[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 17667-17671]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                   SCHOOL SAFETY HOTLINE ACT OF 2000

  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the 
bill (H.R. 5123) to require the Secretary of Education to provide 
notification to States and State educational agencies regarding the 
availability of certain administrative funds to establish school safety 
hotlines.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                               H.R. 5123

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. FINDINGS.

       The Congress finds that--
       (1) an estimated 255,000 violent incidents occurred in 1999 
     on school property, at an official school function, or while 
     traveling to and from school;
       (2) for the complete school year July 1, 1997, through June 
     30, 1998, there were 58 school-associated violent deaths that 
     resulted from 46 incidents; 46 of these violent deaths were 
     homicides, 11 were suicides, and 1 teenager was killed by a 
     law enforcement officer in the course of duty;
       (3) although fewer school-associated violent deaths have 
     occurred in recent years, the total number of multiple victim 
     homicide events has increased;
       (4) in 1997, 5 percent of all 12th graders reported that 
     they had been purposefully injured, while they were at 
     school, with a weapon such as a knife, gun, or club during 
     the prior 12 months, and 14 percent reported that they had 
     been injured on purpose without a weapon;
       (5) on average, each year from 1993 to 1997, there were 
     131,400 violent crimes against teachers at schools, as 
     reported by teachers from both public and private schools, 
     which translates into a rate of 31 violent crimes for every 
     1,000 teachers;
       (6) tools should be created for, and provided to, students, 
     teachers, parents, and administrators across the country so 
     that they have the ability to provide the information 
     necessary to law enforcement authorities to take action 
     before other tragedies occur; and
       (7) school safety hotlines allow students, parents, and 
     school personnel the opportunity to report threats of school 
     violence to law enforcement authorities, thus reducing 
     incidents of youth violence.

     SEC. 2. NOTIFICATION.

       Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of 
     this Act, the Secretary of Education shall provide written 
     notification to the States and State educational agencies of 
     the ability of States or State educational agencies, as 
     appropriate, to use State administrative funds provided under 
     title IV and title VI of the Elementary and Secondary 
     Education Act of 1965 to implement programs related to the 
     establishment and operation of a toll-free telephone hotline 
     that students, parents, and school personnel use to report 
     suspicious, violent, or threatening behavior related to 
     schools or school functions to law enforcement authorities.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) and the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. 
McCarthy) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo).


                             General Leave

  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their 
remarks on H.R. 5123.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Colorado?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5123, the School Safety 
Hotline Act of 2000, which would require the Secretary of Education to 
notify State education agencies so that they can use funding under the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act to establish school safety 
hotlines.
  One of the effects of the recent rash of violence in our Nation's 
schools is that many of our students no longer feel safe. Recent 
studies and polls have confirmed this, showing that the number of 
students who fear violence in their school is at a record level. We 
cannot expect the educational process to continue unencumbered when 
teachers and students are as concerned with their safety as they are 
with teaching and learning.
  School safety hotlines allow students, teachers, parents, and school 
personnel the opportunity to report threats or acts of violence to 
authorities. They give everyone back some of the security that they 
deserve, allowing them to concentrate on teaching and learning, the 
very reasons for which they are in school.

