[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19430-19433]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     SELF-DEFENSE ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it was 2 years ago this week that a 
precious life was cut short tragically. Kari Renee Hunt, a resident of 
Marshall, Texas, was murdered by her estranged husband in a hotel.
  They were in the hotel room. While the estranged husband was 
assaulting Kari, her 9-year-old daughter, while witnessing the murder, 
did what most parents teach their kids to do in an emergency. She 
dialed 911--and got nothing.
  Because what this precious 9-year-old--and the family hasn't used her 
name publicly, so I will not either--what the precious girl didn't know 
is what a lot of folks dialing 911 in that situation wouldn't know, 
that you have to dial 9 before you can dial 911. In order to dial the 
911, you need to dial the 9 prefix in order to get an outside line.
  Mr. Speaker, she didn't know that. She was desperately trying to get 
help to save her mother before the assault turned into murder. She 
never got help, not in time.
  Kari's father, Hank Hunt, has worked tirelessly to try to get 
something done. The State legislature in Texas has enacted a law, but 
from the Federal Government end, we can make it universal across the 
country.
  I do thank my friend Kevin Eltife for his work in the State 
legislature.
  Mr. Speaker, our bill is a little different. I was surprised to find 
out that,

[[Page 19431]]

actually, most of the time, there is no cost whatsoever to requiring 
that a phone be furnished to a business or a home or anywhere where 
there might be a need to punch 9 to get an outside line--there is no 
cost to having a default that you can dial 911 without the prefix, and 
it will go straight to the emergency help.
  Once I learned that, it became clear there was no reason not to have 
a law that just tells providers, provide the phone so that the default 
when you dial 911 is to get emergency help, that you don't need a 
prefix to get an outside line.
  So, today, after a lot of help--again, I am thankful to Hank Hunt for 
his tireless work--a number of groups have made this easier to come 
together on language that was acceptable to most. There were a couple 
of objections, but this is the final language.
  So I want to thank Mark Fletcher with AH&LA, the American Hotel & 
Lodging Association; FCC Commissioner Pai; and the 911 Association.
  Mr. Speaker, the bill we filed today is H.R. 4167, and, as it says in 
the bill, the purpose is to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to 
require multiline telephone systems to have a default configuration 
that permits users to directly initiate a call to 911 without dialing 
an additional digit, code, prefix, or postfix. That is the purpose.
  It is a short bill of three pages. If it had been the law 2 years 
ago, help would likely have gotten there before Kari's murder was 
final. So, while this legislation will not reverse the heartbreaking 
loss of Kari, Kari's law should prevent it from happening again. And 
when it doesn't cost anything, why not?
  Mr. Speaker, I thank all of those who have helped, and, actually, I 
want to thank the news media in east Texas for being so helpful in 
bringing attention to this issue and helping us get to the point where 
we are.
  Now we have to get through committee and get it to the floor. We have 
Senators, one in particular, looking at it to bring to the Senate floor 
so we can get this done and make it law.
  There has been no veto threat on this bill, so I would doubt the 
President would refuse to sign it if we would just pass it.
  Since the shootings in San Bernardino, I guess it shouldn't have been 
surprising that so many people would immediately call out for gun 
control even before they knew how Farouk--the defendants, the shooters, 
the evil shooters, acquired their guns.
  It is interesting that I believe there were 13 bombs already made, a 
number of bombs already made. So if guns were completely outlawed in 
the United States, it wouldn't change the evil in the hearts of radical 
Islamists who are bent on terrorizing and killing people.
  Mr. Speaker, it gets tiresome hearing people feel like they always 
have to say, ``All Muslims we know don't feel this way,'' yet they have 
no conviction and no compulsion, when they condemn Christians as being 
guilty of crusades, of saying, ``But we know all Christians don't feel 
this way.''
  I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that the fact is I don't know whether 
that shooter in Colorado Springs was self-described as a Christian or 
not. He obviously was confused about his gender.

