[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 8853-8854]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       THE GROWING THREAT OUR NATION FACES FROM ISLAMIC TERRORISM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, the terrorist attack on Orlando should 
bring into sharp focus the growing threat that our Nation faces from 
Islamic terrorism, and that begins with realizing that although Islam 
is a religion, it is often accompanied by a poisonous political 
ideology that is antithetical to everything that our country stands 
for. That ideology now poses a direct threat to the liberty and safety 
of our people, and we have every right to defend ourselves against it.
  We knew for years that the terrorist's father was broadcasting pro-
Taliban and anti-American rhetoric aimed principally at a large and 
growing Afghan Islamic population within the United States.
  We knew that the terrorist, himself, had traveled repeatedly to Saudi 
Arabia under mysterious circumstances, associated with known terrorists 
and Islamic radicals in the United States, and expressed the most 
virulent anti-American views. And we took no action because there are 
far more instances of such threats than we can begin to assess or 
address.
  This administration has drastically increased the admission of 
refugees from regions where overwhelming majorities believe in imposing 
sharia law. Those who are fleeing sharia law and Islamist political 
ideology should be welcome in this country at assimilable levels; but 
those who are coming here to impose it are a direct threat to our 
Constitution, and they have no business being admitted to our shores. 
Yet this administration makes no distinction between the two.
  Indeed, earlier this year, when Governor Rick Scott of Florida, 
acting on behalf of law enforcement, requested information on the 
Islamic immigrants being inserted into his State, he was refused that 
vital public safety information.
  While seeking to rapidly increase the number of Islamists being 
admitted to this country, this administration has failed not only to 
enforce our immigration laws, but it has actively undermined those 
laws. As a result of these deliberate government policies, we are 
enduring Islamist attacks within our borders that will continue to 
increase in both frequency and severity.

[[Page 8854]]

  There is no blinking at the fact that these policies have encouraged 
a large and growing fifth column that is violently hostile to our 
country, and it has become deeply embedded within our communities. San 
Bernardino and Orlando were just the first bloody foretaste of what is 
to come until and unless these policies are stopped and reversed.
  Last year, the House passed the SAFE Act. That is an acronym for 
Safety Against Foreign Enemies. It was the first tentative step toward 
properly screening refugees from hotbeds of Islamic extremism. It 
merely required affirmative verification of a refugee's lack of hostile 
intent if they were coming from Islamist strongholds in Iraq and Syria. 
135 Democrats in this House opposed the SAFE Act, and Senate Democrats 
killed it in January at the behest of their President.
  The very same politicians who will not allow us even to confirm the 
intent of Islamists entering America are at the same time using the 
Orlando atrocity as an excuse to disarm loyal and law-abiding 
Americans. Within minutes of the attack, the left began to use this 
terrorist atrocity to justify more restrictions on the rights of 
Americans to defend themselves. They would have us believe that 
terrorists who are bent on destroying our country by violently killing 
Americans will somehow make one exception to their contempt for our 
Nation by meticulously obeying our gun control laws.
  The leftists tell us to leave it to the police. Really? In Orlando, 
it took 3 hours for police to secure the scene and confront the 
attacker, while hostages were being shot and the wounded were left to 
bleed to death--3 hours. In San Bernardino, the terrorists had already 
fled before police even arrived at the scene.
  The first line of defense against an armed terrorist is an armed 
American; yet the Democrats seek to make it harder for Americans to arm 
themselves, while increasing the threat posed by mass immigration from 
those countries where Islamist ideology is rampant.
  Is it possible that they don't understand that there is an 
international arms market and that terrorists can get their hands on 
any kinds of weapons they want as effortlessly as teenagers can buy 
pot?
  While the Orlando terrorist got his guns legally, he could just as 
easily have gotten them illegally. But that is not the case of law-
abiding American citizens. Law-abiding citizens obey our laws; 
terrorists do not.
  The left's vision for our country is one in which Americans cannot 
shoot back and must helplessly wait to be rescued while they are being 
terrorized by Islamic extremists who should never have been in this 
country in the first place. And that is going to continue in this 
country until it wakes up to the danger that it faces and takes 
decisive action at the ballot box.
  That is ultimately the choice before us: we can either suffer 
increasingly violent attacks on increasingly defenseless Americans, or 
we can choose to finally take seriously the nature of the enemy we face 
and finally demand leaders who will secure our borders, empower 
Americans to defend themselves, and act forthrightly to defend our 
country.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________