[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7676-7682]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                           MILLION MOM MARCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. 
Norton) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, it should not take a million moms to do 
anything, but that is what we are going to get this coming Sunday, 
Mother's Day. Actually, it should not have taken the moms whose 
children died at the Columbine High School youth massacre.

                              {time}  1645

  It should not take the moms who are still feeling the reverberations 
of the Jonesboro, Arkansas, shooting. And it should not have taken what 
the moms at the Granada Hills Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles 
went through just last August.
  But what has happened with the killing of youth over the past year, 
and it has been more than a year since Columbine, has caused the 
mothers of America to take the matter into their own hands, and well 
they might because this Congress has not taken it

[[Page 7677]]

into its hands, to do something about it.
  These mothers are coming. I do not know if there will be a million, 
but I know there will be a lot. And this is what they say to us, ``We 
are putting our elected officials on notice that we, the mothers, will 
not tolerate them putting the gun lobby before the safety of our 
children any longer. We expect results, and we will hold our elected 
officials accountable if they do not deliver.''
  Mr. Speaker, these are some serious women and their families. These 
are some moms who wanted to test us to see whether if they come they 
can get the attention that the killings of children throughout the 
United States have failed to attract.
  The moms do not doubt that every Member of this body and of the other 
body are seriously concerned about the deaths of these and the 80,000 
children who have died from gunfire, accidental, suicidal, and 
homicidal since 1979. They know we care. They do not know that we have 
the political will to do what is necessary to stop these killings.
  I am grateful that two Members of this body, the gentlewoman from 
Maryland (Mrs. Morella) and the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. 
McCarthy), have introduced a Congressional resolution praising the 
Million Mom March. They know that this body is full of Members who 
support gun safety legislation and certainly the gun legislation that 
is pending before the House at the moment in conference committee. 
Because that is, by any standards, very modest legislation.
  The million moms, of course, are way out in front of us on 
legislation. Their crusade, and it has taken on the appearance of a 
mother's crusade, began with a single mother, not with any special 
interest organization, not with any group of lobbyists sitting around 
trying to get our attention, but with a single mother who, following 
the North Valley Jewish Community Center shooting last August, simply 
could not take it anymore.
  One mom started. And if ever there is a meaning to grassroots 
movement, that is what has happened ever since. It has been 9 months. 
There must be some symbolic importance of that time since she started 
this crusade. And it has grown like wildfire in every State of the 
Union.
  It started with suburban, middle class moms. And that is very 
interesting as far as this Member, who represents a large city, is 
concerned. Because until the Columbine youth massacre, the real focus 
had been on the one-on-one shootings, and that is what they mostly were 
and mostly are, that occur in large cities because kids so easily get 
ahold of guns.
  What has made this a national priority is that mothers and families 
now see that these guns know no borders and that suburban children are 
at least as fascinated with guns as anywhere.
  So we are going to see hundreds of buses come into this town from 
Texas and California, to Maine and Michigan. In April they said 
Pennsylvania was leading in buses. By now I do not know if some other 
State has overtaken Maine.
  Rosie O'Donnell, the television celebrity, who everybody knows is a 
big opponent of the proliferation of guns, is going to be the MC.
  But the fact is, Mr. Speaker, that we will not find many Members of 
this body speaking because the moms want to speak for themselves. There 
will be an occasional public official speaking. But, apparently, to 
qualify to speak, if they happen to be a public official, they have to 