                              {time}  1500

  Maybe the next thing we will hear is that--since he apparently 
checked off--or it is reported that he had filed a registration where 
he indicated he was an unaffiliated female, perhaps the next we will be 
told is that maybe, if he had been allowed to go into the little girl's 
restroom in elementary school, he wouldn't have later snapped and did 
those merciless killings.
  It has also been interesting--and, as a former prosecutor, a judge, 
also--I don't know if there is anybody else in this body of 435 
representatives or anybody in the Senate--I don't know--who has ever 
been court-appointed to appeal a death penalty conviction as I was.
  Even though I begged the judge not to appoint me, he did. And I do 
believe in our adversarial system to the point like John Adams said 
after the Boston Massacre, for our system to work, it requires 
adversaries on both sides doing the best they can legally and 
ethically.
  When I got into it, it appeared clear he had not gotten a fair trial. 
I later convinced the highest court in Texas to reverse his capital 
murder conviction, which it did. I don't know how many others in this 
body or the Senate have appealed and reversed a capital murder 
conviction. People always think I am such a heartless guy, but I do 
believe in the rule of law and I do believe it should be followed.
  I don't believe it helps the lawlessness that is breaking out across 
our land to have an administration that picks and chooses the laws that 
it likes to enforce and have an IRS that abuses their positions in the 
law, that has Homeland Security that deletes thousands of documents 
that would help us identify terrorists and then go after the guy that 
preserved them on his own classified IronKey.
  He is a real hero, but he has now been forced out of Homeland 
Security. He resigned. But after they empanelled a grand jury to 
investigate him, became terrorists in the way that the government 
treated them, not with guns, but with the power of this administration.
  I mean, with somebody as law-abiding as some of our whistleblowers 
have been only to find that this administration will come after you if 
you try to stand up for truth and integrity, can we not expect 
lawlessness to break out? John Adams wrote: This government was 
intended for the governing of a moral and religious people. It is not 
fit to govern any others.
  I know the President and others keep saying there is nowhere in the 
world that has the frequency of shootings like this or mass murders 
like we do in the United States. But, as I have mentioned before, there 
was an article by Kyle Becker 4 months ago. He has a chart and says, if 
you don't compare apples and oranges, if you actually compare the 
number of rampage shooting fatalities to the number of people in the 
country, then Norway is first, 15.3 per million; 1.85 per million in 
Finland; 1.47 per million in Slovakia; 1.38 in Israel; .75 in 
Switzerland; and .72 per million in the United States.
  The trouble is the loss of even one life is unnecessary, and 
appropriate steps should be taken to prevent them.
  My friend John Lott has an article out today in National Review. He 
says--this is John Lott:
  ``On Sunday, Hillary Clinton slammed Republicans for not being 
serious about protecting Americans from terrorism. `How many more 
Americans need to die before we take action?' Clinton asked in response 
to Friday's shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado 
Springs. She believes that stopping such attacks involves `common-sense 
steps like comprehensive background checks, closing the loopholes that 
let guns fall into the wrong hands.' Within minutes of the attack in 
San Bernardino, California, yesterday, Clinton pushed again for more 
regulations.
  ``Clinton also wants to crack down on terrorism by prohibiting people 
on the no-fly list from buying guns. `If you are too dangerous to fly 
in America, you are too dangerous to buy a gun in America.'''
  And I will insert parenthetically that I have got one of the most 
patriotic friends I know who is a highly decorated general in the 
United States Army who lived just outside Marshall, Texas.
  We have had a number of times tried to help the general, this 
patriotic freedom-loving American, who has put his life on the line 
repeatedly. We have had to repeatedly work to get his name off the no-
fly list because, apparently, there is someone with a similar name. And 
whoever that person is, this patriot's name is on the list.
  Well, John Lott goes on:
  ``Are Republicans really putting Americans in danger by opposing new 
gun-control laws?
  ``After every mass shooting, Clinton and President Obama have called 
for `comprehensive' or `universal' background checks, which would apply 
not only to the purchase of guns from a dealer, but also to private 
transfers of guns. However, it wouldn't have stopped any of the mass 
shootings during Obama's tenure. Last weekend,

