[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5432]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 LET'S DO SOMETHING ABOUT GUN VIOLENCE

  (Mr. DEUTCH asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DEUTCH. Mr. Speaker, an American is killed with a gun every 16 
minutes. And what is Congress' response?
  Well, here is what we have become really good at. We have become 
really good at coming together for moments of silence. We do it every 
time there is a mass shooting. And, in 2015, there were 330 mass 
shootings.
  We ask: Why can't we do more?
  And our response, the response too often, is: We don't need to do 
anything else. There are plenty of laws on the books.
  Why don't we enforce them? Well, the fact is that there is one thing 
we can do that is not on the books. We can require that everyone who 
buys a gun has a background check.
  If you buy a gun in a store, you have to get a background check. But 
for gun shows, 100 gun shows a week, 5,200 gun shows a year, 5 million 
people traveling through those gun shows, there is no background check.
  There is no background check for the millions of Internet ads or 
classified ads.
  Let's pass mandatory background checks to help keep guns out of the 
hands of dangerous people. That is what we can do, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, there is too much at stake for us to continue to ignore 
this tragedy. It is time for Congress to act.

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