have been a public official who has suffered gun violence in her own 
family.
  I love it that the march will be open not, as is the usual case, by 
our mayor, after all, he is not a mom, but by the woman we call Nana 
Williams, the mother of the mayor. And then the moms will step forward 
to tell their stories and to let us know what they want.
  Look, everybody else has tried. We begin in quite civil debates on 
the subject. The media delight in airing the subject. None of that talk 
has gotten us anywhere on the most modest legislation, the bill pending 
before us, where we literally are almost at the point of absolute 
agreement literally with about an inch to go and cannot get that inch 
accomplished.
  That inch, of course, has largely to do with closing the gun show 
loophole, with most of us agreeing that instant checks would do it but 
not wanting to let the most dangerous potential owners get through 
because they will require at least 24 hours.
  We hear about the dozen children every day who die from gunshot 
wounds. These do not always occur in the way, of course, that the 
terrible tragedy occurred at Columbine. These happen with accidents. 
They happen with kids playing with guns. These happen with suicides. 
What they all have in common is the easy availability of guns to kid.
  Well, the moms, in all of their literature, insist upon speaking for 
themselves. Here again is what they say. ``Now we moms are mad, and we 
mean business. We want Congress to create a meaningful gun policy in 
this country that treats guns like cars.''
  I have to tell my colleagues that I would save some time if I did not 
have to get my car checked or the registration renewed. But most of us 
understand that a car is seen as a dangerous weapon. If that is true 
about a car that is used normally in a quite benign fashion, I guess 
the moms have a point when they say they do not understand why guns 
cannot be treated like cars.
  As I contemplated Columbine, which has weighed on my mind for the 
full year since it took place, I was jolted when a big-city version of 
the suburban tragedy in Colorado came right here to the Nation's 
capital at the National Zoo that the House and the Senate established 
long ago essentially for children.
  Seven children were wounded when gunfire broke out on Easter Monday. 
Thank God none of them were killed. But, Mr. Speaker, one of them lies 
still gravely wounded in Children's Hospital here.
  I, of course, have visited that family. It is a very brave family. 
They have stayed away from the press. They are very dignified. The 
family has devoted its energy to prayer and to this 11-year-old child 
who is fighting for his life.
  They call him Pappy because when he was born he looked like a 
papoose. They delight in talking about him. Because this 11-year-old is 
no man-child. He is still a child and is still acting like a child, 
jumping up in his mama's bed, playing with his video games, loving his 
mom and his dad, and is part of a big, extended family. So they feel a 
real hole in their hearts with this youngster lying in the bed.
  It is interesting. His mother, in talking to me, brought up the 
Million Mom March. She said, you know Congresswoman, I go to all these 
marches. So I intended to go to the Million Mom March, but I am 
certainly going to go this time.
  And so, she will be with me. Mrs. Bates, the mother of Harris Pappy 
Bates, will be marching with me and with mothers from Maryland, 
Virginia, and the District on Sunday.
  On Sunday, we are going to start out from Freedom Plaza at 11 o'clock 
and we are going to march together as a region to drive home the point 
that we know that these borders are porous. The moms in Virginia and 
Maryland say they know that the guns come from their States and from 
other States.
  We in the District have done our job in banning guns altogether. We 
are not asking for other jurisdictions to do exactly as we are doing, 
but we do think that our Government has an obligation to protect us all 
in the national union of which we are a part by enacting legislation to 
protect our kids.
  So there is going to be a Metro Moms March from Freedom Plaza to the 
march simply to show solidarity in the region for our kids, to put 
aside all the rhetoric, to put aside all of the jingoism about where we 
are from and to stand together with our kids on Sunday and to make our 
own regional statement.
  And just as we will be making our own regional statement, we know 
that mothers from every State in the Union will be carrying the flag of 
their State

