[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9477-9478]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                          THE SECOND AMENDMENT

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I appear on the floor to speak about a 
provision of the Constitution of our country that has been under nearly 
constant attack for 8 years. In fact, we heard on the floor this 
morning two Senators speak about provisions in law that would alter a 
constitutional right.
  The provision I am talking about is part of our Bill of Rights--the 
first 10 amendments to our Constitution--which protect our most basic 
rights from being stripped away by an overly zealous government, 
including rights that all Americans hold dear:
  The freedom to worship according to one's conscience;
  The freedom to speak or to write whatever we might think;
  The freedom to criticize our Government;
  And, the freedom to assemble peacefully.
  Among the safeguards of these fundamental rights, we find the Second 
Amendment. Let me read it clearly:

       A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security 
     of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear 
     Arms, shall not be infringed.

  I want to repeat that.
  The second amendment of our Constitution says very clearly that ``A 
well regulated Militia'' is ``necessary'' for the ``security of a free 
State,'' and that ``the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, 
shall not be infringed.''
  What we heard this morning was an effort to infringe upon that right.
  Some--even of my colleagues--will read what I have just quoted from 
our Constitution quite differently. They might read ``A well regulated 
Militia,'' and stop there and declare that ``the right of the people to 
keep and bear Arms'' actually means that it is a right of our 
Government to keep and bear arms because they associate the militia 
with the government. Yet, under this standard, the Bill of Rights would 
protect only the right of a government to speak, or the right of a 
government to criticize itself, if you were taking that same argument 
and transposing it over the first amendment. In fact, the Bill of 
Rights protects the rights of people from being infringed upon by 
Government--not the other way around.
  Of course, we know that our Founding Fathers in their effort to 
ratify the Constitution could not convince the citizens to accept it 
until the Bill of Rights was established to assure the citizenry that 
we were protecting the citizens from Government instead of government 
from the citizens.
  Others say that the Second Amendment merely protects hunting and 
sport shooting. They see shooting competitions and hunting for food as 
the only legitimate uses of guns, and, therefore, conclude that the 
Second Amendment is no impediment to restricting gun use to those 
purposes.
  You can hear it in the way President Clinton assures hunters that his 
gun control proposals that will not trample on recreation--though his 
proposals certainly walk all over their rights.
  In fact, the Second Amendment does not merely protect sport shooting 
and hunting, though it certainly does that.
  Nor does the second amendment exist to protect the government's right 
to bear arms.
  The framers of our Constitution wrote the Second Amendment with a 
greater purpose.
  They made the Second Amendment the law of the land because it has 
something very particular to say about the rights of every man and 
every woman, and about the relationship of every man and every woman to 
his or her Government. That is: The first right of every human being, 
the right of self-defense.
  Let me repeat that: The first right of every human being is the right 
of self-defense. Without that right, all other rights are meaningless. 
The right of self-defense is not something the government bestows upon 
its citizens. It is an inalienable right, older than the Constitution 
itself. It existed prior to government and prior to the social contract 
of our Constitution. It is the right that government did not create and 
therefore it is a right that under our Constitution the government 
simply cannot take away. The framers of our Constitution understood 
this clearly. Therefore, they did not merely acknowledge that the right 
exists. They denied Congress the power to infringe upon that right.
  Under the social contract that is the Constitution of the United 
States, the American people have told Congress explicitly that we do 
not have the authority to abolish the American people's right to defend 
themselves. Further, the framers said not only does the Congress not 
have the power to abolish that right, but Congress may not even 
infringe upon that right. That is what our Constitution says. That is 
what the Second Amendment clearly lays out. Our Founding Fathers wrote 
the Second Amendment to tell us that a free state cannot exist if the 
people are denied the right or the means to defend themselves.
  Let me repeat that because it is so fundamental to our freedom. A 
free state cannot exist, our free state of the United States 
collectively, cannot exist without the right of the people to defend 
themselves. This is the meaning of the Second Amendment. Over the years 
a lot of our citizens and many politicians have tried to nudge that 
definition around. But contrary to what the media and the President 
say, the right to keep and bear arms is as important today as it was 
200 years ago.
  Every day in this country thousands of peaceful, law-abiding 
Americans use guns to defend themselves, their families, and their 
property. Oftentimes, complete strangers are protected by that citizen 
who steps up and stops the thief or the stalker or the rapist or the 
murderer from going at that citizen.
  According to the FBI, criminals used guns in 1998 380,000 times 
across America. Yet research indicates that peaceful, law-abiding 
Americans, using their constitutional right, used a gun to prevent 2.5 
million crimes in America that year and nearly every year. In fact, I 
believe the benefits of protecting the people's right to keep and bear 
arms far outweighs the destruction wrought by criminals and firearms 
accidents. The Centers for Disease Control report 32,000 Americans died 
from firearm injuries in 1997; under any estimate, that is a tragedy. 
Unfortunately, the Centers for Disease Control do not keep data on the 
number of lives that were saved when guns were used in a defensive 
manner.

