[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 17832-17835]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from the Virgin 
Islands (Mrs. Christensen) for 30 minutes.
  Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. I thank the Democratic leader and leadership for 
giving us the opportunity to come to the floor as the Congressional 
Black Caucus. Perhaps some other Members may be joining us.
  We wanted to just add our word of sympathy and condolences to the 
families in Newtown, Connecticut. We will all grieve for a very, very 
long time, and rightly so, the loss of the 20 innocent little children 
and seven adults who lost their lives in an utterly senseless and 
horrific act of violence.
  The people of the Virgin Islands, like the rest of our Nation--and 
indeed the world--mourn the loss of the 27 people gunned down in 
Newtown, Connecticut, last week. Our thoughts and prayers are with 
their families and the entire town and they will continue to be for a 
very long time. Our hearts especially go out to them throughout what we 
know will be an extremely difficult Christmas season.
  The President and many others have reminded us that we have been here 
far too many times even in just this year. As he said at the ecumenical 
service a few evenings ago, it's time to act. It's not enough to 
sympathize with the families who lost loved ones. We have to take 
action to protect our children and to protect all our citizens. To that 
extent, I've signed on to the Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device 
Act, sponsored by Congresswomen McCarthy and DeGette, which would 
prohibit the transfer or import of large-capacity ammunition feeding 
devices manufactured before the date of enactment, as well as four or 
five other bills sponsored by Congresswomen Maloney and McCarthy, 
Congressman Perlmutter, and others, to improve background checks, to 
slow the trafficking of guns, and to keep them out of the hands of 
individuals who should not have them; as well as the PROMISE Act, which 
is a prevention bill.
  I'm joined this evening by Congresswoman Yvette Clarke of Brooklyn, 
New York, who has long been an advocate for ending the gun violence in 
our communities and providing the kinds of assistance, both in 
intervention and prevention, that we need in so many communities around 
this country. She has been a leader on so many issues, and I'd like to 
yield her such time as she might consume.
  Ms. CLARKE of New York. I thank my colleague for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, I've joined my colleague, Dr. Donna Christensen, 
Representative of the Virgin Islands, here tonight in remembrance of 
the 20 first-grade children and six educators who were mercilessly 
gunned down last Friday at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, innocent 
victims of senseless gun violence.
  To the families, educators, and the community of Newtown, 
Connecticut, on behalf of the people of the 11th Congressional District 
of Brooklyn, New York, I wish to express my most profound and deepest 
condolences.

[[Page 17833]]

  I believe, like so many across this Nation, that the families of 
these victims, the families of children in every community in the 
United States, have some very important questions for Members of 
Congress. I also believe that as their representatives we have an 
obligation to provide them with answers.
  Question: Why? Why have we allowed our communities around this 
Nation, from a supermarket in Tucson, Arizona to a movie theater in 
Aurora, Colorado, to a shopping mall in Oregon, to an elementary school 
in Newtown, Connecticut, to the streets of Brooklyn, New York, why have 
we been so reluctant in protecting them? Why have we left them 
unprotected, vulnerable to gun violence, death, and the terror that 
such actions inflict?
  Who will speak for the people whose lives were cut short, struck 
down, maimed and traumatized for life? When will we realize that these 
incidents are not inevitable, that we have the ability to prevent gun 
violence and an obligation to do everything in our power to make gun 
violence a thing of the past? The answer to these questions will define 
this generation of Members of Congress. Our answers will determine the 
future of our civil society.
  Americans have the right to demand answers from this Congress. We 
have the authority to keep the guns away from the streets of our cities 
and towns. In the 11th Congressional District which I represent in New 
York City, the New York City Police Department reported 274 victims 
from 226 incidents involving gun violence, and that was in two 
neighborhoods in the district that I represent. The majority of these 
crimes were registered in just two communities; 274 victims from 226 
incidents. Now, fortunately, not everyone perished in these instances, 
but one incident of death is one too many. The repercussions of the 
trauma that comes from those who witness these incidents, who dodge the 
bullets in our communities, is immeasurable.
  We have the authority to focus our efforts on penalties for gun 
trafficking and unlawful sales of firearms. We have the authority to 
prevent the retail sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines 
or clips that are designed for military combat use. We have the ability 
to register handguns and micro stamp munitions to trace ownership and 
origin. We have the authority; we only need to have the courage to act.
  The Newtown tragedy has highlighted a vexing issue that we as 
Americans must address. It is imperative that we set aside our 
differences in the 113th Congress to pass legislation that will 
increase accountability among gun vendors and owners, support local law 
enforcement to stem the tide of gun trafficking across our Nation, 
reduce the number of illegal guns on our streets, and remove access to 
high-powered militarized weapons and ammunition which have no place in 
our communities.
  Madam Speaker, this is not a Republican problem, it is not a Democrat 
problem. This is an American problem, and this is a problem we must 
have the courage to address.
  I want to thank my colleague for yielding. As I drove up to the 
Capitol for this Special Order this evening, I reflected on the flags 
waving at half-mast over the Capitol, an indication of the deep grief 
and sorrow that our Nation faces at this time. I think to my own 
community, where I've attended far too many funerals of families that 
have been devastated by the heinous act of gun violence.