[[Page 7678]]

to talk about their experience and to speak directly to us, mom to 
Congress, about our job, our part of the job in eliminating these guns.
  I see, Mr. Speaker, that one of our distinguished Members, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald), has come to the 
floor. I yield to the gentlewoman.

                              {time}  1700

  Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from the 
District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) for her leadership and her passion on 
this issue.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support today's special order and to 
thank again the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia for bringing 
attention to this serious problem in our Nation. It is a serious issue 
that is really plaguing the families and the children of our mothers. 
As a mother and a grandmother, I am moved by the efforts and commitment 
of mothers across this Nation to draw attention to the thousands of 
children who have been killed by gunfire. As a legislator, however, I 
am disturbed that we here in Congress have not heard the pleas for 
common sense gun legislation. Throughout this session, we have 
struggled to keep the focus of Congress on gun safety, one of the most 
vital issues facing our country today. This Congress has sat idle for 
some 9 months, refusing to pass common sense legislation or to hold a 
simple meeting while an alarming number of America's children are 
gunned down every day.
  Mr. Speaker, the question we must ask ourselves is why so many of our 
American children must die, for God sake, before this Congress takes 
action to end the epidemic of violence that plagues our communities and 
especially our families, but, most importantly, our children. In the 
United States today, a child dies from gunfire every 100 minutes, 12 
times the rate of the next 25 industrialized nations combined. That 
means, Mr. Speaker, that 12 children die from gunfire each day, a 
classroom full every 2 days. Not one of our congressional districts is 
immune from gunfire which has taken the lives of children. In my 
district, Joe and Gerald Hawkins are but two of the victims in this 
cycle. The names of America's children continue to toll. George 
Camacho, Armondo Garcia, Yuridia Balbuena, Olivia Munguia, Jessica 
Yvette Zavala have all been killed by gunfire in California. What do we 
tell mothers when we in Congress cannot even meet to discuss common 
sense gun legislation that would have saved the lives of these children 
and save the lives of many more?
  Mr. Speaker, I represent the 37th Congressional District of 
California, which includes the areas of Watts, Compton and Wilmington, 
some of the most impoverished areas in the Nation. These areas, like 
many in the inner city, have been riddled with gun violence. We cannot 
allow another child from our communities to die while this Congress 
refuses to move forward with common sense gun legislation.
  It is quite simple. While Congress sits on the sideline, more of our 
Nation's children are dying each day from gun violence. Our Nation's 
mothers have spoken and will speak again on Sunday. The message is 
clear. Gun safety is about saving lives. Regrettably, the mothers of 
this Nation are marching on Washington and in cities across this 
country not to celebrate sensible gun legislation but to protest an 
ineptitude which has infiltrated the halls of Congress. A delegation of 
mothers from my district will participate in one of the two marches in 
the Los Angeles community. I hope and pray that our message will 
finally move Congress to address this issue before another day passes 
and more of our children are lost to gunfire.
  It is unfortunate that we have let special interests and political 
differences interfere with a common sense approach to protecting the 
lives of America's greatest asset, our children. I have introduced a 
bill both in the 105th Congress and the 106th Congress that would 
prohibit any person from transferring or selling a firearm in the 
United States unless it is sold with a child safety lock. Common sense 
gun safety measures that prevent felons, fugitives and stalkers from 
obtaining firearms and children from having access to guns are the 
types of items that we want enacted into law in this Congress.
  My dear colleagues, wherever you are, we have been entrusted by the 
people of this Nation to be leaders and visionaries. We have a moral 
obligation to the people of our Nation to enact legislation before more 
of our children are sacrificed. Again, I thank the gentlewoman from the 
District of Columbia, and I urge my colleagues to stand up for children 
and support the Million Mom March this Sunday. Happy Mother's Day to 
all mothers and to those mothers who will be marching on behalf of our 
children.
  Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentlewoman from California for her very good 
intervention and for her work in this Congress on behalf of children 
and her work in promoting the use of Mother's Day in a particularly 
meaningful way this year.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
  Mr. RUSH. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the gentlewoman from the 
District of Columbia for all of her work on behalf of meaningful gun 
control legislation, and I want to thank her for allowing me the 
opportunity to come before this body to discuss gun control legislation 
and to discuss the Million Moms March. Today, Mr. Speaker, I want to 
thank the Million Moms March organizers for inviting me to share my 
thoughts on the need for gun control in this country at the Million 
Moms March on Mother's Day 2000 this upcoming Sunday. This is an issue 
which has been dear to me for quite some time.
  It is with great sorrow that I come to the floor to remember the more 
than 80,000 children who have fallen victim to gun violence since 1979, 
great sorrow that is followed with great conviction, great conviction 
that I rise to advocate for the 13 children who statistics say die 
today, died yesterday, and therein will die tomorrow from gun violence.
  Also on yesterday, the National Education Association held a press 
conference to draw attention in part to the fact that gun violence robs 
children of the opportunity to learn and to grow. And on the eve of the 
Million Mom March, we must remember that at its core the gun control 
issue is about opportunity. It is about the opportunity for our 
children to go to school and to learn without fearing for their lives. 
The gun control issue is about opportunity, the opportunity for our 
children to enjoy the wonderful innocence of youth. This is an 
opportunity that they all deserve.
  As adults, we make life choices which may be risky or may be 
dangerous. For example, millions of police officers and other public 
safety officers go to work each and every day and willingly put their 
lives on the line to protect and serve the public. But it is one thing 
for an adult to die in the course of performing a chosen duty. It is 
one thing for the parents, the family of that adult to have an element 
of uncertainty in their lives as their father, spouse, mother go off to 
perform a chosen duty. But it is another thing for a parent, for any 
parent, to fear for the life of a young child who goes off to school, a 
birthday party or even to the local grocery store.
  Too often, it is a common occurrence in our Nation for these parents, 
these siblings, these loved ones, to engage in moments of uncertainty 
as our young people go off to perform in routine matters, go off to do 
those normal things that children do, including going to school, going 
to a birthday party or just going to the local grocery store. These are 
the routine events of a young life which should never ever be 
threatening.
  So today, on the eve of the Million Moms March, I want every mother 
in my district in Chicago, every mother in Chicago, every mother across 
this Nation, to know that I for one stand firmly with them arm in arm, 
hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder. I am ready to do all that I can to 
bring this senseless violence to an end. The time has come. This time 
is now. The time has come for the Congress to listen finally to the 
impassioned voices of mothers