                              {time}  1415

  According to the report ``The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment 
Perspective'' released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last 
week, one of the most important aspects of identifying potential 
violent adolescents is detecting that point at which they begin to talk 
about the event they are planning, when a student intentionally or 
unintentionally reveals clues to feelings, thoughts, fantasies, 
attitudes, or intentions that may signal an impending violent act.
  Not too long ago we had the opportunity to hear from members of the 
Secret Service who came into our office and made us aware of the fact 
that they had been working on a profile similar to this, or a document 
similar to this, and looking at the number of people who have been 
involved with either threats against personnel or threats against 
elected officials or people who have carried out those threats, and 
then looking at what they found were similar characteristics among the 
people who had been involved with school shootings and school violence.
  One of the things they told us, there were several common elements, 
but the one that struck my attention at the time was the fact that all 
of these people tell somebody; that none of them have acted alone, in a 
vacuum, without ever letting anyone know of their intentions.
  If that is the case, if in fact that happens and these people are 
inclined toward that and do in fact tell others, then something like 
the school safety hotline, the need for it is quite evident.
  In the aftermath of the tragedies around the country, I worked in 
cooperation with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the Colorado 
Department of Education, U.S. West, now Qwest, AT&T, and local sheriffs 
departments throughout the State to establish the Colorado school 
safety hotline. We were able to pool the resources of State agencies 
and private companies to provide this needed resource for the State 
which provides parents, students, and teachers with a valuable tool in 
our efforts to make schools safe.
  We were able to come together as elected leaders, administrators, 
neighbors, friends, and families to search for ways to restore that 
sense of safety and security to our schools. Now if someone learns of a 
potential threat to a fellow student, a teacher, or a school facility, 
they have an opportunity to provide this information to law enforcement 
and school authorities who will follow up on their tip, and they can do 
so anonymously.
  All reports to the hotline are kept strictly confidential. Here is 
how it works, and here is how it has worked in Colorado. The Colorado 
Bureau of Investigation answers the school safety hotline 24 hours a 
day, 7 days a week. This is enormously important. We have talked to 
other people and other school districts that have implemented these, 
but they are not really always available and accessible to a live 
person on the other end. Sometimes they go into a recording. That 
leaves a great deal of liability for the agency involved.

[[Page 17668]]