                              {time}  2110

  I think about a former colleague of mine. As a member of the New York 
City Council, I unfortunately count myself among the victims who 
witnessed my own city council colleague being gunned down before us. 
And so, what we need to understand is that while these incidents may 
seem remote from many families, the implications of what can happen in 
our communities extend beyond what we may hear in the news but affect 
tens of thousands who may not have been the immediate or intended 
target of gun violence but have been a witness, have been family 
members, community members, that have a love and a care for the lost 
one who were taken senselessly and needlessly. Let us muster up the 
courage to act. I yield back.
  Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. Thank you, Congresswoman Clarke, for joining us. 
Again, thank you for your leadership, and thank you for those words 
that you have uttered on behalf of our communities and the community of 
Newtown and children and our citizens across this country.
  Flags are flying at half-mast across this country. I know whenever I 
would drive at home last weekend, and I would see them, our thoughts 
and our hearts went out to the people of Newtown because we knew that 
that was why they were that way. Like my colleague, I recall going to 
funerals with my children, something that I never had to do, funerals 
of their friends.
  In his column just a few days ago, Nicholas Kristof quoted David 
Hemenway, a public health specialist at Harvard, who reported that 
children 5 to 14 in America are 13 times more likely to be murdered 
with guns as children in other industrialized countries. And that ought 
to be a call of action to all of us.
  He wrote, and I agree:

       Let's treat firearms rationally as the center of a public 
     health crisis, a public health crisis that claims one life 
     every 20 minutes.

  If only for the sake of our children, we have to act and really need 
to begin with renewing the ban on assault weapons.
  The homicide rate in the United States is 6.9 points higher than 
rates in 22 other populous, high-income countries combined. This gives 
me great pause when I think that the homicide rate in our neighboring 
Puerto Rico is more than four times higher than that of the U.S., and 
the Virgin Islands' rate is even higher than that compared to the 
United States overall. The last reported in Puerto Rico was 36.2 per 
100,000, and the Virgin Islands is closer to 60. We, Puerto Rico, and 
the Virgin Islands have pleaded for more Federal help. And we can begin 
by passing the assault ban next year and the other related bills.
  The United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, 
an average of 88 per 100 people. I understand that the next highest is 
Yemen, somewhere around 56 per 100 people. But the rate of gun 
ownership doesn't always directly relate to the number of homicides. 
Honduras, with the most homicides by firearm at 68.43 per 100,000 has 
only 6.2 firearms per 100 people compared to our 88, while Finland, 
which has a relatively high one, 45.3 guns per 100 people, only reports 
about 19 per 100,000 homicides by firearms.
  So while we must do what is required to reduce guns in our community, 
assault weapons in particular in this country, there's much more work 
that has to be done.
  As Attorney General Holder said earlier this week, and I'm quoting 
him here:

       As a nation, I think we have to ask ourselves some hard 
     questions. We need to discuss who we are as a nation, talk 
     about the freedoms that we have, the rights that we have, and 
     how those might be used in a responsible way.