[[Page 7679]]

and fathers from all across this Nation. It is high time that we do all 
that we can to give our children the most important opportunity of all, 
and that is the opportunity to lead a meaningful life, the opportunity 
to just live.
  Again, I want to thank the organizers of the Million Moms March, and 
I want to thank the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia for 
organizing this special order.
  Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentleman from Illinois for coming to the 
floor this evening. The gentleman from Illinois will be speaking at the 
march because of his own tragic loss, and I honor the moms for 
understanding that what public officials should speak are those public 
officials who indeed have a tragedy that bespeaks why the moms are 
here. I honor the gentleman for his participation and our prayers 
continue to be with him in his loss.
  It is my great pleasure to yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and 
for her leadership in so many very, very important issues. Again, the 
issue that we address today is probably one of the most important. As I 
reflected on my statement this evening about the upcoming Million Moms 
March to be held on such an important day, Mother's Day, and focus on 
such a pressing issue, common sense gun safety legislation, I knew that 
this momentous occasion deserved profound but heartfelt words.
  As I searched my soul for those words, I realized that they had 
already been written over two centuries ago and could be found within 
one of the documents that is sitting right on my desk, the Constitution 
of the United States of America, for the Constitution's preamble 
states, ``We the people of the United States in order to form a more 
perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide 
for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the 
blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity, do ordain and 
establish this Constitution for the United States of America.''
  Let me repeat the key phrase that is critical to this issue: ``We the 
people of the United States in order to ensure domestic tranquility . . 
. do ordain and establish this Constitution.''
  Many of the opponents of common sense gun safety legislation would 
interpret this phrase along with the second amendment to mean that our 
Constitution provides for unregulated access and use of guns by 
individual citizens in order to protect themselves, their families and 
their communities. And may I add for recreational use.
  On Sunday, Mother's Day, our Nation's mothers will respectfully 
disagree. In 1999 in one single year, 4,025 children and teens were 
killed by gunfire, one every 2 hours, nearly 12 every day. 1,262 
children committed suicide using a firearm, more than three every day. 
306 died from an accidental shooting. I ask the opponents of gun safety 
legislation, is this domestic tranquility? Nearly three times as many 
children under 10 died last year from gunfire as the number of law 
enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. Is this domestic 
tranquility? And American children under 15 are 12 times more likely to 
die from gunfire than children in 25 other industrialized countries 
combined.

