[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15718]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        GUN CONTROL DOESN'T WORK

  (Mr. SMITH of Texas asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, within minutes of the tragic 
shooting in Las Vegas, Democrats and the liberal media called for more 
gun control measures.
  A recent Washington Post op-ed describes how one gun control advocate 
researched restrictive gun laws in Great Britain and in Australia, only 
to discover that gun buybacks and gun bans do not reduce mass shootings 
or gun-related crimes.
  She said: ``The case for the''--gun control--``policies I had lobbied 
for crumbled when I examined the evidence. . . . But I can't endorse 
policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. 
Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have 
encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the 
news.''
  This researcher concluded that more lives would be saved by focusing 
on individuals instead of guns.
  We should ensure that background checks work as intended and prevent 
those with mental health issues from acquiring guns. This actually will 
do some good, as opposed to meaningless gun regulations.

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