  I recently wrote to my fellow Virgin Islanders, as we looked at ours 
being one of the highest homicide rates in the Nation, I also think we 
need to go further in examining what we have been doing or what we have 
not been doing in our territory and across our Nation that has created 
an atmosphere where gun violence is escalating to a frightening and 
totally unacceptable level, and where in many districts, gun violence 
has turned, in my district, has turned against law enforcement. Six 
officers have been injured by gunfire this year in the Virgin Islands, 
and one, Colvin Georges, died as a result of his injuries. And 
communities across this country are experiencing the same thing.
  I know that many feel that guns are needed for their and their 
families' protection. But reports show that keeping a firearm in the 
home increases the risk of homicide by a factor of three. And on the 
whole, guns are more likely to raise the risk of injury than confer 
protection.
  The killings in Newtown, Aurora, and other places are horrific mass 
killings by disturbed people, and we need to

[[Page 17834]]

find a way to prevent them from getting access to any kind of firearm. 
But gun violence is happening every week in neighborhoods across our 
country, and these, too, demand our attention, including gang-related 
gun violence. Gang violence is a growing epidemic across this country. 
Congress has to work toward passing and funding legislation like the 
Youth Promise Act, which helps communities facing the greatest youth 
gang and crime challenges to develop a comprehensive response to youth 
violence through a coordinated prevention and intervention response.
  To go back to where we are in the United States compared to other 
countries, data compiled by the United Nations' Office on Drugs and 
Crime confirms Americans are living with greater risk of gun-related 
death than are residents of other developed countries. From 2007 to 
2009, the U.S. averaged 10,987 homicides per year by firearm compared 
with an average of 182 in Germany, 75 in Spain and 47 in the United 
Kingdom. Mexico, though, averaged about 5,980 annual homicides, still 
half of ours, by firearm during that same period. Colombia was higher.
  Roseanna Ander, executive director of the University of Chicago Crime 
Lab, has said that the U.S. is an outlier in lethal violence among 
developed countries. Other countries have similar rates of rape and 
battery, Ander said, but because so much American violence includes 
guns, the rate of death is so much higher.
  The steady gun violence leaves especially young blacks and Latino men 
particularly vulnerable and more likely to die in a shooting, Federal 
data shows. In each year from 2006 to 2010, homicide was the leading 
cause of death for African American males ages 15 to 24, more than the 
next nine causes of death combined, according to data from the Centers 
for Disease Control and Prevention.
  Persistent gun violence is part of a complex cycle born of poverty 
and residential segregation, as is poor health and substandard 
education, which all are related to the poverty and the persistent gun 
violence, challenges that the Nation has yet to truly face and address.
  That's what Sampson said, and I agree. And he also said:

       Guns are readily available. Gun violence thrives, in part, 
     because exposure to violence makes children more likely to 
     engage in violence themselves. It makes them have difficulty 
     learning and, therefore, climbing the economic ladder.

  So we can make a big difference. But to make that difference, we have 
to have the political will. We have to be able to stand up to the NRA, 
which has gone silent in the face of this tragedy, and other 
organizations that have blocked us from doing what we know in our 
hearts is the right thing to do.
  It is our responsibility, as Congresswoman Clarke said, to do what we 
must to protect our children and to protect our other citizens. 
President Obama has set up a task force which will be headed by Vice 
President Joe Biden. He is calling on us to ban military-style assault 
weapons, to ensure that background checks are there for all gun 
purchases, and to make access to mental health services at least as 
easy as it is to access guns.