                              {time}  1715

  I ask the question is this domestic tranquility? Sadly, many of our 
neighborhoods and schoolgrounds have become war zones where our 
children will soon be forced to wear protective gear to protect them 
from the piercing sting of a bullet, and, ultimately, death.
  Again, I ask the opponents of gun safety, is this domestic 
tranquility? Is this what our Constitution allows? I submit that the 
framers of the Constitution created a document that serves as the 
foundation of our democratic society, yes, lending certain freedoms. 
However, it is also meant to guarantee certain protections, including 
domestic tranquility.
  As lawmakers, it is our duty to pass legislation that breathes life 
into this constitutional ideal. This means that our Nation's mothers 
should be guaranteed the right to raise their children in a tranquil 
environment free from the fear that their child could be killed by 
gunfire in their own home, in a friend's home, or on the school 
playground or simply walking to a neighborhood store.
  This means common sense gun safety legislation that would make guns 
childproof and theftproof and would require increased background checks 
in order to close loopholes through which criminals gain access to 
guns.
  And so, this evening, the profound heartfelt words that I leave with 
you, Mr. Speaker, are as such, on Sunday, our Nation's mothers will 
send us a signal that we have an obligation to uphold the ideals of the 
Constitution of the United States of America by ensuring that their 
children are afforded a world of domestic tranquility.
  Mr. Speaker, it is our duty to breathe life into these words and 
protect the lives of our children, for our children are the living 
messages we send to a future we will never see. Let us rid their lives 
of gun war zones and replace them with tranquil homes, schools and 
communities by passing common-sense gun safety legislation.
  Our time is running out, one child dead in the past 2 hours, 12 dead 
today.
  Ms. NORTON. I thank the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Cummings), my good friend, for those very moving remarks.
  Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield to another distinguished friend, 
the gentleman from Manhattan, New York (Mr. Nadler).
  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from the District of 
Columbia (Ms. Norton).
  Mr. Speaker, I rise to voice my support for the Million Mom March. I 
am looking forward to participating in the march this weekend which 
welcomes concerned mothers, fathers and their children to join in the 
call for reasonable gun safety measures.
  This House should certainly pass reasonable gun safety measures, and 
we should call upon the leadership to convene the conference committee 
that has sat for over a year without meeting because they do not want 
to deal with these issues.
  One of the main goals of the march is to urge Congress not to pass 
merely some of the very mild gun safety legislation that has been 
considered here, which is apparently too much for the Republican 
leadership, but to pass, in addition handgun licensing and registration 
legislation. In the spirit of this effort, I strongly urge my 
colleagues to cosponsor the handgun licensing and registration bills, 
H.R. 2916 and H.R. 2917, that I introduced in September of last year.
  Senator Feinstein has just introduced very similar legislation in the 
Senate. Handgun Control, Inc. has endorsed these bills which would 
require States to establish handgun licensing and registration systems.
  H.R. 2916 would require individuals to pass a Brady background check, 
take a gun safety course and obtain a photo license from their States 
in order to receive a license to purchase a handgun.
  H.R. 2917 would require States to implement handgun registration 
programs.
  These common sense measures are supported by about 70 percent of 
Americans according to the recent CNN-USA Today-Gallup polls, if you 
want to own and operate an automobile, which, used improperly, can be a 
deadly weapon. Every State in the union requires that the automobile be 
registered and that you obtain a license to drive.
  With respect to guns, which are by definition deadly weapons, we 
should take similar precautions, and as the polls I mentioned shows, 70 
percent of Americans agree with this common-sense assertion.
  These bills have been awaiting action by the House Committee on the 
Judiciary since last September. In response to the huge outpouring of 
support for these ideas, I, again, urge the House Republican leadership 
to schedule hearings and markups on these two critically important 
bills.
  The House Republican leadership is fond of embracing motherhood and 
apple pie; now they should listen to the moms and pass handgun 
licensing and registration legislation as soon as possible.

[[Page 7680]]