[[Page 9478]]

  Yet if we were to survey the public every year, we would find 400,000 
Americans report they used a gun in a way that almost certainly saved 
either their life or someone else's. Is that estimate too high? 
Perhaps. I hope it is, because every time a life is saved from 
violence, that means that someone was threatening a life with violence. 
But that number would have to be over 13 times too high for our 
opponents to be correct when they say that guns are used to kill more 
often than they are used to protect. What they have been saying here 
and across America simply isn't true and the facts bear that out.
  We are not debating the tragedy. We are debating facts at this 
moment. They cannot come up with 2.5 million gun crimes. But clearly, 
through surveys, we can come up with 2.5 million crimes thwarted every 
year when someone used a gun in defense of themselves or their 
property. In many cases, armed citizens not only thwarted crime, but 
they held the suspect until the authorities arrived and placed that 
person in custody.
  Stories of people defending themselves with guns do not make the 
nightly news. It just simply isn't news in America. It isn't hot. It 
isn't exciting. It is American. Sometimes when people act in an 
American way, it simply isn't reportable in our country anymore. So the 
national news media doesn't follow it.
  Yet two of the school shootings that have brought gun issues to the 
forefront in the last year, in Pearl, MS, and Edinboro, PA, were 
stopped by peaceful gun owners using their weapons to subdue the killer 
until the police arrived. How did that get missed in the story? It was 
mentioned once, in passing, and then ignored as people ran to the floor 
of the Senate to talk about the tragedy of the killing. Of course the 
killing was a tragedy, but it was also heroic that someone used their 
constitutional right to save lives in the process.
  A third school shooting in Springfield, OR, was stopped because some 
parents took time to teach their child the wise use of guns. So when 
that young man heard a particular sound coming from the gun, he was 
able to rush the shooter, because he knew that gun had run out of 
ammunition. He was used to guns. He was around them. He subdued the 
shooter and saved potentially many other lives. We have recognized him 
nationally for that heroic act, that young high school student of 
Springfield, OR.
  For some reason, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle never 
want to tell these stories. They only want to say, after a crisis such 
as this, ``Pass a new gun control law and call 9-1-1.'' Yet these 
stories are essential to our understanding of the right of people to 
keep and bear arms.
  I will share a few of these stories right now. Shawnra Pence, a 29-
year-old mother from Sequim, WA, home alone with one of her children, 
heard an intruder break into the house. She took her .9 mm, took her 
child to the bedroom, and when the 18-year-old criminal broke into the 
bedroom, she said, ``Get out of my house, I have a gun, get out now.'' 
He left and the police caught him. She saved her life and her child's 
life. It made one brief story in the Peninsula Daily news in Sequim, 
WA.
  We have to talk about these stories because it is time America heard 
the other side of this debate. There are 2.5 million Americans out 
there defending themselves and their property by the use of their 
constitutional right.
  In Cumberland, TN, a 28-year-old Jason McCulley broke into the home 
of Stanley Horn and his wife, tied up the couple at knife-point, and 
demanded to know where the couple kept some cash. While Mrs. Horn was 
directing the robber, Mr. Horn wriggled free from his restraints, 
retrieved his handgun, shot the intruder, and then called the police. 
The intruder, Jason McCulley, subsequently died. If some Senators on 
the other side of the aisle had their way, perhaps the Horns would have 
been killed and Jason McCulley would have walked away.
  Earlier today, we heard the Senator from Illinios and the Senator 
