[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 189-191]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 PROTECTING OUR SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. 
Russell) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. RUSSELL. Mr. Speaker, it was New Year's Eve in Blanchard, 
Oklahoma. Eighteen-year-old mother Sarah McKinley, alone with her 3-
month-old son, heard a ruckus at the door. Two men were outside trying 
to break it down. Grabbing her baby and barricading the door with her 
sofa, she immediately called 911.
  In the frantic and desperate situation that followed, it became clear 
that law enforcement would not arrive in time to prevent the assault by 
armed intruders. She informed the dispatcher that she had a shotgun, 
and asked if it was all right to shoot the intruders, should they make 
their way inside.
  Wisely, the dispatcher told Sarah: ``I can't tell you to do that, but 
you do what you have to do to protect that baby.''
  Sarah already knew what she might have to do, and hoped against hope 
that law enforcement, while responding quickly, would arrive in time.
  When the armed intruders broke down the door, 24-year-old Justin 
Martin climbed over the couch and was greeted with a shotgun blast to 
the chest. While his accomplice ran for his life, Sarah had saved hers 
and her baby's.
  Eight weeks ago, 88-year-old Arlene Orms was at home alone in Miami, 
Florida, when an intruder kicked in her door. Orms responded by 
retrieving a .25-caliber pistol, but fired it at the home invader, 
prompting the criminal to flee.
  Following the incident, Orms' neighbors expressed absolute support 
for her actions, with one telling a local media outlet: ``You have to 
do something. You have to protect yourself.''
  Arlene Orms, like most Americans, inherently understands that you 
have the right to defend your life, your property, and your liberty.
  The right to keep and bear arms is as fundamental to our freedom as 
any other inalienable right we enjoy as Americans. This right is God-
given, as much as the freedom of religion, and to exercise worship, the 
freedom to assemble and express, the freedom to own property, and to 
protect our privacy.
  As such, serious-minded individuals must have serious deliberation on 
any attempt to alter these fundamental American rights that are 
embodied in the Bill of Rights, inalienable, not granted by government.
  In a time where Americans face uncertain threats from terrorists at 
home, most Americans clearly understand why we must preserve the right 
to defend ourselves, our families, and our property.
  For those who would refuse their right to defend themselves, they 
have the freedom to do so. They do not have the freedom to make that 
decision for others.
  In terms of human behavior, our survival instincts are inherent. The 
Creator of the universe did not make human beings with fangs, claws, 
quills, or odors for their self-defense. Instead, he gave them their 
intelligence and, by extension, their hands, to fashion implements to 
protect their lives.
  While the President is certainly welcome to choose not to defend 
himself, as is his right, it is not his right to prohibit others from 
protecting their lives and property.
  The President has histrionically compared his gun control agenda with 
the advancement of women's suffrage rights and the elimination of 
slavery, chiding Republicans for their lack of advancement of the human 
race.
  If we look historically, rather than histrionically, it was 
Republicans who eliminated slavery and embraced Republican activist 
Susan B. Anthony, the women's suffragist, to get voting rights for all 
women, where his party had stood in the way.
  The President can no more rewrite history than he can rewrite the 
Constitution. While he may be a constitutional scholar, he needs to be 
schooled on constitutional history. From Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, 
and Adams, all the way to the Supreme Court decisions with Heller and 
McDonald, this inalienable right has been affirmed in defense of its 
articulation in the Bill of Rights.
  While the President complains of congressional inaction on the right 
to keep and bear arms, it can no more take action to deny this right 
than it could deny a free press, a free religious expression, or 
property rights to individuals.
  Congress will not act to destroy the Bill of Rights, and we will 
stand in the way of any executive who will not uphold the Constitution 
of the United States.
  Still, the administration presses forward with passion and 
conviction, convincing Americans that the threat is so grievous, the 
injury is so great, that Americans must act to inhibit our liberty. We 
are told that mass shootings are on the rise and gun deaths are out of 
control and the worst among developed nations.
  But before America signs up to eliminate one of her inalienable 
rights, let's deliberate with a sober mind. The President and his party 
would report outrage if conservatives suggested that the First 
Amendment must be scrapped because of such abuses as libel, hate 
speech, religious bigotry and sit-ins, warranted necessary commonsense 
reforms to the first of our enumerated freedoms embodied in the Bill of 
Rights.
  Americans recognize that we must face the unpleasantness of abuse of 
these rights on occasion to secure its inviolable status.
  Not the same, some may say. We are talking about outrageous loss of 
life and injury and it must stop, they claim.
  Since when did our security become substitute for our liberty? 
Americans for 240 years, rather, have sacrificed to secure it.
  And the simple truth is, the facts supporting this liberal gun 
control call to give up an essential American liberty have been widely 
and unfairly distorted. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 
199,756 people lost

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their lives to firearms in 2014. But on examination, only 15,000 of 
that number were homicide. That is only 8 percent of the total. The 
vast majority, over 68 percent, were accident-related, and even that 
has steadily declined in recent years.