  Mr. Speaker, I also wish to thank the organizers of the march for 
their efforts, and I look forward to joining many New Yorkers and tens 
of thousands of people from all across the country in the Million Mom 
March this Sunday on Mother's Day.
  Let me add, I also want to thank the delegate, the gentlewoman from 
the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) for arranging this special order.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I very much thank the gentleman from New 
York City for coming down to offer those important remarks and remind 
us of our own obligations there is much we can do right now in this 
House to respond to the mothers. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. Speaker, the need for national gun legislation is brought home by 
the virtual futility that many of us who have succeeded in getting 
strong gun legislation in our own jurisdictions now see to that effort.
  Many large cities in the United States, including the District of 
Columbia, have gun bans. There are those with the audacity, some of 
them on this floor occasionally to say words to the effect the District 
of Columbia has a gun ban, so what good are gun control laws?
  Well, that is a virtual concession to the proposition that we need 
national gun safety legislation in order to have truly effective local 
gun safety legislation, and that is all we are asking. That is all we 
are asking. We are not asking for uniformity, but we do think there 
should be a minimum standard that any decent civil society should have 
with respect to the most dangerous weapons in that society, guns. That 
is what these moms, I take it, are coming to say.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not want to identify myself, though, with those who 
have become so obsessed with the national obsession with guns that when 
it comes to gun violence, they focus solely on guns. I do not believe 
that guns are the central source for the violence in American society. 
I think that their role is overwhelmingly clear, the role of guns in 
that violence is overwhelmingly clear.
  Mr. Speaker, I am a student of history, I have a Master's in history, 
I read history, I love my country and I love its history, and I am 
profoundly impressed with the degree to which violence is simply a part 
of our national character. It was there before guns became the 
pervasive weapons of choice in the streets of the cities and in the 
homes of the suburbs.
  Violence in the American character has expressed itself throughout 
American history. We continue to carry forward that sense of violence 
as simply a part of who we are. It may have to do with the fact that we 
came, at least those of us who were not African Americans, or American 
Indians, simply came as immigrants and fought our way, one way or the 
other, some violently, some nonviolently, into the fabric of this 
country, from the time that the first settlers fought the native 
Americans for territory until the time that the Wild West was settled. 
Whatever it is, we have to face who we are and who we are are folks who 
have had violence as a part of who we are from the time the country 
came into being. It is deep within us and guns is but one expression of 
it.
  Indeed, most of the expressions are at least overtly non-lethal, but 
in my judgment, they probably are as primary in causing the violence as 
guns are. I am talking about our movies and our videos and our cable, 
and I am talking about Hollywood and the networks, and I am talking 
about computer games. I see this as one huge stew. Guns are a part of 
that stew, but it is a very dangerous mixture of things that we kind of 
take for granted because everybody has them, as we see the increasing 
violence in all of the portrayals from our literature to our video 
portrayals. It is there, it is all around us. It cannot be avoided. We 
have a love affair with violence and always have had one. We have had a 
long, deep romance with violence.
  Mr. Speaker, what I am saying is not that guns are the source of the 
problems in our city, even the problems of guns; I am saying that guns 
are a part of a phalanx of sources and this if we are going at the 
sources, if we are going at Hollywood, if we are going where the guns 
begin, with the parents and the communities, if we are going at the 
networks, then who would leave out the guns? This is a big picture. All 
of the actors in this picture need to sit around the same table and 
come to some agreement about how to deal with all the causes of 
violence.
  All I ask my colleagues to remember, or indeed, to ask themselves, is 
should guns be left out of this picture. Should we take them off the 
table, while saying to Hollywood and the networks and computer games 
and cable and literature, you come and see what should be done. As a 
virtual first amendment absolutist, I certainly am not calling for 
censorship, but I do believe if we all sat around the table and frankly 
admitted that when a child of 5 gets acculturated to who he is in 
American society through gun and violent-impacted portrayals everywhere 
he looks, that one should not be surprised if he picks up a gun and 
tries it out one day himself. Therefore, if we understand how almost as 
if by osmosis the violence is picked up, then it seems to me putting 
all of the causes on the table, we can stop the finger pointing and 
begin where we must begin. All I am asking is that with a million 
mothers coming in on mothers day, we at least begin with modest gun 
control legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to sit with those who over and over again tell me 
that there is not enough enforcement. Right, let us have more 
enforcement; that we have to do something about the parents, I would 
begin there; that the communities are racked with violence, we have to 
draw the churches in, absolutely. Let us sit down and figure out a 
strategy for that, but let us not take guns off the table. Let us not 
have more than a year pass since Columbine and sit on our thumbs doing 
nothing about it. Let us start with guns. Let us start with that 
youngster with a bullet in his brain in Children's Hospital. Then, let 
us come to work next week and put everything on the table and sit down 
and figure out what to do.

                              {time}  1730

  Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield to the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Holt).
  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join the gentlewoman from the 
District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) today to renew our call for gun 
safety legislation and to highlight the Million Mom March, which will 
take place this coming Sunday.
  As my colleagues have indicated, the Million Mom March promises to be 
an amazing event. This weekend I, too, will be coming back to 
Washington from New Jersey. I will join families from across the Nation 
who will take time out of their lives to come to the Nation's capital 
to call for passage of commonsense gun safety legislation.
  It takes a special kind of parent to spend Mother's Day on Interstate 
95 on a bus heading for Washington. It will be moms, and in my case and 
in the case of others, granddads and dads and grandmothers, but these 
Americans feel so strongly about this issue that they are making this 
commitment.
  I believe this will be a Mother's Day that few will forget. Mothers 
are trying to demonstrate to Congress the overwhelming desire of our 
Nation's families for commonsense gun safety legislation.
  Just a few weeks ago our Nation was shaken by events at a Michigan 
elementary school classroom where a 6-year-old child, a child who had 
barely learned to read, knew how to kill another child with a handgun. 
It is the latest in a long line of gun-related tragedies.
  In Columbine we thought it was the last straw, but in West Paducah, 
in Jonesboro, and in dozens of other communities across America, in 
each case we thought, this is the straw. This is the last straw. It 
will break the camel's back. We will get gun safety legislation moving.
  Since the murder of little Kayla Rolland, citizens across New Jersey 
have called even louder for passage of strict gun safety laws. But 
despite the outcry, a few politicians in Congress have