[[Page 19432]]

Clinton, Obama, and other Democrats issued their calls for new 
legislation before anyone even knew how the Colorado shooter had 
obtained his rifle.
  ``Colorado already had expanded background checks two years ago. So 
had Oregon before the Umpqua Community College shooting in October. 
France also has a background-check system. So too does California, 
which experienced yesterday's attack. Yet, while the existing laws 
didn't stop shootings of the very kind Clinton claims that they will 
stop, she uses these failures to justify imposing similar laws on the 
rest of the country.
  ``The American background-check system is supposed to prevent the 
purchase of a gun by anyone who has been convicted of a felony or 
certain misdemeanors. The Feinstein amendment would also ban the sale 
of guns to anyone who is on the terrorist watch list. Now, being on the 
watch list sure sounds bad, but it doesn't mean that a person has been 
convicted of anything. In fact, it is pretty easy to get on the watch 
list; you can be on it simply because the FBI wants to interview you 
about someone you might know. According to the TechDirt website, about 
40 percent of the people on the watch list are considered to be under 
`reasonable suspicion' even though they have absolutely `no affiliation 
with known terrorist groups.'
  ``The number of people on the list has grown dramatically during the 
Obama administration; by 2013, there were about 700,000 people on the 
list. As of 2014, about 50,000 people were on the no-fly list. This is 
a ten-fold increase since Obama became president.
  ``Between February 2004 and December 2014, over 2,000 people on the 
watch list bought one or more guns. The government has not identified a 
single one of these people as using a gun in a crime.
  ``Should the government be able to deny you the right to protect 
yourself simply because it wants to ask you about someone you might 
know? And that isn't the only problem posed by the proposed expanded 
background checks. In New York, today's background checks add about $80 
to the cost of transferring a gun. In Washington State, they add about 
$60. In Washington, D.C., they add $200. In effect, these laws put a 
tax on guns and can prevent less affluent Americans from purchasing 
them. This disproportionately affects poor minorities who live in high-
crime urban areas.
  ``While some people on `no-fly' lists are there because they are 
suspected of terrorist activity, you can also get added because you are 
a suspect in a criminal case, made controversial statements or tweets 
unrelated to terrorism, are the victim of a clerical error, or refused 
to become a government informant.''
  And I might add, last November, as I was leaving London, I had a 
security person tell me they realized I was a U.S. Congressman and, 
``We are very sorry,'' but that our Homeland Security Department here 
in the United States said I was to be thoroughly personally searched 
along with my bags.
  I don't know. Maybe they didn't like my questioning of the Secretary 
of Homeland Security and were threatened by my questions trying to get 
truth out of them.
  ``Between February 2004 and December 2014, over 2,000 people on the 
watch list bought one or more guns.'' It is pretty amazing there. But 
not one of them--not a single one of those people have been accused of 
using a gun in a crime.
  So even if these people wanted this law to be changed, it would not 
have changed the outcome in Oregon, Colorado, or California. It seems 
as if my well-meaning friends proposing tougher and tougher laws to 
take away our Second Amendment rights mean well, but they are proposing 
things without even knowing whether they would save a single life. 
Certainly they will take away rights of law-abiding Americans, but they 
certainly would not have changed the outcome in Colorado or California.
  ``The error rate for identifying potential terror threats is probably 
similar to the error rate for background checks on gun purchases. Over 
94 percent of `initial denials' for gun purchases are dropped after 
just a preliminary review. These cases were dropped either because the 
wrong person had been stopped or because the covered offenses were 
decades old and the government decided not to prosecute. The total 
error rate comes to about 99 percent.
  ``Putting people on a list and prohibiting them from legally 
purchasing guns doesn't really stop them from getting weapons. The fact 
that people are prohibited from buying certain drugs doesn't mean 
people can't get them. It's the same with guns. And, incidentally, drug 
gangs supply both illegal drugs and illegal guns.
  ``Indeed, since Clinton wants to make a comparison to last week's 
Paris attacks, we should point out that France's strict weapon bans 
didn't stop the terrorists from getting the AK-47s and explosive belts 
they used in the attacks.
  Strangely, the Oregon, Colorado, California, and Paris shootings are 
being used to push for additional gun-control laws of the sort that 
failed to prevent those attacks.''
  That is John R. Lott, Jr., today writing.
  When I proposed and filed Kari's Law today, I had to be sure that it 
would make a difference and that the added burden would not cause any 
extra effort, cost money, hardly ever, just something that needed to be 
done.
  Kari's Law would be a great law for our country, whereas, the laws 
being hailed as something we must pass wouldn't have saved a single one 
of the lives that we will pause in silence and for whom most of us will 
pray.

