[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 19432]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



              CONTROLLING GUN VIOLENCE IN OUR COMMUNITIES

  The SPEAKER. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 19, 
1999, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) is recognized during 
morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, my goal in Congress has been to make the 
Federal Government a better partner, working with people back home to 
make our communities more livable, our families safer, healthier, and 
more economically secure. An important step towards that goal would be 
to reduce the threat of gun violence in our communities.
  In no developed country in the world are families at greater risk of 
gun violence than in the United States. Why is this? I think that one 
of the problems is that the sheer magnitude and terrible frequency of 
gun violence has numbed the American public. It is hard to grasp the 
enormity of more than 12 children a day killed, the equivalent of a 
Columbine High School massacre just scattered around the country.
  Part of our task must be to put a human face on those tragedies and 
then to propose simple, common sense steps to reduce gun violence.
  My first experience with this tragedy involved a high school friend. 
Bob Boothman was one of five kids. He was sandwiched between two older 
twin sisters and two younger twins, a brother and a sister, a couple of 
years younger. The Boothman family was a place where people gravitated. 
It was warm and loving, lots of activity, friendly, full of life.
  Then, one night in the fall of 1969, as Bob was driving home, things 
were turned upside down for that family. Someone in a car driving in 
the other direction fired a random shot that killed Bob. Bob, the 
student body officer, the boyfriend, the son, the brother, the trusted 
employee.
  Life did go on for the Boothman family, their children, and today, 
their grandchildren. Yet, nothing quite filled the void of having lost 
this terrific young man. It was not just Bob that was the victim, but 
his parents, sisters, brother, friends. They were all victims of that 
violence, changing their lives forever.
  Mr. Speaker, I share this painful memory not because we should dwell 
on these losses, but because they should inspire us to take steps to 
protect families in the future.
  About the time that Bob lost his life, America declared war on drunk 
driving and death on our highways. Our battle for highway safety was 
enormously successful. We have cut the fatality rate in half by a 
series of simple common sense reforms. So too, we can launch a similar 
effort to protect Americans against gun violence. We can take simple, 
common sense steps, keeping guns out of the hands of more people with a 
pattern of reckless and dangerous behavior, treating the gun like the 
dangerous product that it is, making it harder for children to obtain 
and use them, cutting down on illegal sales and distribution.
  Sadly, this Congress has been paralyzed by extremists on the issue of 
gun violence, and the Republican leadership has refused to even allow 
the conference committee on the Juvenile Justice bill to meet for 14 
months to consider the Senate-approved gun amendments. They have not 
met since August of last year.
  Luckily, in my State of Oregon, in November, we can vote for Measure 
5, which would close the gun show loophole, a small, but significant 
step to make sure that all gun purchasers are subjected to background 
checks, to maybe help break the log jam here in Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, Bob Boothman died on a cold November night in 1969. 
Since then, over 1 million Americans have lost their lives to gun 
violence, more than all of the Americans who have been killed in gun 
violence in war from the Civil War to this date. We as a Nation have 
celebrated the sacrifice of those million war dead; and we have worked 
to minimize, to prevent future conflicts and loss of life. So too, we 
need to memorialize the victims of gun violence, to make sure that 
their lives were not lost in vain, so that all of America's families 
can be safer, healthier, and more economically secure.

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