[[Page 7681]]

been standing in the doorway and blocking the halls and refusing to 
act.
  The National Rifle Association may control a few of the hearing rooms 
around this Capitol, but we are here today to say that the NRA is going 
to recoil from the effect of the mom squad. The hundreds of busloads 
from across the Nation I think will show that they have more clout than 
Charlton Heston and the gun lobby.
  Every school I visit, every PTA meeting I attend, every classroom I 
teach in, moms, kids, dads, nearly everyone I talk to in New Jersey 
tells me it is high time that Congress take action to keep guns out of 
the hands of kids and criminals. They are fed up reading the headlines, 
and so am I.
  As a new Member of Congress, I find it particularly disturbing that 
Congress has refused to consider this legislation this year, 
particularly in light of the fact that nearly one child is killed every 
2 hours by gunfire.
  I am sure my colleague here knows, but it is worth repeating, that 
more people were killed by guns in New Jersey than in Australia and New 
Zealand and Korea and Singapore, Japan, Canada, Germany, and Great 
Britain combined last year. A child in America is more likely to die 
from gun violence than from all communicable diseases.
  Congress has passed laws that allow water pistols to be regulated by 
the Consumer Product Safety Commission, but real pistols, the ones that 
kill people, are not regulated. That needs to change.
  All of us were shocked last year when a deranged gunman opened fire 
at the Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles, wounding several people, 
children, later killing a randomly selected bystander. It was a hate 
crime that left us numb.
  But many people do not realize an additional shocking fact in that 
story. The gun that was used was originally a police service firearm 
that had been resold legally by the law enforcement agency and put back 
on the street. It is an all too common problem that is only recently 
being recognized. It makes no sense for police to work to get guns off 
the street, and then to put them right back there where they can be 
used to harm officers or civilians.
  I have introduced legislation to encourage States to mandate the 
destruction of surplus police guns when they are at the end of their 
lives. Furthermore, something I have called for, some say it is 
politically risky, but I think we should have registration of all 
handguns in the United States, and licensing of all handgun owners. I 
have legislation to do that.
  As my colleague has said, you need a license to drive a car. You need 
a license to catch a fish. You need a license to give a haircut or even 
a pedicure. You ought to need a license to own a deadly firearm. It 
should not take tragedies like Columbine and the recent shootings in 
Seattle and Hawaii to get us to admit that.
  It is time for Republicans and Democrats, Independents, to look the 
NRA in the eye and say, enough. It is time to pass gun safety 
legislation now.
  I think the million moms, the moms squad, will help make that change. 
I am old enough to remember the effect of the Mothers March for Peace. 
I am sure my colleague remembers this. She was too young, perhaps. But 
in 1961, it was the outrage of millions of mothers across America that 
brought us the Atmospheric Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
  The power unleashed from these million moms is something to behold, I 
guess is the way to put it. I think this will be a Mothers Day to 
remember. Let us just hope that there are enough Members of Congress 
who hear and heed the message that these mothers bring to Washington 
this coming Mothers Day.
  I thank my colleague for arranging this special order and drawing 
attention to this important subject.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I very much thank the gentleman from New 
Jersey, Mr. Holt, for his salient remarks. I must say to the gentleman, 
when he spoke about the moms and the nuclear ban treaty and said he was 
old enough to remember it, he might have said, ``When I was a child, 
the mothers insisted on such a ban.''
  I would say to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), if I may say 
so, I found what the gentleman had to say about shootings in the 
gentleman's own State, New Jersey, comparing them to shootings in 
nations, huge nations across the world, that there were more shootings 
in this single State than in what looked like more than a half dozen 
nations, I found that to be itself profoundly informative.
  Mr. HOLT. If the gentlewoman will yield, the point I wanted to make, 
it is not a particularly large number in New Jersey relative to the 
other States. New Jersey also has a crime rate that is falling.
  It is just that in the United States, there are 30,000 gun deaths a 
year in the 50 States. Among the 9 million people in New Jersey, yes, 
we have some, too. And it is, by any international standard, 
astoundingly large.
  Ms. NORTON. The gentleman does point out that crime is falling, and 
still we are way beyond other countries. Of course, the statistics the 
gentleman gave us from New Jersey very frankly could probably have been 
given from every State in the Union. No State I think would be 
excluded.
  As the gentleman says, it is because we now have pervasive gun 
violence. None of us is safe. Some thought they were safe if they did 
not live in big cities. The million moms, most of whom are going to be 
suburban moms, are leading the country to understand that these guns 
are everywhere.
  I very much thank the gentleman from New Jersey, unless he has some 
more remarks to make.
  Mr. HOLT. Just following on what the gentlewoman just said, no one in 
America is immune. We have a society where guns are prevalent, are 
available, are unlocked, and dangerous.
  What I hear from so many people is not that Columbine High School is 
a school where our children might go. In fact, Columbine High School is 
a school where our children would like to go. It seems to have all of 
the advantages: An excellent curriculum, excellent facilities. Yet, 
that kind of tragedy could happen there. Yes, it could happen anywhere.
  Ms. NORTON. Indeed so, because when children are acculturated to 
violence, they get it off the television, off the same CDs, off the 
same networks, they get it out of the same Hollywood, we really are one 
Nation. Nothing, ironically, proves that more than the way in which 
these guns have touched every part of our Nation.
  I very much thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) for his 
very cogent intervention.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to put into the Record what the million 
moms want. They are way beyond our modest gun legislation where we are 
trying to close a gun loophole, and where we are trying to get gun 
safety locks. They think that any rational human being should be doing 
that and should do it quickly.
  They are asking for licensing and registration. They say each would 
work very simply and without a new bureaucracy. They say that the 
licensing would mean that before one got a gun, one would complete a 
basic safety course. Would anybody want a gun without in fact making 
sure that she understood everything that was associated with that gun?
  There would be a check to ensure that the person was not a criminal 
who committed a violent crime, or a mentally ill person. There would be 
a photo and a thumbprint, and of course, that like any license, it 
would have to be renewed periodically.
  Then they say they also want gun registration. The nerve of them. We 
have to register for almost everything. I have to make sure my car is 
registered because the time for that is due this year. They said what 
would be involved there, if you fill out a form with the gun serial 
number, the government would make sure, the local government would make 
sure that the gun buyer is in fact licensed. A copy of the registration 
would go to law enforcement authorities.
  Of course, there would be renewal of the registration periodically. 
That way, of course, the tracing of guns would be a snap, and we would 
make sure that the only people who got guns in the first place were 
like the 90 percent of the people who pass the instant

