[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 11869]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              GUN CONTROL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Imagine the headline, ``Outbreak of Serious Illness 
Strikes; 12 People Killed, 58 Hospitalized,'' just like similar 
outbreaks, but the Federal Government prohibits the Centers for Disease 
Control from investigating.
  Or another headline, ``70 Trapped in a Collapsed Building, 20 Dead or 
Critically Injured,'' and your government makes it illegal for 
government organizations to collect data to study what could be done to 
solve it, to minimize this carnage in the future.
  People would be justifiably outraged. They expect government to 
protect them and to help understand the nature of threats in the 
workplace, the marketplace, or in our homes. At some level, we want to 
know about why cars malfunction or if there are patterns of disease, 
illness, injury, or mechanical failure.
  That is what our government is supposed to do. If food safety, mine 
safety, or TSA fails, there would be calls for accountability. Sadly, 
that's not what is happening as the Nation recoils in anguish at 
another outbreak of gun violence. The 70 killed or wounded are the 
latest in a pattern that happens repeatedly, predictably, with overall 
loss of life being in the tens of thousands over the years.
  What is as appalling as the loss of life is the fact that we not only 
refuse to do anything about it, but we allow political bullies to 
intimidate us from even researching the facts.
  Now, there's never been a threat in this country that sportsmen will 
not be able to hunt or target shoot, that false specter raised by the 
gun lobby so successfully that today there's virtually no gun 
protection. But that doesn't stop the number one gun advocacy group, 
the National Rifle Association, from making things up, creating phony 
threats to gun ownership.
  They're attacking the Obama administration, which has done, 
essentially, nothing in this field since they know that Congress would 
reject even the most reasonable of proposals. It has been impossible, 
for example, to even close the gun show loophole, where people can get 
unlimited amounts of guns without a background check.
  The NRA is at work to make sure that people on the ``no fly list'' 
because they are threats to national security can purchase guns, that 
data cannot be shared between ATF and Homeland Security dealing with 
potential terrorists.
  The NRA argues that all we need is for existing gun laws to be 
enforced, while they systematically set about to dismantle what laws we 
have and then defund even feeble government enforcement efforts.
  Anyone who looks at the background of the recent so-called Fast and 
Furious controversy finds that, in part, the Bureau of Alcohol, 
Tobacco, and Firearms is dysfunctional because it's constantly under 
assault by the NRA for its most modest steps and most minimal budgets. 
We cannot even study gun violence, patterns, causes, and potential 
solutions.
  While I didn't know anybody in Aurora, this most recent tragic, 
senseless rampage touches home for me. As I was growing up, a young man 
in a family that I was close to was killed by an act of random gun 
violence.
  As I've followed the issues over the years, I continue to feel that 
there's no reason to permit armor-piercing, cop-killer bullets to be 
sold like Tic Tacs; that automatic weapons should be available over the 
counter with hundred-bullet magazines like the killer in Colorado had 
that facilitate such sprees. These things have no useful purpose in 
sports activities or target shooting.
  I find it appalling that we, as citizens, have enabled Congress to 
act in a spineless fashion, to be taken over in the area of gun safety 
by the NRA; that we refuse to deal with something that has serious law 
enforcement implications so that we, alone, in the developed world are 
most at risk for random gun violence. Any time there's a mass killing 
spree, I hope against hope for a more enlightened reaction.
  Perhaps the gun owners themselves, the majority of whom disagree with 
the NRA's extreme positions, will join with politicians, business, the 
health community to come together to deal with an epidemic of gun 
violence in the way we would treat any other threat to the safety of 
our families and our communities. We would study, we would work on 
solutions together, and we would act.
  Sadly, we're still waiting.

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