                              {time}  2015

  Suicides accounted, sadly, for most of the remainder at 21 percent
  But the truth about gun homicides is that you are as likely to die 
from malignant neoplasm of the esophagus as you are to violent homicide 
with a firearm. You are twice as likely to die from the result of a 
fall. You are 2\1/2\ times more likely to die by accidental poisoning.
  Still, while these incidents are tragic, and many beyond the scope of 
civilized thinking, we cannot substitute emotion for examination. 
Contrary to those most vocal--and most funded--voices on this issue, we 
are not the most violent civilized country on the planet. In fact, 
according to data compiled from the United Nations Office on Drugs and 
Crime, the United States ranks in the bottom half of homicides 
worldwide among civilized or uncivilized nations.
  Still, the President often touts Europe as a commonsense model for 
better policy and security. A remarkable seven European countries have 
higher overall per capita homicide rates than the United States. Where 
is that news flash? Disarming law-abiding citizens as a solution to 
curtail those that break the law does not necessarily make people 
safer, but it certainly makes them more defenseless. On our own shores, 
we can find an example of this line of thinking by examining the most 
violent cities in America. They are most likely to be ones with the 
strictest gun laws.
  If gun control advocates ignore this body of evidence, as they are 
wont to do, they will explore ways to eliminate this essential right in 
America through other means. We often see them turn to the false 
assertion that the Second Amendment was never intended for
individuals--remarkable, considering that James Madison insisted on 
enumerating inalienable individual rights into the body of the 
Constitution before he accepted the compromise to secure them through 
an amending process known as the Bill of Rights. Like all of our 
Framers and Founders, he understood common or natural law and its roots 
in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, and it guaranteed the individual 
right to bear arms.
  All of our constitutional Framers would have relied heavily on Sir 
William Blackstone's thought on law and liberty. This brilliant jurist 
secured complete influence among every colonial attorney and all of our 
Founding Fathers with his Commentaries on the Law published in 1765. He 
was explicit in his assertion that to secure individual life, liberty, 
and property, it was necessary ``to the right of having and using arms 
for self-preservation and defense.''
  It comes as no surprise then, in the language of common and natural 
law so clearly understood in the context of the time that the Second 
Amendment would be so highly placed in the order of individual rights 
at number two.
  Gun control advocates argue the amendment was only for militias, not 
individual people. Despite that argument being struck down for 225 
years in Supreme Court rulings to include the most recent cases of 
Heller and McDonald in 2008 and 2010, it is instructive to see what the 
Framers said themselves about the meaning of people and militias.
  Richard Henry Lee wrote in Federalist Number 18, that brilliant group 
of papers known as the Federalist Papers that argued for our 
Constitution: ``A militia when properly formed are in fact the people 
themselves. To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of 
the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when 
young, how to use them.''
  In fact, when one examines the First and Third through the 10th 
original amendments, it is difficult to interpret any other meaning 
than that they apply to individuals. The Second Amendment is no 
exception. The Supreme Court has always agreed.
  The famous 14th Amendment, during Reconstruction after Black 
Americans were freed from slavery--you know, that famous amendment that 
is the most referred to--guarantees equal protection under the law for 
all American citizens. It started out, and most Americans are not aware 
of this, as a Second and Fourth Amendment issue.
  The Southern Democratic Party lawmakers were nullifying individual 
liberty with their State Black Code laws which deprived Black Americans 
of their right to liberty, property, and to keep and bear arms as they 
attempted to defend their homes. Republicans fought back against these 
lawmakers and then led the fight to pass legislation addressing the 
issue in 1868. Democratic President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill. 
Congress overrode it and then secured their rights forever in the 14th 
Amendment to the Constitution.
  In fact, the Supreme Court has determined with clarity that the 
constitutional individual right of Americans to bear arms is guaranteed 
on Federal enclaves such as Washington, D.C., with the Heller v. 
District of Columbia decision. In McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme 
Court in 2010 held that the individual right extends to keeping and 
bearing arms to all States and territorial jurisdictions.
  Okay. Fine, you say. But there is no reason why people need military-
style firearms. Those need to be banned. The Framers of the 
Constitution and the Supreme Court, strangely, to those who would have 
this way of thinking, would disagree.
  In 1939, United States v. Miller, Justice Holmes speaking for the 
Court in the case where one Mr. Miller asserted he had a constitutional 
right to bear a sawed-off shotgun without paying a special exemption 
tax of $200, the Supreme Court held that no such right existed on the 
grounds that sawed-off shotguns of the very short length Mr. Miller 
possessed were not suitable as a military-type firearm if needed for 
common defense--a paraphrase, not a quote.
  1997, Printz v. United States, Justice Clarence Thomas, our most 
recent treatment of the Second Amendment prior to the late Supreme 
Court decisions, stated that they reversed the District of Columbia's 
invalidation of the National Firearms Act enacted in 1934. In Miller, 
we determined the Second Amendment did not guarantee a citizen's right 
to possess a sawed-off shotgun because the weapon had not been shown to 
be of ``ordinary military equipment'' that could ``contribute to the 
common defense.''
  Ban military rifles you say? Throughout our history, they have been 
guaranteed as an essential portion of the defense of our liberty, our 
homes, and our lives.
  What about the terrorist watch list? Nobody on the terrorist watch 
list ought to be able to own a firearm. The terrorist watch list is 
only on suspicion--no court, no rule of law, no jury of your peers. It 
is on suspicion for surveillance, and it can be done bureaucratically 
and administratively. In fact, we have had several Members of Congress, 
such as my colleague from Alaska, Don Young, who was falsely and 
inadvertently put on the terrorist watch list. Under this line of 
thinking, his Second Amendment rights would be removed.
  Well, we can't have these terrorists coming here and then being able 
to buy a firearm. They can't. People do not understand 18 U.S. Code. 
They don't understand the law. If you are a nonresident legal alien, 
you cannot possess, purchase, or receive a firearm. It is the law. 
There are only very small rare exceptions for that, such as if you were 
approved for a specialized hunting trip or maybe you were armed 
security for a head of state, for example.
  Well, what about that gun show loophole? Businesses shouldn't be able 
to sell firearms without a background check. News flash: You cannot 
sell a firearm under a business license without a background check. If 
you do so, whether you are on your property or off your property at a 
gun show, you are committing a felony and with strict sentencing laws 
often that are minimum sentences of 10 years or more.