[[Page 7682]]

gun check, those who of course are like you and me and are buying guns 
not to kill other people.
  I want to thank the President of the United States for going with me 
to our academy, our police academy, where he announced that there would 
be some funds available for the District to do another gun buyback on 
June 14.
  I have national legislation that would allow localities to receive 
small amounts from the Federal government in order to do gun buy-backs. 
They have been enormously successful in the District, where we set 
something of a precedent, and we would hope that would be repeated and 
that our national government would take up this notion.
  I do want to stress that the million moms stress that they do not 
advocate the banning of guns. They want particularly their Second 
Amendment sisters to know that, because they cannot see any part of 
what they want to do that any mothers would be truly in disagreement 
with.
  As a lawyer, I do want to answer those who are concerned about the 
Second Amendment. My friends, if the Second Amendment kept the modest 
legislation we are advocating here from going through, then how could 
the gun bans, total gun bans, handgun bans that we have here in the 
District and in every large city, have passed constitutional muster?
  We can in fact regulate guns the way we regulate cars. The Second 
Amendment does not say that there should be no regulation. We can even 
regulate the time and manner of speech, and that is a more salient 
constitutional right than the Second Amendment. Let us not keep 
throwing the Second Amendment up and confusing the matter.
  In the recent gun violence, in 1997, of the children killed, 191 were 
under the age of 10 and 84 were under the age of 5. Most of these 
children are not shot in shoot-em-ups, in gang wars. Most of these are 
suicides. Imagine if a gun had not been available. The presence of the 
gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home. If a gun is 
not handy, then a suicide is less likely to occur, whether by a child 
or an adult.
  Mr. Speaker, the gun safety legislation that we have here is the 
least that the mothers who are coming on Sunday are entitled to a year 
after the Columbine youth massacre. They want much more. I think it 
would be an insult and a show of disrespect if, at the very least, the 
modest gun legislation pending before us were not forthcoming after 
their visit here to Washington, where the national government sits.
  I know that every Member of this body has the deepest respect for the 
mothers. The mothers do not represent themselves as a lobby or 
representative of every mother. They do say they are moms, and they ask 
as moms for their Congress, their House, and their Senate to hear them 
and to respond accordingly.

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