they wanted to make sure 
that we would have a last check on tyranny with an armed citizenry.
  Folks, the Second Amendment is there, and we have preserved this 
experiment in liberty and democracy for 240-plus years, even though, in 
the 20th century alone, tens of millions of people have been 
slaughtered by their own government. We have preserved this great 
beacon of liberty, this shining city on a hill, because of that 
founding principle that the Second Amendment is the citizen's last 
check on an abusive government.
  The Declaration of Independence says it best. It talks about the 
mission of a government that has the consent of the people to protect 
and secure the liberties of those people, and whenever any form of 
government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the 
people to alter or abolish it. But it goes further. It says when there 
is a

[[Page H5435]]

long train of abuses and usurpation, reducing the society to absolute 
despotism, it is the right and even the duty of the people to throw off 
that government.
  Folks, that is the context to the Second Amendment. It is not just to 
give east Texans and west Texans a hunting license. And I think it is 
critical.
  As we grieve with our brothers and sisters in Uvalde, and it is 
heartbreaking and unthinkable to see that tragedy play out and to see 
these families suffer, but I think it is incumbent upon mature 
lawmakers and leaders of the greatest and freest country in the world 
to take a deep breath and ask the question: Will these things that we 
are talking about with respect to gun control actually do anything to 
stop these crazy, murderous people from committing their crimes?
  We need to let Uvalde grieve. We need to let the final report come 
out. We all need to be more vigilant.
  Quite frankly, when we talk about 18- to 21-year-olds and extreme 
risk orders and all the litany of things that are being debated in this 
Chamber, we ought to let the States like Texas, along with their 
communities, figure out how to solve these problems and secure their 
schools and communities.
  The Federal Government's mission at its core is to secure the 
liberties of the people and provide for a common defense. Let Texas 
figure this out.
  My goodness, the very gun control laws that were passed out of this 
Chamber have been in place in cities and States with the highest gun-
related crimes.
  No more feel-good measures, no more infringing measures. Let's pray 
for Uvalde. Let's let Texas solve those problems. Let's protect the 
God-given, constitutionally protected rights of every American to 
defend themselves against the criminal and, God forbid, a coercive 
government.
  God bless America, and I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the wise observations of my 
friend from Texas. I couldn't have asked for a better lead-in to the 
thoughts that I have on this very issue. Mr. Arrington had some great 
insights.
  I have an article here from, of all things, ABC News. Above the name 
of the author, Bill Hutchinson, is a quote from a police official 
saying: ``It is worse than a war zone around here lately.''
  The article says: ``At least 12 major U.S. cities have broken annual 
homicide records in 2021--and there is still 3 weeks to go in the 
year.'' This is from December 8, 2021. This article became more 
relevant because of the horrors that occurred in Uvalde.
  Another quote, from Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney: ``It is terrible 
to every morning get up and have to go look at the numbers and then 
look at the news and see the stories. It is just crazy. It is just 
crazy, and this needs to stop.'' He said that after the city surpassed 
its annual homicide record of 500, which had stood since 1990.
  ``Philadelphia, a city of roughly 1.5 million people, has had more 
homicides this year''--this is 2021--``(521 as of December 6) than the 
Nation's two largest cities, New York (443 as of December 5) and Los 
Angeles (352 as of November 27). That is an increase of 13 percent from 
2020, a year that nearly broke the 1990 record.''
  The article goes on and talks about all these shootings in our major 
cities. In fact, these aren't considered mass shootings. They don't 
meet that definition as commonly used.
  From worldpopulationreview.com, the top 10 cities in the United 
States with the highest murder rates--and that is murders per 100,000 
people--number one is St. Louis; number two, Baltimore; number three, 
New Orleans; number four, Detroit; number five, Cleveland; number six, 
Las Vegas; number seven, Kansas City; number eight, Memphis; number 
nine, Newark; and number 10, Chicago.
  Now, all of those cities have Democrat mayors. Las Vegas has an 
independent who was a Democrat until 2009 when he announced now being 
an Independent.
  We also, in 2021, had 16 cities hit record-high homicide rates. 
Again, rates normally are calculated in murders per 100,000 people. 
Rochester, New York, had 80. Philadelphia had 524. Louisville, 
Kentucky, had 179. Baton Rouge had 115. That was an unofficial number 
but, apparently, accurate or close to accurate. Austin had 88. 
Indianapolis had 258. St. Paul had 35. Portland, Oregon, had 84. 
Albuquerque had 107. Tucson had 92. Columbus had 179. Jackson, 
Mississippi, had 129. Atlanta, Georgia, had 150. New Haven, 
Connecticut, had 25, which is a tremendous number for a small city. 
Macon, Georgia, had 52. Milwaukee had 190.
  Additional cities with high homicide rates, naturally, Chicago had 
797 homicides in 1 year, yet Mayor Lightfoot, prominent Democrat that 
she is, doesn't want to get to the root causes of that.