from California read the names people killed by guns in America. Some 
day they may read the name Jason McCulley. I doubt they will tell you 
how he died, however, because it doesn't advance their goal of 
destroying the Second Amendment. But As Paul Harvey might say: Now you 
know the rest of the story.
  Every 13 seconds this story is repeated across America. Every 13 
seconds in America someone uses a gun to stop a crime. Why do our 
opponents never tell these stories? Why do the enemies of the right to 
keep and bear arms ignore this reality that is relived by 2.5 million 
Americans every year? Why is it that all we hear from them is, ``Pass a 
new gun control law, and, by the way, call 9-1-1.''
  I encourage all listening today, if you have heard of someone using 
their Second Amendment rights to prevent a crime, to save a life, to 
protect another life, then send us your story. There are people here 
who desperately need to hear this in Washington, right here on Capitol 
Hill. This is a story that should be played out every day in the press 
but isn't. So let's play it out, right here on the floor of the Senate. 
Send me those stories from your local newspapers about that law-abiding 
citizen who used his constitutional right of self-defense. Send that 
story to me, Senator Larry Craig, Washington, DC, 20510, or send it to 
your own Senator. Let him or her know the rest of the story of 
America's constitutional rights.
  I ask unanimous consent to proceed for one more moment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CRAIG. Having said all of this, let there be no mistake. Guns are 
not for everyone. We restrict children's access to guns and we restrict 
criminals' access to guns, but we must not tolerate politicians who 
tell us that the Second Amendment only protects the right to hunt. We 
must not tolerate politicians who infringe upon our right to defend 
ourselves from thieves and stalkers and rapists and murderers. And we 
must not tolerate the politician who simply says: ``Pass another gun 
control law and call 9-1-1.''
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from North 
Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I be recognized 
for 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, with great respect to my colleague from 
Idaho, and I did not come to the floor of the Senate to talk about 
this, let me say when any of my colleagues stand up and talk about gun 
control issues that the minority wishes to pursue--let me explain in a 
sentence or so what we are trying to do. It is not to restrict the 
opportunity of anyone in this country who has the right to own a gun. 
We are trying to close the gun show loophole to prevent convicted 
felons from getting a gun.
  Go to a gun store to buy a gun in this country and you must run your 
name through an instant check because we do not want convicted felons 
to have weapons. They cannot, by law, possess weapons. Go to a gun 
store and you have to run your name through an instant check. If it 
comes up that you are a convicted felon, you do not get the gun. But go 
to a gun show on a Saturday morning as a convicted felon and buy a gun 
and you do not have to have your name checked against anything. Go get 
your gun at a gun show, if you are a convicted felon and want a weapon. 
We are trying to close that loophole.
  Every American should support closing that loophole and should 
support it now. That does not affect any law-abiding citizen's right to 
own a gun. All it does is says let's keep guns out of the hands of 
felons. No one in this Chamber should believe convicted felons ought to 
be able to go into a gun show and gain access to a weapon they are not 
by law entitled to have.
  I did not come to the floor to speak about that, but I did want to 
respond to the pejorative suggestion that people on this side of the 
aisle want to injure the rights of law-abiding citizens to possess 
weapons. That is just wrong. We are trying to close a loophole that
every American ought to support closing--to keep felons from getting 
guns.

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