  This hotline, the one we have in Colorado, operates, as I say, 24 
hours a day, 7 days a week. It goes to a live person. Then the 
sheriff's department in the county where the school is located is 
identified and is provided with the information, if that is necessary.
  The local sheriff's department then works with local law enforcement 
agencies to take appropriate action and follow up on tips phoned into 
the hotline.
  Of course, one of the most important aspects of the hotline is 
getting the word out to everyone in our schools and communities. To 
this end, the Colorado Department of Education provides each school 
with posters and makes sure all students and parents are aware of the 
hotline. AT&T-Qwest provides the public service announcements to 
highlight the school safety hotline to students, and they do so through 
the cooperation of TCI cable.
  On the hardware side, Qwest has provided the telephone service for 
the hotline, including the telephones, the phone service, and 
installation, and provides the maintenance. As of September 5, the 
Colorado school safety hotline has taken over 600 calls, including 80 
that were in the nature of a threat.
  Establishing hotlines will hopefully help prevent future tragedy, and 
are just one of the many actions we can take to help make our schools 
safer. This will not be a cure, but it is another tool for all of us to 
use. We all know that the roots of school violence lie much deeper, but 
we should do everything at our disposal to prevent individual acts from 
happening.
  The Colorado school safety hotline has been a success, and we need to 
make sure that every school district in America knows they already have 
some of the resources they need to start their own hotline.
  H.R. 5123, the School Safety Hotline Act of 2000, was devised to help 
States throughout the nation do just that. While I wholeheartedly 
advocate the public-private partnerships in developing the hotline, 
which has been extremely successful in my district, with the passage of 
this legislation, funding will not be an issue whether to take steps to 
help protect our schools and communities.
  It is my hope that tools like the school safety hotline will help 
restore a sense of security to students, teachers, and their families 
who undertake this learning mission each day. Once again, I thank the 
Speaker and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) for moving 
this bill. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 5123.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mrs. McCARTHY of New York. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, today the House considers legislation that will direct 
the Secretary of Education to notify the States that Federal money is 
available to set up school safety hotlines so teachers, students, and 
parents will be able to report threats of school violence to law 
enforcement.
  Many States already know these funds are available for school 
hotlines. Some House Members may question whether or not this 
legislation is really necessary.
  As a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce with my 
colleague, the gentleman from Colorado, I am committed to reducing 
classroom sizes, ensuring after-school programs, and increasing student 
achievement and test scores. We can accomplish none of these things 
unless we have safe schools first.
  Had the 106th Congress really addressed school violence, then this 
legislation would be an appropriate amendment in major gun safety 
legislation. I regret that Congress has accomplished next to nothing to 
enact commonsense gun safety legislation.
  Have we closed the gun show loophole that permits criminals to get 
guns easily? No. Have we required gun manufacturers to install safety 
locks on all new guns? No. Have we banned high-capacity ammunition 
clips on assault weapons? No. Do we even allow the Department of 
Education to collect specific information on gun violence in our 
schools? No.
