[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15394]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               GUN SAFETY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, what if the headline in the morning 
paper was slightly different? What if we had a disease that had killed 
59 people yesterday and sickened over 500 others? Do you think the 
Nation would demand action?
  If we had an outbreak every day that had over 100,000 people a year 
killed and injured, Congress would be in a frenzy. Yesterday, we found 
2 minutes for a moment of silence, and we moved on.
  Gun violence is a public health hazard every bit as important as any 
other disease or outbreak. Ours is the only developed country in the 
world that cannot protect our families from death and injury from guns 
on a massive scale.
  After years of frustration in Congress and another school shooting in 
my district, I sat down with my constituents to go through, what are 
the things that we can do that would make a difference?
  We understood that you cannot completely stop evil people. There is 
not a statute that is foolproof, but our statutes are filled with 
efforts to try to make things better.
  Let's stop dealing with gun violence as a political issue and think 
about it as the public health epidemic that it is, already claiming 
over 12,000 lives in the United States this year.
  We attacked auto death and safety in a resolute fashion. It didn't 
happen overnight that we made automobiles safer and our highways less 
dangerous, but we stayed at it with law enforcement, with engineering, 
and with research, and we cut the rate of death over half.
  We are starting now to deal with massive addiction and overdose as a 
medical condition that requires treatment, not just law enforcement 
with harsh punishment.
  My report outlined nine areas where we could take action. There are 
26 bills in Congress now that deal with these items, and we haven't 
been able to deal with them meaningfully: no hearings and certainly 
nothing on the floor of the House.
  There are provisions to keep guns away from the most dangerous users. 
Even members of the NRA support that. We can improve the mental health 
system. We can authorize and increase research into gun safety.
  There is an outrageous provision in United States law that prevents 
the Centers for Disease Control to research gun violence that was 
authored by our late colleague Jay Dickey from Arkansas who, later in 
life, realized that was a horrific mistake. We ought to be able to 
understand and find ways to help prevent it.
  We can control access to the most dangerous products. We can increase 
product safety for guns, which are inherently dangerous. We can empower 
healthcare professionals to deal with families to help prevent gun 
violence and understand what risks their families face, rather than 
outrageous provisions that seek to limit what healthcare professionals 
can do to deal with their patients. We can effectively regulate the 
sale of firearms. There should be no hidden sales where we do not have 
background checks.
  This is all within our capacity. We can enforce existing laws, and we 
can mitigate the loss of life in shooting by helping provide more 
resources for first responders.
  This isn't pie in the sky. This will do nothing to take away the 
rights of Americans who want to target shoot or hunt. What it will do, 
is start the slow, steady process toward making our families safer and 
make sure that America is not the only developed country that cannot 
protect its families from gun violence.

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