                              {time}  2120

  I would hope that we would not see the partisanship or the 
brinksmanship that we're seeing right now on this fiscal cliff issue, 
and that we'll all work with our Vice President and our President to 
truly memorialize the children that are being laid to rest this week 
and not have them be martyrs to our inaction.
  With that, Madam Speaker, I would love to yield to our Congressman 
from Louisiana. I'm sure that he will add a lot to this discussion.
  I talked about the fact that African-American and Latino males have 
high rates of death due to gun violence, and one report that goes back 
to 2004 rates Louisiana as number two.
  So I'll yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from 
Louisiana, Cedric Richmond.
  Mr. RICHMOND. I thank the gentlelady from the Virgin Islands for 
yielding and commend her on her passion as a physician and someone who 
has taken an oath to preserve life and to make sure that people can 
live out their years in a meaningful way and die of natural causes.
  I will just say that I'm from Louisiana, which our motto is we are 
the sportsman's paradise. We like to fish and we like to hunt. We like 
to have a fishing pole and we like to have a gun. The difference is 
that the guns we use and the guns that sportsmen use are rifles, and 
you don't need high-capacity magazines in order to hunt deer, to hunt 
dove, to hunt ducks, to hunt rabbit. You just don't do that.
  I rise tonight in support of my colleagues because, especially in our 
urban cities, we are losing far too many of our children, our fathers, 
our mothers, our sisters, and our brothers to gun violence. And every 
once in a while, we'll have an event that will shake the confidence of 
our country and make us take a step back and rationally look at our gun 
laws in this country and say, Wait, we've done far too much. We've 
expanded the Second Amendment too far. The Founders of the 
Constitution, when the Second Amendment was crafted, had no idea that 
we would have AK-47s with clips that can hold 50 rounds.
  I can just tell you about an incident in La Place, Louisiana, about 6 
months ago where a gentleman was denied benefits at an office and 
decided he was going to his car and he was going to go back inside. One 
of those Good Samaritans, an older lady, called the police and said 
there was a man armoring up in his car. State police and our sheriffs 
responded to it and found the man in his car. When they found him, he 
had more ammunition in his trunk than State police and our sheriffs put 
together. He had an AK-47, another rifle, and so much ammunition.
  But the scary part to that story, and why this Good Samaritan was so 
key, is when they arrested him, they went to his apartment and he had a 
suicide note there in his trailer. He had every intention of making 
sure that he could go in there and kill as many people as he could, 
even if it meant him dying. When the thugs and the criminals have more 
guns and more ammunition than our first responders, then we have a 
problem.
  In urban cities, when our kids have better access to guns than 
textbooks, then we're a country that went wrong. We're not talking 
about every American's basic right to bear arms, because that is 
sacred, it's in our Constitution, and I believe in it. But when we 
start talking about assault weapons with high-capacity magazines, we're 
talking about weapons of mass destruction.
  If you look at Newtown, if you look at Aurora and you look around our 
country at the incidents that have happened, these are not incidents 
where one or two people lose their life. If we tally the number of 
people in the United States that die because of gun violence, if 
another country entered our soil and did that to us, we would declare 
war and we would go out and find those people responsible. But here in 
the United States, we have taken the Second Amendment to protect things 
that are just indefensible.
  I will join with my colleagues, and I will say, when I was in the 
Louisiana State Legislature, I authored, every year I was there, an 
assault weapons ban, a bill to close the gun show loopholes, to have a 
gun registry. I'm not suggesting here today that we do everything I did 
in the State legislature, because some things went very far, but what I 
am challenging America to do is to challenge the NRA, the liberals, the 
gun control lobby, whatever you want to call them. We should all come 
together in the name of the citizens of the United States that we've 
lost and have an adult conversation about can we do better, because we 
can.
  We don't need clips that allow people to take out a whole 
neighborhood. We don't need guns that you can shoot through police 
vests and through the police car door and through their shield and hit 
their body sold in our sporting good stores in this country.
  At some point, we have to come together. We can't just come together 
and pray and mourn. People are tired of mourning, and people are not 
fed up,

[[Page 17835]]

but people have given up on prayer. When you see incidents when you 
have to bury your children--when you drop a child off at school you 
expect to go there that afternoon and pick them up and talk about what 
they learned today and do they need help with their homework, you never 
imagine that you're going to go there and find your child deceased with 
multiple gunshot wounds because of assault rifles with high-capacity 
clips.
  We are the United States of America, always in search of a more 
perfect Union. We can do better, we have to do better.
  I will close with my own little paraphrase from a song, and it's to 
the Members of Congress. We had an incident that shed light on this 
earlier in our term in which our colleague was a victim of gun 
violence.
  We should be careful of what we do, because the life we save may be 
our own.
  Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. Thank you, Congressman Richmond.
  The three of us have been here on behalf of the Congressional Black 
Caucus to add our voices to those across our Nation who are mourning 
the loss of those who were killed last week in Newtown.
  The gentleman said more access to guns than schoolbooks. It's really 
true. There's more access to guns in most communities than schoolbooks 
and computers for many children; more access to guns than to decent 
housing; more access to guns than a decent job; more access to guns 
than quality health care, especially mental health care.
  So, colleagues on both sides of the aisle, we need to act, and we 
need to act in the name of those beautiful first graders and all of 
those across this country who have been lost to gun violence over the 
years. I hope that we will take that kind of action.
  With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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