  In my home State of New York, I have worked closely with Governor 
George Pataki and our State lawmakers so we were able to enact strong, 
commonsense gun safety legislation this summer. I am proud our State 
now has a law that closes the gun show loophole and requires child 
safety locks on guns.
  We need national commonsense gun legislation. This way we know all 
our schools will certainly be as safe as they can be.
  The House leadership and the gun lobby have maintained their ironclad 
alliance to block the consideration of this commonsense gun 
legislation. I urge the American people to send a message to the House 
leadership to reject the gun lobby and enact real gun safety 
legislation before we adjourn for the year.
  Mr. Speaker, the new school year has just begun. We need to give 
parents greater assurance that their children will be safe while they 
are attending school. I will support H.R. 5123, but the truth is, the 
Congress must do more. We can close the gun show loophole. We can 
require child safety locks. We can ban high-capacity ammunition clips. 
We can collect information on gun violence in our schools.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pascrell).
  Mr. PASCRELL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time 
to me on this important issue, and I commend her for her continued 
fight on this most critical problem.
  We all remember with horror the tragedy that occurred in April of 
1999 at Littleton, Colorado. It left a country speechless, parents 
childless, and Congress clueless. We will likely never know the 
motivations behind these two young killers.
  One fact remains glaringly clear, Mr. Speaker: They were able to 
obtain the firearms they needed without any questions asked. A friend 
of the two purchased the guns from a gun show the previous autumn. Days 
after the killing she said, ``I wish it had been more difficult. I 
wouldn't have helped them buy the guns if I had faced a background 
check.''
  In the days, months, and now a year following Columbine, I have 
joined my colleagues in the Congress from both sides of the aisle to 
put an end to the gun show loophole. While successful to that end, the 
majority leadership still refuses to address other proposed legislation 
dealing with gun safety issues, so I am pleased and I am honored to 
stand with the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) and his 
legislation. It is on the suspension calendar today, and I salute the 
gentleman from Colorado. It is timely, in fact, because millions of 
children and teenagers are returning to classrooms across the Nation to 
go back to school this month.
  As stated in H.R. 5123, an estimated 225,000 violent incidents 
occurred in 1999 on school property, at an official school function, or 
while traveling to and from school. That is not acceptable and it 
should not be to anybody, regardless of which side of the aisle they 
sit on. Students and teachers ought not to leave their houses in the 
morning worried about whether or not they will make it home that 
evening.
  H.R. 5123 adds one more safety measure to ensuring that school 
violence is stopped. To those who say there are enough laws on the 
books already, I say, they are misinformed. It requires the Secretary 
of Education to notify States that administrative funds may be used to 
establish the tollfree hotline in schools, as the good gentleman from 
Colorado pointed out. Parents, students, and school personnel wanting 
to report suspicious or violent acts could use this hotline.
  I applaud the author of this commonsense legislation. It does not 
take one gun away from one person in the United States of America. It 
is common sense, and I applaud the gentleman for that. This is a step 
in the right direction.
  I am encouraged that we are debating this today, because it gives me 
hope. Remember the song, Core Ingrata. Give me the slightest sign of 
hope. That is what they are doing today. This measure requires, as a 
measure that I had introduced not too long ago concerning

