Pass Gun Safety Legislation and Give D.C. the Vote

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, anyone who thought the Democrats would go away after we were driven to a sit-in on the House floor for gun safety legislation learned differently very soon after we got home on Wednesday, June 29, when events were held all across the country on a National Day of Action for Gun Violence Prevention. We served notice.

Yes, there have been moments of outrage and sometimes we have not kept up the battle unceasingly. Watch us this time.

I am very pleased that our very effective police chief, Cathy Lanier, came with me to a roundtable where we heard not only from her, but from residents of the District of Columbia who have experienced the incredible heartache and throbbing agony of the loss of a loved one to gun violence.

This morning, unstimulated by me, parents organized themselves to come to the Capitol at 9 a.m. They call themselves D.C. Moms and Dads for Rational Gun Safety Legislation. They are a group of spontaneously formed District of Columbia parents who lack voting representation in the Congress, although they pay the highest taxes per capita of any Americans. They do not have the final vote on the House floor, and they have no Senators.

They wanted to come and show their support for national gun legislation to prevent gun violence in our city and our country. They came when, the week before, I had just fought off three amendments in the House Rules Committee to undermine D.C.'s gun laws with an attempt to erase some of those laws.

It is interesting that, in the Rules Committee, I was able to keep those Republican amendments to take away our gun laws from being made in order. I think it is because the Rules Committee took place only days after Orlando, and even Republicans didn't have the nerve to authorize gun legislation so close to the Orlando gun massacre. Is that what it is going to take? Or will it take the persistence that you saw when Democrats had no alternative but to sit on this hard floor just before recess?

Now, the Republicans have gotten the permission of the NRA to include a gun bill in a pending bill. No wonder, it makes things worse. Now you would have to go before a judge before you can get someone off the no- fly list, instead of depending on the slow administrative process, you would go through the much slower judicial process. Thank you for nothing. It certainly won't satisfy us or the American people.

We who live in your Nation's Capital, need national gun legislation to keep guns from flowing in from weak gun jurisdictions, and we need Congress to leave our gun safety laws alone.

Without fail, every single year, I have to drive back attempts to overturn our gun laws. I just described three that were in the Rules Committee before we left that I was able to drive back because of Orlando.

Yes, I am proud that the Nation's Capital has the strongest gun laws in the country, as well it might. Controversial world figures walk our streets and visit our restaurants. Weak gun laws we do not need in this Capital.

We have effective enforcement. We have good relations among Chief Lanier and her police force and our residents. But we are still at the mercy of a Congress, which will not do its job.

During our House sit-in, I left the floor to go to a press conference held by the Mayor and the police chief, displaying AK-47s and other guns illegal in the District of Columbia but that you can simply go to a gun show and buy, undermining our gun laws.

Our gun problem in cities like ours and many cities and jurisdictions across the country are not local problems. They are a national problem. That is why you see us demanding universal background checks. That is why we are demanding that Congress stop censuring the CDC from studying gun laws.

I thank the moms and dads and kids who marched to the Capitol today for overriding their denial of a vote to come here. You sent a dual message: pass gun safety legislation, and give D.C. the vote.

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