                              {time}  1215

  Black lives matter. There is absolutely an inordinate number of Black 
lives that are taken in these Democrat-controlled cities.
  New York, New York had 481. It is just tragic what has gone on. So 
what is different? We have had guns in America. In fact, not only have 
we had them from our founding, if it were not for guns in America we 
would not have had a founding, starting perhaps with Lexington Green.
  People in America had guns and they defended themselves and they 
defended their liberty. That is how we came to have what I believe is 
the greatest country in the history of the world. I know there are a 
lot of schools that are teaching how terrible this country is, but I 
hear over and over from people that come here to the United States from 
other countries, and they say: You have got to protect your freedom 
because if you lose your liberty, your freedom here in America, there 
will be nowhere else in the world anyone can go to be free.
  Historically, countries don't go fight for other people's freedom, 
yet, this country has. We fought the bloodiest war with the biggest 
loss of life here on our own soil for the freedom of people who were 
slaves. Yes, I know States' rights were a big part, but let's face it, 
slavery was at the bottom of it all.
  Countries don't do that. This one did. You even had the Founders do 
something that Founders don't do historically. They condemned 
themselves in their own founding documents by saying all men are 
created equal, they are endowed by their creator with certain 
inalienable rights.
  Thomas Jefferson himself put the grievance in the declaration. There 
was disagreement on it. Here he was a slave owner, yet, the most 
offensive, longest paragraph of the grievances was because King George 
had allowed slavery to ever start. The problem, or the wrong, that was 
being done through that institution, it was wrong. Yes, I know it has 
always been here on Earth.
  As I understand, there may be 40 million or more people in slavery 
right now today in our modern world, but it doesn't make it right 
anywhere and it needs to stop. This country had people who were 
Founders that condemned themselves by putting that language in there 
because they knew what was right.
  This is an unusual country. I know Solomon's Israel was an absolutely 
amazing place, supposedly the wisest man to ever live. Of course, he 
had so many wives and that creates problems. More opportunities. More 
liberty here than anywhere. Yet, we have spent the week hearing over 
and over about the need for gun control.
  The first time I was asked if I supported gun control years ago, I 
said: Well, of course I do. We were taught in the Army that the most 
effective gun control back then was--I believe there were eight steady 
hold factors--which was the best way to control your gun while firing--
the steady hold factors were taught.
  They don't teach that in the Army anymore, as I understand it. Kids 
have grown up around guns in America and we didn't have mass shootings. 
There is something going on here. I know I was condemned roundly this 
week, yesterday, talking about--we had friends across the aisle who 
made clear they didn't want to hear any more about prayer. They wanted 
to do something. They didn't seem to care if it was wrong. They wanted 
to do something.
  Well, John Lott, Jr., had this article on May 26 in Newsweek. I am 
just touching on certain parts.
  He said: ``Just as with so many of these attackers''--talking about 
the shooter in Uvalde--``the man who attacked Robb Elementary School 
picked

