Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I rise again today to offer this important piece of legislation with my good friend Pat Toomey. It is a bipartisan piece of legislation. It makes all the sense in the world. Most of America supports the background checks that we are talking about.

As a law-abiding gun owner, I can assure you that basically I have been taught not to sell my gun to a stranger, not to sell my gun to a criminal, and not to sell my gun to someone who is severely mentally ill. That is how we were trained, and that is how most American law-abiding gun owners are trained. All this bill does is not infringe upon the rights of a personal transaction.

The only thing this piece of legislation does is to close a loophole in commercial transactions such as gun shows and Internet sales. I don't know if that person is a criminal. I don't know if that person is severely mentally ill. I just don't know that person. I was taught not to sell to that person or to give to that person unless I knew him.

This is the most commonsense idea supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans and an overwhelming majority of law-abiding gun owners in America.

I urge all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in this bipartisan legislation to please support this. It is basically something that is long, long overdue, and these tragedies continue to happen.

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