                              {time}  1515

  Mr. Speaker, I know that Christians are being reviled. Certainly, in 
the Middle East, they are being beheaded. Here, in the United States, 
after leaders talked about praying for the victims' families, there 
have been belittling comments made.
  But I look at the quote that Thomas Jefferson provided. It is 
inscribed in his memorial:
  ``God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a 
nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a 
conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the 
gift of God? that they are not to be violated but with His wrath? 
Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that 
His justice cannot sleep forever.''
  Jefferson, on March 4, 1805, in his second inaugural, said:
  ``. . . I shall, need to the favor of that Being in whose hands we 
are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old, from their native land 
and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessities and 
comforts of life.''
  James Madison made many declarations and statements.
  On July 23, 1813, in the National Day of Public Humiliation and 
Prayer Proclamation, James Madison, who is given credit for being the 
most prolific author in the Constitution, said:
  ``If the public homage of a people can ever be worthy of the 
favorable regard of the Holy and Omniscient Being to whom it is 
addressed, it must be that in which those who join in it are guided 
only by their free choice, by the impulse of their hearts, and the 
dictates of their consciences; and such a spectacle must be interesting 
to all Christian nations as proving that religion, that gift of Heaven 
for the good of man, freed from all coercive edicts, from that 
unhallowed connection with the powers of this world which corrupts 
religion . . . and making no appeal but to reason, to the heart, and to 
the conscience, can spread its benign influence everywhere and can 
attract to the divine altar those freewill offerings of humble 
supplication, thanksgiving, and praise, which alone can be acceptable 
to Him . . .''
  We have observed a time now in our country's history where we have 
gone from, not nine Supreme Court Justices--most of the time, it is 
just five--who have said, even though the Founders have been requiring 
every day to start with prayer since the beginning of the new 
Constitution, we don't think you should have prayer in public places.
  That was a shocker. It would have been a shocker to the Founders 
since

[[Page 19433]]

they started with prayer in the very beginning and have continued 
through to this day.
  The Supreme Court goes on to say that they don't think you should 
talk about Jesus. You can talk about Mohammed, and you can talk all 
about Islam, but you can't talk about Jesus Christ. We have even had 
Federal judges say you can't mention the name ``God'' in your 
graduation ceremony. Our judicial system has a small group of judges 
who has run amuck, who has lost its way, and it has taken the country 
with them.
  Abraham Lincoln said:
  ``It is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their 
dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and 
transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine 
repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime 
truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that 
those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.''
  It is remarkable that this is 2 years and 40-something days before 
his assassination.
  Abraham Lincoln, with people dying all over the country, put this in 
print in his National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer 
Proclamation.
  Abraham Lincoln said:
  ``We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which 
preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; 
and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that 
all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of 
our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-
sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too 
proud to pray to the God that made us.
  ``It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, 
to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and 
forgiveness.''
  I will just share one more, Mr. Speaker.
  William Howard Taft is the only man in U.S. history to have been 
President and Chief Justice--or any Justice--on the Supreme Court.
  In 1908, William Howard Taft said:
  ``No man can study the movement of modern civilization from an 
impartial standpoint and not realize that Christianity and the spread 
of Christianity are the only basis for the hope of modern civilization 
and the growth of popular self-government. The spirit of Christianity 
is pure democracy. It is the equality of man before God, the equality 
of man before the law, which is, as I understand it, the most godlike 
manifestation that man has been able to make.''
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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