[[Page 17669]]

smart guns, that every handgun manufactured and sold in America must 
incorporate technology to allow operation only by its owner. What in 
God's name is so demonic about that?
  I urge the majority leadership to consider bringing up reasonable gun 
legislation: a 3-day waiting period for gun show purchases, the 
elimination of high-capacity ammunition clips, and requiring child 
safety locks on every handgun. We have Federal law on aspirins, child 
seats, cigarette lighters. We are afraid to do it with weapons.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I recognized when I brought this measure forward that 
would provide an opportunity for our friends on the other side to 
discuss a variety of other issues not really attendant to this 
particular problem, not attendant to this particular bill.
  We can spend all of our time, and I know that, in debate on the 
myriad of issues that have been hashed and rehashed on this floor, 
debated, discussed, or raked over, but in fact we are talking about 
something here that is a very practical step that can be taken 
tomorrow.
  It does not need the overwhelming support of the Congress from a 
financial standpoint, it just simply needs to be passed into law and 
allowed to be implemented by the Secretary of Education, and we will 
have done something significant. It is meaningful. These are not just 
whimsical attempts to try to deal with this problem. Over 600 calls 
have come in in 1 year, a little over 1 year. Eighty of those calls 
were of a threatening nature.

                              {time}  1430

  We do not know, because the system does not require a feedback, as to 
what kind of action was finally taken after the CBA sends the 
information to the local agency. But, anecdotally, we have heard that 
there have been three to four arrests that have been made as a result 
of the hotline; and, therefore, we can only speculate as to the 
possibility as to the number of people whose lives have either been 
saved or at least kept out of harm's way as a result of this. So we can 
do this. We should think positively about the steps we can take in this 
regard.
  I urge us to focus our attention on this issue and not on the many 
other things that I know are deep and deeply felt. I totally understand 
my colleagues who do get emotional about this issue. It is definitely 
an emotional issue. Perhaps the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pascrell) and I share more than just an inclination of that because, 
being both Italians here, one can understand how we can both get 
emotional about this.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mrs. McCARTHY of New York. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), my colleague on the Committee on 
Education and the Workforce.
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I would, first of all, like to thank the 
gentlewoman from New York for the time that she has given me to speak 
on such an important topic and commend her for her strong leadership on 
the committee that we serve on together.
  I would like to extend a bipartisan hand to my colleague on the other 
side of the aisle who also serves on the Committee on Education and the 
Workforce for his common sense, his bipartisanship, and his 
responsiveness to a need in America, which is important to establish a 
safety hotline for our parents and our schools.
  But just as we need this safety hotline because of violence programs 
in our schools, we also need more. We need a lifeline to many of our 
students in our schools across this great country who do not have a 
chance to get a good education.
  Just as we have brought this bipartisan and responsive and common 
sense legislation to the floor tonight, it is a very small step, a drop 
in the bucket towards solving some of the education problems in 
America, we need to do more.
  The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Davis) and I have a bill to try 
innovative and bold and new ways to respond to the need in this country 
to bring more teachers into the teaching profession. Where is that bill 
today? This would bring people into the teaching profession at 40 or 50 
years old in technology and math and science areas when too many of our 
teachers are overwhelmed with problems in the schools; and they are 
teaching, with a physical education degree, physics. They are not 
certified in the area. So we need to do more.
  We need to do more in Head Start, making our Head Start programs more 
responsive to the needs of learning children earlier and at earlier 
ages. We need more resources for those children. Where is that bill 
today?
  We need to do more to help some of our working families in the middle 
class and low income to afford the cost of college or community school. 
But we do not have that bill today.
  We do not have the Elementary and Secondary Education Act on the 
floor today, although that will probably expire soon. We need more 
charter schools and public choice in America today. Where is that bill 
today?
  Now, I am all for establishing a hotline to help our parents and our 
children and help establish safer schools, but what about the lifeline? 
In America today, across the country, from Colorado to Indiana to New 
York, education is the most important and pressing concern on the minds 
of our parents. Yet, oftentimes we cannot muster the needed, the 
required bipartisanship and common sense and responsiveness to bring 
some of these other bills to the floor.
  I hope we do it before this session ends. I hope we can work on 
charter schools and public choice. I hope we can work on new ideas to 
bring new teachers into the profession. I hope we can work on better 
quality ideas for our parents to be involved in our schools and for 
local control. I hope that we can work on the ideas of, sometimes in 
our cities, schools that are literally falling down on the heads of our 
children.
  Let us work together in this Congress on these ideas and not just on 
the idea, although it is a good one, of outlines for our parents, for 
safe schools.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.
  Mr. Speaker, if we are going to get into all of the things that have 
not been on the floor that are not on the floor, it is, I guess, 
important for us to talk about what has happened so far.
  April 29, 1999, the Educational Flexibility Act, H.R. 800, was signed 
into law; May 4, 1999, IDEA Full Funding resolution passed the House; 
July 10, the Teacher Empowerment Act. October 12, Dollars to the 
Classroom resolution passed the House; October 21, Student's Results 
Act. October 21, the Academic Achievement Act (Straight A's) passed the 
House. February 29, Literacy Involves Families Together Act passed the 
committee. April 13, the committee completed consideration of Education 
Options Act. May 3, IDEA Full Funding bill passed the House.
  There have been actions taken. Again, speaking about these things in 
a vacuum makes it appear as though this is the only thing that we are 
doing. It is certainly not the case with education.
  Mrs. McCARTHY of New York. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer).
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York once 
again for her kindness and generosity. I just respond to the gentleman 
from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) by saying this: The first bill that he 
mentioned, the Education Flexibility Act, was a bill that I authored 
with the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), a Republican; and we 
worked across the aisle to pass that bill. It was signed into law by 
the President. It was one of the few that the gentleman from Colorado 
mentioned that has been signed into law.
  It is one thing to be able to say we passed this in this body, it is 
another thing to be able to say we mustered the bipartisanship in the 
Senate or we were able to persuade or convince the President to be with 
us on the issue; and generally he is with us on many of these education 
issues.
  The gentleman from Colorado mentioned a host of resolutions that do 
not

