[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 22882]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



         CONGRESS SHOULD ACT TO REDUCE GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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. Madam Speaker, my goal in coming to Congress was to 
help make the Federal Government a better partner in making communities 
more livable, our families safer, healthier, and more economically 
secure.
  Clearly, safety from the threat of gun violence is one critical 
element in a livable community. Since I started my public service 
career, over 1 million Americans have lost their lives to gun violence. 
That is more than all the United States citizens who have lost their 
lives in battle from the Civil War through last week to the 17 who were 
tragically killed in Yemen.
  Part of the solution to this epidemic of gun violence is to put a 
name to those faces, to make them real. One of those faces belongs to a 
woman named Candice DuBoff Jones, who was a bright, caring 26-year-old 
attorney who happened to be a law school classmate of mine in Portland, 
Oregon.
  One morning at 10:30, she was having a hearing on a domestic 
relations matter two floors below where I was working as a county 
commissioner. Shots rang out. Candice was dead, along with her 
assailant who was the husband of the woman she was representing.
  This impact had a dramatic ripple effect. It was not just the loss of 
Ms. Jones' life, but it was a loss for her husband, it was a loss for 
her brother, friends, and colleagues. Certainly, everybody in that 
courtroom was scarred by that event.
  Madam Speaker, it is hard for me to share even today, not because we 
were that close particularly. In fact, I knew her brother much better, 
who was a distinguished and respected faculty member at our college, 
Professor Leonard DuBoff. But what is hard for me, besides the tragic 
loss of this woman, was that we as a society, we as a government know 
we can take steps to reduce gun violence, and we do not.
  Over the same period of time that we lost those million gun deaths, 
we as a society cut the rate of auto death in this country in half. 
There was not any single magic solution, but there was a determination 
on the part of citizens and government alike to take simple, common 
sense steps to improve traffic safety, auto design, and law 
enforcement.
  We can do the same thing to reduce gun violence. Luckily, there are 
now some States where citizens have taken the matters in their own 
hands, like my own State of Oregon where there is a measure on the 
ballot in November that will allow people to close the gun show 
loophole. I am confident that voters will overwhelmingly, when given 
this chance, vote affirmatively, as they will in Colorado.
  It is strange that at a time when leaders in the Mideast are once 
again taking risks for peace, in fact, putting their own lives at risk 
by stepping forward, I am sad that the Republican House leadership will 
not stand up to the gun lobby and take a small but important step for 
peace in this country to reduce gun violence.
  We have not had a meeting of the conference committee on the juvenile 
crime bill for the last 15 months. It was last August that it met. It 
has a provision that would enable us to close the gun show loophole 
that has already passed the Senate.
  This is just but one small step, but it would send a signal that we 
in the House of Representatives care enough about saving lives of 
families in this country to take modest political risks to do the right 
thing.
  There is still time yet in this session of Congress to do that, to 
convene the conference committee, to allow the House of Representatives 
to vote on closing the gun show loophole, to take a small step to make 
our communities more livable, our families safer, healthier, and more 
economically secure.




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