Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Floor Speech

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Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Montana for your leadership on this issue and for all the members of the House Freedom Caucus who stand for the issues that are both constitutional and extremely important to the American citizens.

All of us, all of us, all of us have been shocked over and over to see the unspeakable acts of violence, mass shootings and the like that have taken place in recent years and are rising in intensity and frequency. We see the heart-wrenching situations that these tragedies create in families and communities, and we see the rippling effect that they have in our Nation as a whole.

But far too often when these types of things happen, the reaction has become predictable from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, from the media, from others who immediately jump to conclusions, politicize the tragedies, and transfer to an agenda that includes disarming law-abiding citizens and stripping away our constitutionally protected Second Amendment.

Stricter regulation is not the issue--it is not the answer. Stripping away constitutional rights of American citizens is not the answer to these problems.

When considering how to deal with issues like mass shootings, we need to dig down to the root cause. This is just common sense. We have a major problem, let's get to the cause of the problem.

Firearms are just a tool, and like with any tool, the tool is only as effective or ineffective as the one operating the tool. I am not a violent person, that is why I don't have violent guns. The guns are not the problem. The person is the problem.

If you have a violent person--as has already been stated tonight--a violent person is going to commit violent acts. What is our response here--let's not go after the person, let's not deal with the cause, let's go after the tool, the instrument that was used. That does not solve the problem.

If we are ever going to deal with issues like mass shootings, and a host of other issues of that nature, then we have got to look at the problem, which is the shooter. We, in this country right now, we are a Nation in deep moral and spiritual crisis.

Among other things, we are watching our values in the family unit deteriorate right under our nose. Just today in a hearing in the Oversight Committee where the Democrats were yet again offering one piece of legislation after another that continues to deteriorate and dismantle the most critical unit in this country--that is the family unit.

Mr. Speaker, I would challenge anyone to take a deeper look at those who have committed such violent, heinous crimes that we have watched and see what their family life was like, what their spiritual life was like, and we will start finding some of the issues here that must be addressed.

Yet, we have so many attempts right now to address all the wrong things.

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