Gun Violence Survivors Week

Floor Speech

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Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, last night in this Chamber, we heard a bloviating, self-congratulatory speech full of exaggerations, half- truths, and outright falsehoods. The President pretended to have addressed, or was going to address, concerns of the American people.

He said he is taking care of prescription drugs. Yeah. Really. They haven't done a damn thing. We sent a bill to the Senate and it is sitting there.

Second, he said, oh, we are going to protect preexisting conditions. Funny thing, his Attorney General is in court arguing that those preexisting conditions should no longer be protected. But, hey, what the heck.

And then he did devote one sentence--one sentence--to infrastructure. What happened to the $2 trillion plan he campaigned on and carries on about all the time? Well, so far, he has only proposed cuts.

But one issue of vital concern to the American people that is the focus this week--this is National Gun Violence Survivors Week--did not receive a single mention by the President, despite the fact that several commonsense bipartisan reforms and programs have passed this House and have received no action in the Senate in a year.

H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Comprehensive Background Checks Act, passed on February 27. No action in the Senate.

The Enhanced Background Checks Act passed February 28--bipartisan. Again, no action in the Senate.

Every year, guns are sold to people who aren't supposed to have them--including at that horrible church shooting a couple of years ago--because of a mandate that, if there is confusion over a background check, they have to get the gun within 3 days.

Over the last 10 years, 35,000 guns, because of that provision, were sold to people who were not qualified under Federal law to have the guns. And guess what. Then the Feds contact the FBI who screwed up the background check, contacts the local law enforcement and says, ``Hey, go get the gun from that felon,'' endangering our local law enforcement.

This would plug that loophole.

The Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization passed April 4. No action in the Senate. And, for the first time in 20 years, we are going to do some research on gun violence. There are other bills we should be doing.

In my State, we have adopted red flag laws. And over here, they say, well, we can't have red flag laws for abusers because of their constitutional rights.

Well, we have set it up in a way that we have had 160 petitions for red flag restrictions. Most of them--actually, the majority--were for people at risk of suicide; and then a minority were for abusive relationships, and 32 of those were denied by a judge.

Due process was followed, but lives were saved. But, no, we can't take that.

Bump stocks, we banned fully automatic weapons decades ago. Bump stocks, essentially, turn a semiautomatic into a very inaccurate, nearly full automatic in terms of ready to fire. But if you are shooting at a stadium full of people, it doesn't matter how inaccurate it is; you are going to hit a lot of people.

We can't even bring up legislation--or, well, the Republicans won't support legislation to ban bump stocks, hate crimes legislation, the list goes on.

Just one other quick issue. You can go online to armslist.com, and if you are not eligible to buy a gun, you can get one. It is very evident that, in study after study done, that many of the people selling guns on armslist.com are felons and not allowed to own firearms, and they will sell to other felons. It will say: No background check necessary. Will cross State lines--all sorts of things like that.

All those things need to be banned. Those are commonsense gun violence reforms.

And, in this week, just, really, this week, National Gun Violence Survivors Week, let's do something to end the bloodshed.

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