[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 935-936]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            SECOND AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, the Constitution of the United States of 
America was written to put in statute the limits of government's 
authority over citizens. It does not bestow rights or permit freedoms 
upon American people; rather, it delimits what government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people can and cannot do.
  Since well before our country's founding, Americans have exercised 
the right to keep and bear arms, a right formally protected by the 
ratification of the Second Amendment in 1791. As a lifelong defender of 
Second Amendment freedoms, I am committed to ensuring that any new 
proposals considered in Washington do not infringe upon the 
constitutionally guaranteed rights of law-abiding citizens.
  In the wake of devastating tragedies, well-meaning people feel 
compelled to do something, and the government, likewise, to intercede. 
But good intentions don't often make good or constitutional laws, and 
they certainly are no match for those set on being lawless.
  The Second Amendment reads:

       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.

  If the text alone were not explicit, our Founding Fathers clarified 
the purpose of the Second Amendment. James Madison wrote, in Federalist 
No. 46, that Americans possess:

     the advantage of being armed over the people of almost every 
     other nation whose governments are afraid to trust the people 
     with arms.

  Even more applicable to our current situation is this excerpt 
referenced by Thomas Jefferson, which reads:

       Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who 
     are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such 
     laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the 
     assailants.

  The rush to action in the wake of tragedies sadly heaps the price of 
criminal wrongdoing onto law-abiding, responsible gun owners. When such 
is the case, government flirts with construing the desire to exercise 
Second Amendment rights as suspect behavior, it deems some Second 
Amendment utilities superior to others, and it ignores the root causes 
of mass violence, focusing instead on the means by

[[Page 936]]

which violence is accomplished. Those mistakes must never be made. 
Federal proposals must be well-thought, data-driven, and 
constitutionally sound.
  The right to keep and bear arms is not one for hunters and sportsmen 
alone. For centuries, it has been a right for every American citizen to 
arm themselves to defend their property and the people they hold dear. 
And it is a right that cannot be infringed.

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