[[Page H5436]]

a place where people were banned from carrying concealed handguns. For 
example, the perpetrator of the Buffalo shooting from a couple of weeks 
ago wrote in his manifesto: `Areas where' carrying with a concealed 
weapon `are outlawed or prohibited may be good areas of attack.' ''
  He put that in the manifesto in case people just were too dense to 
understand that it draws shooters if they know they have got soft 
targets.
  John Lott says: ``Teachers and staff can carry concealed handguns in 
about 30 percent of Texas school districts, so we don't need to guess 
how the policy would work. Nineteen other States also allow concealed 
carry in schools. Since the year 2000, there has yet to be a single 
case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a 
mass public shooting, between 6 a.m. and midnight at a school that lets 
teachers carry guns.
  ``While there have not been any problems with armed teachers, the 
number of people killed at schools without concealed carry has 
increased significantly over the course of the last decade.
  ``Biden's speech Tuesday night contained one misleading or false 
statement after another. Instead of trying to bring the country 
together, it politicized the attack. When mentioning the Sandy Hook, 
Parkland, Santa Fe, and Oxford school shootings, Biden claimed that 
there were 900 instances of gunfire at schools over the last 10 years. 
But someone committing suicide in a car parking lot at 2 a.m., two 
gangs fighting over drug turf in a parking lot after school hours, and 
an accidental discharge in a firearms training class are not remotely 
similar to the sort of shooting that happened Tuesday. Even including 
lone suicides, accidental discharges, including those by police, and 
gang fights, the number--as compiled by my organization, the Crime 
Prevention Research Center, is about half of what Biden claims it is: 
470.
  ``Since 1998, there have been a total of nine attacks similar to the 
Robb Elementary School shooting. Nine is nine too many. But once you 
adjust for population, there are many other countries, from Germany to 
Russia to Finland, that have comparable rates of school shootings.
  ``Biden says that we need commonsense gun laws, but what he proposes 
simply will not help. He doesn't seem to realize that over 92 percent 
of violent crime in America has nothing to do with guns. Focusing on 
so-called `assault weapons' is not only not going to stop mass public 
shootings, but it won't make a difference in reducing murders at large.

  Madam Speaker, one murder is too many.
  ``Only a small share of murders are committed with rifles, let alone 
`assault rifles,' and that share has grown even smaller over time. The 
percentage of firearm murders committed with rifles was 4.8 percent 
prior to the Federal `assault weapons' ban that took effect in 
September 1994.
  ``When the ban was in effect, from 1995 to 2004, the figure stood at 
4.9 percent.'' Up a tenth of a percent with the so-called assault 
weapons ban in effect. ``And since 2004, it's been even lower. Based on 
these numbers, it's hard to argue that the ban did anything at all.
  `` `When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. 
When the law expired, mass shootings tripled,' Biden claimed. In fact, 
there was no drop in the number of attacks with `assault weapons,' and 
virtually no change in total mass shootings, during the 1994 to 2004 
ban.''
  We know from the rules of the House--I can't say anybody lied, 
including the President, but whoever is putting those words in his 
teleprompter sure was because that just didn't happen, it 
misrepresented the truth--I am sure not intentionally.
  ``Biden asked Americans why people need `assault weapons' to hunt 
deer. But, in reality, many so-called `assault weapons' are nothing 
more than small-game hunting rifles. The AR-15 platform has just been 
made to cosmetically resemble a military-grade weapon.''
  For people that know weapons, it fires a .223 round. It is just 3/
1000ths bigger around than a .22.
  We were taught in military science--and I had an Army scholarship at 
Texas A&M--that Vietnam had gone to the M-16, now the M-4, same basic 
gun. It fires the same size round--or in the metric system, 556. We 
were taught that, gee, it is a higher speed, but the rounds are lighter 
weight, therefore, our military can carry more of them. We were also 
taught it certainly is not more lethal than what was being used before 
with the 7.62 round.
  John Lott says, ``The Uvalde tragedy will inevitably lead to a push 
for so-called `red flag' laws or extreme risk protection orders. You 
would never know this from the media coverage, but the Federal 
Government and every State already have laws on the books that deal 
with people who are a danger to themselves or to others. These laws are 
commonly known as `Baker Act' statutes, though they go by different 
names in different States. They typically allow police, doctors, and 
family members to have someone held for a mental health examination 
based upon a simple reasonableness test--effectively amounting to an 
educated guess.''
  Further down: ``When faced with legal bills that can easily amount to 
$10,000 for a hearing, few people find that it makes sense to fight 
`red flag' laws just to keep their guns. Judges will thus initially 
confiscate a person's gun on the basis of a written complaint and 
`reasonable suspicion.' When hearings take place weeks later, courts 
overturn a third of the initial orders. But since few defendants have 
legal representation, the actual error rate is undoubtedly much higher.
  ``When people pose a clear danger to themselves or to others, they 
should be confined to a mental health facility. If someone is really 
suicidal, simply taking away his gun won't solve the problem anyway. If 
anything, `red flag' laws harm people who need genuine help; absent 
such laws, a person contemplating suicide might speak to a friend or 
family member and be dissuaded from that tragic course of action.
  ``It is well past time that we address these mass public shootings. 
But let's come up with proposals that matter--starting with eliminating 
`gun-free zones'.''

