American Freedoms
Floor Speech
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Mr. RUSSELL. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague and fellow warrior from New York and my brother warriors who are joining me in this effort today. It is an honor to have a sister warrior who is also sitting in the chair with us here tonight.
The right to keep and bear arms is as fundamental to our freedom as any other inalienable right we enjoy as Americans. This right is God- given--as much as the freedom of religion and to exercise worship, the freedom to assemble and express, the freedom to own property and protect our privacy.
As such, serious-minded individuals must have serious deliberation on any attempt to alter these fundamental rights. In a time where Americans face uncertain threats from terrorists at home and abroad, most Americans clearly understand why we must preserve the right to defend ourselves, our families, and our property.
For those who would refuse their right to defend themselves, they certainly have the freedom to do so. They do not have the freedom to make that decision for others.
In terms of human behavior, our survival instincts are inherent. The Creator of the universe did not make human beings with fangs, claws, quills, odors, or poisons for their self-defense. Instead, he gave them their intelligence and, by extension, their hands to fashion implements to protect their lives.
While the Progressives are certainly welcome to choose not to defend themselves, as is their right, it is not their right to prohibit others from protecting their lives, liberty, and property or the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States.
It was New Year's Eve in Blanchard, Oklahoma. Eighteen-year-old mother Sarah McKinley, who was alone with her 3-month-old son, heard a ruckus at the door. Two men were outside trying to break it down. Grabbing her baby and barricading the door with her sofa, she immediately called 911.
In the frantic and desperate situation, it became clear that law enforcement would not arrive in time to prevent the assault by armed intruders with designs that can only be imagined. She informed the dispatcher that she had a shotgun and asked if it was all right to shoot the intruders if they made it inside. Wisely, the dispatcher told Sarah: I can't tell you to do that, but you do what you have to do to protect your baby.
Sarah already knew what she had to do and hoped against hope that law enforcement, while responding quickly, would arrive in time. When the armed intruders broke down the door, 24-year-old Justin Martin climbed over the couch and was greeted with a shotgun blast to the chest. While his accomplice ran for his life, Sarah had saved hers and her son's.
A year ago, 88-year-old Arlene Orms was at home in Miami, Florida, when an intruder kicked in her door. Orms responded by retrieving a small .25-caliber pistol and fired at the home invader, prompting the criminal to flee.
Following the incident, Orms' neighbors expressed support for her actions, with one telling a local media outlet: ``You have to do something . . . You have to do something to protect yourself.''
Americans all across this land understand inherently you have the right to defend yourself, your property, your loved ones, and your liberty.
Progressives can no more rewrite history than they can rewrite the Constitution. From Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams, all the way to the Supreme Court decisions with Heller and McDonald, this inalienable right has been affirmed in defense of its articulation in the Bill of Rights.
While the President complains of congressional inaction on the right to keep and bear arms, we can no more take action to deny this right that we could deny a free press, free religious expression, or property rights of individuals. Congress cannot become a vehicle to destroy the Bill of Rights.
Madam Speaker, my fellow warriors and I have nearly lost our lives like you defending this Republic in our Nation's Armed Forces doing very hard things. We stand as brothers in arms to declare that we will stand in the way of any Executive who will not uphold the Constitution of the United States, plain and simple.
Still, the administration and progressives press forward with passion and conviction, convincing Americans that the threat is so grievous, the injury so great, that Americans must now act. We are told that mass shootings are on the rise and gun deaths are out of control and the worst possible environment exists among developed nations.
Before America signs up to eliminate one of her inalienable rights, let's deliberate with a sober mind on this issue. The President and his party would report outrage if conservatives suggested that the First Amendment must be scrapped because of outrageous libel, hate speech, religious bigotry, and sit-ins warranted necessary commonsense reforms so that we could take away the first of our enumerated freedoms embodied in the Bill of Rights. There would be outrage over such a suggestion. Americans recognize that we must face the unpleasantness of its abuse to secure its inviolable status.
Not the same, some may say. We are talking about outrageous loss of life and injury, and it has to stop. Since when did our security become substitute for our liberty? Americans for 240 years have rather sacrificed to secure it.
My brother warriors with me here, Madam Speaker, along with you and your service, we stand in that group of those who have defended and supported the Constitution since we were very young adults.