[[Page 17670]]

have the force of law. The gentleman mentioned the TEA act, the Teacher 
Empowerment Act, that tries to provide more opportunities for our 
teachers to get into the teaching profession in new ways. I supported 
that piece of legislation. That is not law. ESCA, no where to be found 
today. Elementary and Secondary Education Act that is so vital where, 
we worked very well together for about a third of that act in a 
bipartisan way, and then bipartisanship somehow mysteriously fell 
apart.
  So we have a long way to go. My point to the gentleman from Colorado 
(Mr. Tancredo) is, one, to congratulate him for a bipartisan piece of 
legislation today, and, secondly, and I think he would admit, we need 
to do more.
  The challenges in America today were succinctly put forward by Thomas 
Jefferson a long time ago when he said ``I like the dreams of the 
future better than the history of the past.'' The dreams for the future 
for our children are a great education and not leaving children behind. 
Too many of these children are being left behind.
  We need local control of our schools. We need more public school 
choice and more charter schools. We need more new and innovative ways 
to bring teachers into the profession and give them the resources to 
have great schools.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) for his 
comments, his very, I think, observant comments. I believe that much of 
what he brings to our attention is worthy of our attention. There is so 
much that we can do here and so much for which we have responsibility.
  There is this other body, the other body we all know, we all have 
concerns and complaints about how it operates, or sometimes it 
apparently does not, but the fact is that is where most of this 
legislation resides. We can take, I think, pride in what we have done 
here. There is only so much we can do until the other body makes their 
decisions and moves along.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mrs. McCARTHY of New York. Mr. Speaker, I yield 7\1/2\ minutes to the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. 
McCarthy) for yielding me this time. I especially want to thank her for 
her consistent and dedicated leadership on gun safety; leadership that 
has not faltered, as I am sad to say this Congress has.
  I want to congratulate the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo), 
who knows firsthand what gun violence can mean to a State and to a 
jurisdiction, for the bipartisan leadership he has given on the bill 
that is before us today.
  It is a useful bill. It is useful if nothing more as an advertisement 
for districts to know that this money exists. It is useful as a 
reminder to the Department of Education, if the Secretary has not 
already done it, to send out notices that these funds are available. It 
is useful to help prevent further gun violence.
  But if I may say so, if we are truly serious about preventing gun 
violence, we will look at more than threats for gun violence. There 
would be fewer threats if there were fewer guns.
  The gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) mentioned the kind of 
emotion that he knew his bill would call forth on the floor. Well, 
particularly for those of us from high gun violence jurisdictions, what 
kind of Members would we be this late in the session if we had no 
passion for this issue?
  I can tell my colleagues this, the representatives of the Million 
Moms came to see me recently. Last week they went to the press in 
desperation. The mothers who appeared with pictures of their dead 
children. Yes, we are angry, Mr. Speaker. They were angry, many of 
them, to the point of tears. School was opening throughout the region 
and throughout the country. They could not believe that the 106th 
Congress had made no progress on gun safety since the Columbine youth 
massacre more than a year ago. They were incredulous, and they mean for 
us to be incredulous.
  They were dismayed that the leadership could be sitting on gun safety 
legislation as their children were about to go back to school. They 
could not believe that we would consider going home without taking this 
bill out of conference and passing it now. That is what they wanted me 
to come to the floor to say this afternoon. I would be here in a 5-
minute speech if not for this legislation.
  My colleagues are going to hear, not only from me and the gentlewoman 
from New York (Mrs. McCarthy), they are going to hear from many of us 
until this bill is passed and especially during this session.
  The moms cannot believe that, after families pulled off the largest 
gun safety demonstration in American history, this House, this Senate 
has not yet heard them. I can tell my colleagues this, they have not 
gone away. They have not only not gone away, look in the districts of 
my colleagues. They are in their district now organizing.
  They are making gun safety a potent election issue, which it did not 
have to be, because there is bipartisan support for the minimum gun 
safety legislation that is locked up in a self-imposed moratorium in 
conference committee as I speak.
  I can tell my colleagues one thing. It is dangerous to treat moms 
like children with short attention spans. They are in for the long 
haul. They are not going to forget. They did not forget when they came, 
and they are not going to forget in November.
  As Congress came back, the families felt no safer, even though it was 
reported during that very week that crime was down 10 percent in the 
country over last year. We hear one hand clapping. I do not hear the 
moms clapping. We are down 34 percent since 1993. Do my colleagues know 
why they do not hear them clapping is because they do not feel any 
safer.
  Now, I do not know if passing the gun legislation locked up by the 
majority will make them be any safer, I know they will feel safer. It 
is the shadow of Columbine, I will say to the gentleman from Colorado 
(Mr. Tancredo), that is hanging over the heads of parents and children 
in every State of the Union, in the District of Columbia, and the 
insular areas.
  Imagine waking up just before Congress reconvenes and reading in the 
Washington Post that the FBI was preparing a guidebook on how to detect 
children who might go on a shooting spree.