                              {time}  1230

  It also is worth noting, although some say assault weapon bans would 
reduce mass shootings and they think an assault weapon would be an 
automatic weapon--you hear that over and over, Madam Speaker. Actually, 
automatic weapons are already illegal and unavailable to the general 
public. Assault weapons are only available to the military. Though you 
have people who are vying for gigs on CNN or MSNBC who may say 
otherwise, but people who actually are not don't have an ulterior 
motive. They know an AR-15 is most often used as a defensive weapon.
  I have heard why more people like an AR-15 with such a small round as 
a defensive weapon at home is people who don't fire weapons often end 
up twitching before the gun is fired which is extremely harmful to the 
accuracy. The AR-15, because the round is so small, it doesn't have 
much of a kick at all, and so people who are not used to using guns 
actually can be more accurate and find it more helpful.
  We have people here saying that you shouldn't have more than five 
rounds. Yet, if you have multiple people coming into your home 
threatening your family, Madam Speaker, and they will each have guns 
most likely, then you need that.
  Of course, I had a guy last time, some years back, when there was 
talk by Democrats about eliminating or making illegal multiple rounds 
in a magazine, and I had a guy over in the Rayburn Building who told 
me, I know you all are looking at banning multiple rounds in magazines. 
I am from Georgia. We don't want that because we find that, generally 
speaking, it takes over 50 rounds to bring down a drone.
  I thought he was kidding, but he didn't smile. So that was news to 
me. That is the only time I have heard that request for multiple rounds 
in a magazine.
  But the ``Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: 
Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994 to 2003,'' the Department 
of Justice concluded this: ``Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on 
gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for 
reliable measurement. Assault weapons were rarely used in gun crimes 
even before the ban.''

[[Page H5437]]

  According to recent data from the FBI between 2015 and 2019, you were 
twice as likely to be killed by hands or feet than you are to be killed 
by a rifle.
  That is really amazing and shocking.
  Our society, if you go back to a Supreme Court case in the late 
1800s, they reviewed pages and pages of evidence and said that they 
didn't think there was any question that the United States was a 
Christian nation--not that everybody in the United States was a 
Christian, of course not, never has been. But that Christian and Judeo-
Christian principles had a major effect on our founding and on the 
country up through those times.
  I would agree with President Obama when he said we are not a 
Christian nation. I think the Supreme Court was right back in the late 
1800s, and I think President Obama was right when he said that we are 
not now.
  So what is the answer?
  What is amazing to me is we have people deeply concerned--and I have 
friends across the aisle, I know their heart, and I know how 
desperately concerned they are about these shootings, and they want to 
stop them.
  But if you look at the data, Madam Speaker, and you look at the cold, 
hard facts, the number one State in the Nation for gun control laws is 
California.
  This article is from AWR Hawkins from June 5, 2022:
  ``An FBI report on active shooter incidents in 2021 shows that 
California was the number one State for such incidents, with six 
incidents total.
  California is also number one for gun law strength, the Mike 
Bloomberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety noted.
  According to the FBI, there were 61 `active shooter incidents' across 
the country in 2021 and 12 of the incidents met the definition `of mass 
killing'.''
  Madam Speaker, California--where our Speaker is from--led the Nation 
with six of those 12 active shooter incidents:

       California has universal background checks, an assault 
     weapons ban, a high-capacity magazine ban, a 10-day waiting 
     period on gun purchases, they have got the red flag laws, gun 
     registration requirements, good cause requirements for 
     concealed carry, a ban on carrying a gun on a college campus 
     for self-defense, a ban on K-12 teachers being armed on 
     campus, a background check requirement for ammunition 
     purchases, and a limit on the number of guns a law-abiding 
     citizen can purchase in a given month, among other controls.
       Additionally, ammunition purchases are only allowed if made 
     through a State-approved vendor.

  Yet, as a friend mentioned at the beginning of our hour here, Madam 
Speaker, you have got more shootings in Mexico.
  As this article from ``American Wire'' by Melissa Fine indicates 
that: ``According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, retailer 
surveys revealed a 58 percent increase in gun sales to African 
Americans, a 49 percent increase among Hispanic Americans, and firearm 
sales to Asian Americans jumped by 43 percent.''
  According to this article there is a guy named Juan Ramireo, who 
immigrated from Mexico as a teenager, said: ``As a Mexican immigrant, I 
feel that people are waking up.''
  Ramireo, who legally immigrated to the United States when he was 13, 
said, The Second Amendment is a large reason why people feel safer here 
in the U.S. and in their homes at night. He said that as a kid--of 
course, living in Mexico--he knew what it was like to feel helpless. 
Nobody wants that feeling.
  He said, ``I saw my mom and grandmother go through several struggles 
and feelings of fear in our small Mexican town. It was difficult. But 
after moving here to the U.S., it's a new world. I go to bed with no 
worry about defending myself and my family.''
  That is because he and his family have guns.
  So what makes a difference?
  We heard in our hearing in the Judiciary Committee from some 
Democrats that they didn't want to attribute any effect to social 
media. They didn't want us to attribute any effect to violent video 
games or to Hollywood or to mental illness or to godlessness or to 
fatherlessness or to drug use.

  Yet we need to talk about these things. We really need to talk about 
these things.
  We were told that they didn't want to hear anything more about 
prayers. And I know some media has made a big deal of that. But the 
fact is before prayers were eliminated in schools we didn't have the 
kind of mass shootings we do today.
  I read a quote from a man named A.A. Hodge who was the principal of 
the Princeton Seminary and a professor of systematic theology back 
before the turn of the century of 1900. In fact, it was a few months 
before his death in 1886. Jim Garlow had quoted Reverend Hodge.
  He warned a few months before his death, ``I am as sure as I am of 
the fact of Christ's reign that a comprehensive and centralized system 
of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly 
proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of 
anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic 
ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has 
ever seen.''
  George Orwell commented, ``Sometimes the first duty of intelligent 
men is the restatement of the obvious.'' He said, ``The further a 
society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak 
it.''
  I am getting a lot of hate.
  ``The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate 
their own understanding of their history.''
  We are getting a lot of that in this country: eliminate our history, 
lie about our history, and tear down our history and our statues.
  When the truth is you learn from good history and you learn from bad 
history, Madam Speaker, and if you don't get all of it or you get 
inaccurate history, you don't learn anything accurate.
  Orwell said, ``Free speech is my right to say what you don't want to 
hear.''
  He said, ``In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a 
revolutionary act.''
  But as he talked about history and the ministry of truth that rewrote 
history every day like a disinformation board, he said, ``The past was 
erased, the erasure forgotten, and the lie became the truth.''
  We have seen a lot of that and not from Republicans.
  Orwell said, ``So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with 
fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.''
  He said, ``Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though 
often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless 
checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.''
  He said, ``Whoever controls the image and information of the past 
determines what and how future generations will think; whoever controls 
the information and images of the present determines how those same 
people will view the past.
  ``He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the 
future conquers the past.''
  Orwell defined journalism as ``printing what someone else does not 
want printed. Everything else is public relations.''

