[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2363-2364]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                STOP ILLEGAL TRAFFICKING OF FIREARMS ACT

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, yesterday the Senate took an important 
step forward when it comes to keeping guns out of the hands of 
criminals. Senator Pat Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, 
introduced bipartisan legislation to finally crack down on the straw 
purchasing and illegal trafficking of firearms. I was happy to join in 
introducing this bill. It is a bipartisan group of Senators, including 
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Senator Susan Collins, and my colleague 
from Illinois, Senator Mark Kirk. Chairman Leahy's legislation combined 
a straw purchasing bill he and I introduced earlier this year together 
with a gun trafficking bill on which Senators Gillibrand and Kirk had 
been working. We sat down with Senator Collins and crafted a new bill, 
the Stop Illegal Trafficking of Firearms Act. It is important 
legislation, and the need for it is very clear.
  I have met a number of times in recent months with law enforcement 
leaders in Chicago and across my State. I asked them what Congress can 
do to help better protect our communities and our children, and one 
thing I kept hearing over and over again was that we needed to crack 
down on straw purchases. Time after time, law enforcement agencies say, 
criminals and gang members commit crimes with guns they purchased 
through others.
  A typical straw purchase happens when someone who legally can 
purchase a weapon and pass a background check buys a gun on behalf of 
someone who cannot pass that same background check. When a straw 
purchaser buys from a licensed gun dealer, the purchaser falsely claims 
on the Federal sale form that he is the actual buyer of the gun. Under 
current law, it is illegal to lie and buy a gun this way, but the only 
charge a Federal prosecutor can bring is for knowingly making a false 
statement on a Federal form--an offense which dramatically understates 
the gravity of the situation.
  We have had several hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee, 
including one I chaired on February 12, where U.S. attorneys have 
testified that these paperwork prosecutions are wholly inadequate as a 
deterrent for straw purchasing. Some of the critics even on my Senate 
Judiciary Subcommittee panel said: Why don't you prosecute more? The 
U.S. attorneys told us it's because these paperwork offenses are not 
taken that seriously by the court. The new law we have written will be 
taken seriously.
  The cases, as they stand now, are hard to prove and have little jury 
appeal. Even a conviction usually results in a very small sentence 
under the current law. The reality is that straw purchasers think they 
can make a fast $50 or more by buying a gun from somebody else, and 
that the consequences are not that great. We need to change this 
equation.
  At the hearing I chaired in the Judiciary Committee's Constitution 
Subcommittee on February 12, we heard powerful testimony from Sandra 
Wortham from the South Side of Chicago. Her brother, a Chicago police 
officer, Tom Wortham IV, was murdered in 2010 by gang members with a 
handgun that had been straw purchased and trafficked to Chicago from 
Mississippi. Almost 1 out of 10 crime guns in Chicago come from 
Mississippi. We ask why. Because the standards for sales are lax in 
Mississippi, and straw purchasers know they can fill the trunk of a car 
with these purchased weapons and head to the Windy City and sell them 
on the streets to thugs and drug gangs. Then, of course, they result in 
tragedy.
  The gang members who killed Officer Wortham were not allowed to buy a 
handgun from a dealer because of their age and criminal records, but it 
was real easy to get a straw purchased gun on the street. According to 
an investigative report by the Chicago Tribune, the man who straw 
purchased the gun that killed Officer Wortham did so for a quick $100. 
The Tribune said he gave little thought to what he was doing. ``I 
didn't even know what ATF stood for,'' the straw purchaser said to the 
Tribune.
  That was the gun that was used to kill Officer Wortham, a veteran of 
two combat tours in Iraq, a leader in his community, one of Chicago's 
finest, and he was gunned down in front of his parents' home. His 
father was a retired Chicago police officer.
  We need to send a message to those who think that straw purchasing 
might be an easy way to make a quick buck. As Sandra Wortham said at 
our hearing:

       We need to do more to keep guns out of the wrong hands in 
     the first place. I don't think that makes us anti-gun, I 
     think it makes us pro-decent law abiding people.

  I agree with Sandra Wortham. We can take steps consistent with the 
Constitution and the Second Amendment to crack down on straw purchases 
and gun-trafficking schemes that provide criminals with guns, and that 
is what this bill does.
  The bill we introduced yesterday will create a tough Federal crime to 
punish and deter straw purchasing. It says that if a straw purchaser 
buys a gun

[[Page 2364]]

from a licensed dealer on behalf of someone else, the buyer will face 
the prospect of significant jail time for up to 15 years. They will 
face hard time for a Federal crime. The same penalty applies to straw 
purchasers who buy a gun from a private seller on behalf of someone he 
knows or is has reasonable cause to believe is a prohibited purchaser.
  The legislation also creates a separate Federal offense for firearms 
trafficking, which is when someone transports or transfers firearms to 
another when he knows or has reasonable cause to believe that transfer 
violates Federal law. The bill provides for increased penalties if the 
trafficker was a leader of an organized gang.
  Cracking down straw purchasing and gun trafficking will help shut 
down the pipeline of guns into cities such as Chicago, where gang 
members use them on almost a daily basis to commit terrible crimes.
  This section of our bill is named in honor of Hadiya Pendleton, the 
15-year-old girl in Chicago who was shot and killed by alleged gang 
members in January just days after she attended the inauguration of the 
President of the United States here in Washington. Both Senator Kirk's 
hope and mine is that these reforms--once signed into law--will help 
prevent gang shootings and other gun crimes in the future.
  It is time to move forward on this legislation and on other 
commonsense proposals that will reduce the epidemic of gun violence in 
America. This Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will take up 
this bipartisan legislation that was introduced yesterday. I hope we 
can pass it out quickly with a strong bipartisan vote.
  I also look forward to voting in committee for bills to improve our 
system of criminal background checks and to stop the flood of new 
military-style and high-capacity magazines onto our streets. It is time 
for Congress to move forward with these measures to reduce gun 
violence. These proposals will not stop every shooting in America--no 
proposal can--but they will save lives if we put them into effect.
  I again thank my colleagues Chairman Leahy, Senator Kirk, Senator 
Gillibrand, and Senator Collins for collectively joining together to 
make sure this legislation moves forward. I think we can do something 
important, on a bipartisan basis, to make our streets, schools, and 
communities safer across America.
  I ask unanimous consent that my following statement be placed in a 
separate part of the Record.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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