What about the facts? With more than 33,000 gun homicides last year, the question is asked: Don't you think it is time to do something about gun violence?
Well, here are the facts:
More than 60 percent of these homicides are suicides. While tragic, it is not the same.
Only 8,124 were with firearms of the 11,961 that were murders. That is 8,124, not the 33,000 that you hear.
This is a 9 percent decline in gun murders since 2010. Haven't heard that one, a 20 percent decline in gun murders since 2005. Again, you haven't heard that one. A 50 percent decline in gun murders since 1995.
The laws seem to be working. With shall-issue carry laws and good lawmaking in States, we have seen a 50 percent diminishment in the problem. That is called success. Why on earth would people want to change that?
Here is another one that we see people asking: People are being slaughtered by these assault weapons. Don't you think it is time we ban them?
Assault weapons are fully automatic and unavailable to the public. Semiautomatic rifles make up the majority of rifles owned in the United States. Here is an interesting fact. Of those 8,124 murders with firearms in 2014, the last full statistical year, only 248 were with rifles of any kind--that would be flintlocks; that would be semiautomatic rifles; that could be anything. 8,124--not the 33,000. Of those, 248 were with rifles. Yet people think that: Oh, my goodness. This is the problem. This is what we have to ban. Statistically, the facts are simply not there.
To put that in perspective, of other murders in different categories, 435 people were murdered in 2014 with clubs and hammers; 660 were murdered in 2014 with hands, fists, and feet.
So let's have the deliberative debate, but let's look at the facts. Don't you think a terrorist, if they can't board a plane, they ought not to be able to buy a firearm. News flash: the terrorist watch list has over 1 million names; 99 percent of them are foreigners. As the only firearms manufacturer in Congress, I can assure you in the 18 U.S. Code and in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms regulations that govern manufacturers and dealers, guess what. They can't purchase a firearm, not as a nonresident alien. Ain't going to happen. If we were to do that, we would be committing a felony.
Of the less than 1 percent that might be eligible, an even smaller fraction of these are on separate no-fly lists. Yet you don't hear these facts. You are hearing them tonight in the people's House.
All Federal prohibitors would trigger an alert to the FBI on any firearms transfer, even if they were eligible.
What about the gun show loophole? Don't you think businesses should be forced to conduct background checks at gun shows? I have a firearms business. If we were to go to a gun show and set up there, and we were to do a firearms transfer under that license without a NICS check and a 4473, we would be committing a felony.
No firearms licensee can transfer a firearm without a background check, period. If so, a felony is committed with stiff penalties. On- site business or off-site transfer, it doesn't matter. It is irrelevant. These are the facts.
What about Internet gun sales, don't you think there should be a background check on those? Why, you can just go on the Internet and they mail you a firearm.
No licensee will transfer a firearm to another location without sending it to another licensee to make the transfer. When people order our products, we send them out to another Federal firearms licensee. They do the background checks. They do the transfer. If that doesn't happen, nothing is transferred. To do so is to commit a felony otherwise.
Further, no firearm can be transferred through the mail or a shipping service unless by a licensee, and unless--the only exception--it is the owner sending it back to the manufacturer to have some repair made or something of that nature.
And so these are the facts that we see and that we deal with. As we go into this debate, we have to go into it with deliberation. We often hear: Why aren't we having these issues? Why aren't we discussing this issue? Let's have the debate. Let's go after the facts.
Serious people decline to trivialize any right expressly addressed in the Bill of Rights. A government that abrogates any of the Bill of Rights, with or without majority approval, forever acts illegitimately and loses the moral right to govern this Republic. This is the uncompromising understanding reflected in the warning that America's gun owners will not go gently into the utopian woods.
While liberals and gun control advocates will take such a statement as evidence of their belief in the back-water, violent, untrustworthy nature of the armed American citizen, as gun owners, veterans, combat veterans, defenders of this Republic, we understand that hope, that liberals hold equally strong conviction with theirs about printing presses, Internet blogs, and television cameras. We get that. It is the same Bill of Rights, inalienable.
The Republic depends on the fervent devotion to all of our rights, not selective rights. This is the oath we take, and no President's tears or progressives' passionate pleas will shake us from the defense of the Constitution of the United States.
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