                              {time}  1245

  We have got a lot of public relations in this town.
  From the Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had an interesting 
quote. He said, ``Remember Lenin's words: `An oppressed class which did 
not aspire to possess arms and learn how to handle them would deserve 
only to be treated as slaves.' ''
  That is Lenin. And the system he created in the Soviet Union resulted 
in the second most murders by a government in the history of the world, 
second only to Mao Tse Tung in China.
  Whitaker Chambers--I waited too many years to read his book, Witness. 
But he says--because he did a lot of analysis. He was an atheist. He 
had had a troubled family life and loved the idea of communism; but 
eventually saw what communism really was and decided he didn't want any 
of it; eventually became a Christian.
  But he said: `` . . . the moment man indulged his freedom to the 
point where he was also free from God, it led him into tragedy, evil 
and often the exact opposite of what he had intended. In human terms, 
there was no solution for the problem of evil.''
  He said: `` . . . the crisis of the Western world exists to the 
degree it is indifferent to God. It exists to the degree

[[Page H5438]]

in which the Western world actually shares communism's materialist 
vision, is so dazzled by the logic of the materialist interpretation of 
history, politics, and economics, that it fails to grasp that, for it, 
the only possible answer to the Communist challenge is to choose either 
faith in God or faith in man.''
  Well, what Lenin had to say about that issue, he said, ``Every 
religious idea of God, even flirting with the idea of God, is 
unutterable vileness.'' And that came after Dostoyevsky analyzed what 
this crazy guy named Marx had to say. And Dostoyevsky took great issue 
with it. And at one point, he said: ``The problem''--Dostoyevsky--``The 
problem of communism is not an economic problem.'' Of course, some of 
us know it is an economic problem. But his point is it is not the 
biggest problem.
  He said, ``The problem of communism is the problem of atheism.''
  And back during the summer I was an exchange student to the real 
Soviet Union in the seventies, it was nauseating to walk into a church, 
and where you would have seen a gorgeous stained glass window of 
Jesus--I remember one came in, and I have seen a picture depicting 
Jesus surrounded by the children where he--the quote was: ``Suffer the 
little children to come unto me,'' except it was Lenin sitting there 
with the children around him. They had destroyed the stained glass 
window of Jesus and had Lenin; which goes back to what Dostoyevsky had 
to say, the problem of communism, socialism, progressivism, the big 
problem is ultimately government has got to be God; and that doesn't 
work out well.
  Natan Sharansky, an amazing man, he said: ``A lack of moral clarity . 
. . is why people living in free societies cannot distinguish between 
religious fundamentalists in democratic states and religious terrorists 
in fundamentalist states. That is why people living in free societies 
can come to see their fellow citizens as their enemy and foreign 
dictators as their friends.'' A lack of moral clarity. And that is not 
being taught in too many of our schools.
  Ronald Reagan told the Alabama Legislature in 1982: ``To those who 
cite the First Amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more 
of our institutions and everyday life, may I just say: The First 
Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of 
this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious 
values from government tyranny.''
  John Adams said, ``The general principles on which the Fathers 
achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.'' He 
wrote this to Thomas Jefferson toward the end of his life.
  Adams said, ``I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe, 
that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and 
immutable, as the existence and attributes of God.''
  And I have gotten mail before saying, How dare you bring these things 
up on the House floor? Because people are not taught our history. The 
fact is, the Bible has been quoted more times--many, many times more 
than any other book throughout our history, but it is quoted less and 
less these days. We have got our work cut out for us.
  But it appears the Supreme Court is starting to understand, for them 
to become oligarchs, monarchs, and rule from Mt. Olympus across the 
street here, is not the best way to decide things better left for the 
legislature, after a great debate. And that is what we need to do.
  And we really need to look at what is different now than when we 
didn't have mass shootings like we do now. And I think we will come to 
the things that Natan Sharansky, Whitaker Chambers, Dostoyevsky, John 
Adams, Ronald Reagan, and so many of our founders understood.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________