[[Page 191]]

  Well, what about Internet sales? You can go online and you can just 
order a rifle, and they will ship it to your home--again, false. People 
do not understand the law.
  The United States Postal Service and our commercial carriers do not 
allow shipping of firearms except under licensed dealers. The only 
exception to that would be if you had an original manufacturer's 
warranty and you ship it directly back to the manufacturer under their 
license, and they will receive it and send it only directly back.
  As the only Member of Congress who owns a firearms manufacturing 
business, I know about what I speak. If someone in another State were 
to try to order a firearm off of our Web site, it would never get 
shipped to their home or I would go to prison. Instead, we tell that 
person: You need to get the local firearms licensee in your area to 
send a certified copy of your license to us, and they are in a form 
where we can recognize what is a real license. When we receive that, we 
will ship it to him, they will do the check, and you will fill out 
forms and you can receive your firearm. That is the way the law works.
  So all of this outrage from my colleagues on the liberal left of 
trying to fix things, the law already exists. It is like saying that we 
need to do something about murder. We need to make some laws to stop 
murder. Maybe they will quit doing that. Oh, we already have those 
laws, and people still commit crime.
  Therein is where we need to focus. Target the abusers, not the law-
abiding American citizen, and do not target the Republic of the most 
incredible constitutional form of law the world has ever known.
  Serious people decline to trivialize any right expressly addressed in 
the Bill of Rights. A government that abrogates any of the Bill of 
Rights with or without majority approval forever acts illegitimately 
and loses the moral right to govern the Republic. This is the 
uncompromising understanding reflected in the warning that America's 
gun owners will not go gently into these utopian woods.
  While liberals and gun control advocates will take such a statement 
as evidence of their belief in the backwater, violent, and 
untrustworthy nature of the armed American citizens, we gun owners hope 
that liberals hold equally strong conviction about their printing 
presses, their Internet blogs, and their television cameras. The 
Republic depends upon the fervent devotion to all of our fundamental 
rights. That is the oath that we take, and no President's tears will 
ever shake us from the defense of that Constitution.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back my time.

                          ____________________