                              {time}  1445

  I want to know how to detect the guns and get the guns out of the 
hands of children who might be inclined to go on a shooting spree.
  Congress better watch out, we are way behind the moms. We are still 
at the level of high-capacity ammunition, safety locks on guns, and the 
gun show loophole. They have sailed ahead to licensing and registration 
one gun a month. But if we were to do just what is before us now, I 
think they would feel that they and we had accomplished much.
  I know this much: they have got long memories and their memories are 
not sustained by the statistics that show about 80,000 children killed 
in gun violence since 1979. They are not sustained by the statistics 
from the District of Columbia that show that there were 700 children 
killed by gun violence in my district.
  Do my colleagues know why I am emotional? Seven hundred children in 
this city of half a million.
  I know some of my colleagues will say, Yeah, you have got legislation 
that bans guns, Eleanor, so what good is it? I will tell them what good 
it is. Not one of those guns came from the District of Columbia. Every 
one of them was brought in from jurisdictions that allow guns to be 
sold with loopholes and without safety locks.
  This is one country. This is all of our country. Guns travel across 
borders the same way that children do. And until there is a national 
gun law, there is no gun law and there is no safety for any child 
anywhere in America.
  We do not measure them by statistics. We measure them by the way I 
do, by Harris ``Pappy'' Bates, who went on

[[Page 17671]]

Easter Monday to the National Zoo, set up by this body, and got shot in 
the head. I am pleased to report that somehow he has survived.
  We measure it by Andre Watts and Natasha Marsh of Wilson High School, 
who were buried in their graduation gowns.
  Many of us stand with Mothers Across America. I say to my colleagues, 
I come to my colleagues with their message: we go home without gun 
safety legislation at our peril.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, it was inevitable, I am sure, regardless of how many 
attempts to try and focus on this particular piece of legislation, a 
positive step that we are taking, it was inevitable that we would begin 
to once again hear the kind of rhetoric just propounded on the floor of 
the House. It is inevitable but disconcerting.
  Certainly those of us from my State, certainly I need no one to 
remind me what happened, where it happened, and how it happened. And I 
will tell my colleagues this also: we can talk forever about gun 
violence, and there are absolutely legitimate issues for us to debate 
on this floor and through legislative bodies throughout the United 
States, but to tie every single issue every single time they have an 
opportunity to tie Columbine to it, to use that name over and over 
again, they do so and they do so, I believe, in a way that is not 
respectful of the event and of the feelings and emotions of the people 
in my community because it is exploiting that horrific event.
  The gun show, let us talk about exactly what did happen. And I do 
hope that, in fact, the people of this Nation do have long memories. I 
will be more than willing to help them remember exactly what happened 
on this floor when we debated the part of the bill dealing with gun 
safety that we call the juvenile justice bill and we, in fact, included 
a provision to close the gun show loophole; and we included a ban on 
importation of high-capacity clips, and we included a juvenile Brady 
bill saying that if any juvenile gets convicted of a violent crime that 
they can never own a gun, and we included a mandatory sale of gun 
locks; and we included making it illegal for a juvenile to possess an 
assault weapon.
  Those were there. The bill went down, and it went down with 191 
Democrat noes and about 81 or 82 Republican noes, and it went down 
because there was a desire to have rhetoric for the rest of this 
session about guns as opposed to a solution.
  This that I propose today is part of a solution. It is not the cure. 
It is not the silver lining that we can look for in this ominous 
picture. But it does give us hope, and it is designed to give children 
and parents hope.
  There is nothing more discouraging in the last several months than 
having to recognize the fact that there were kids all over this country 
actually afraid to go to school. Even if nothing had happened in their 
particular school, nothing of a violent nature, they were still afraid 
because of everything they had seen on the television, everything they 
had heard from the media about the potential for violence.
  I kept thinking to myself, what can I do, what is one thing I can do 
about this; and it was this hotline, the school safety hotline. It is 
not everything we should do. I agree with my colleagues, there is more. 
But, please, let us at least be positive enough to move in the 
direction that we know we all want to move here; and that is to provide 
a safe learning environment for every single child in America and to do 
so without the sort of incredibly divisive and, I think, inappropriate 
rhetoric, especially in reference to Columbine.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Quinn). The question is on the motion 
offered by the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) that the House 
suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 5123.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor 
thereof) the rules were suspended and the bill was passed.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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