Expressing Sense of House Regarding Arizona Shooting

Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Madam Speaker, GABBY GIFFORDS is a wonderful human being and a treasured colleague and friend. But this resolution, as important and appropriate as it is, stops short of any collective commitment to prevent this type of tragedy from happening again. It happened because of a combustible mix of: one, a highly charged, antigovernment political environment; two, easy access to weapons whose only purpose is to kill large numbers of human beings; and, three, mental illness.

Not too long ago, another mentally ill person used the same kind of weapon to kill 32 innocent people on the Virginia Tech campus. In response we passed legislation eventually that enabled States to provide the names of people that they judged were too mentally imbalanced to be buying guns and provide those names to the National Instant Criminal Background Check system. We authorized $250 million to enable them to do that. But since then, we have appropriated each year less than 10 percent of that amount. As a result, of the 2.6 million people that the States know should be disqualified from buying firearms, less than 20 percent are actually on that list and so disqualified. In fact, less than 4 percent of Arizonans who the State knows should be disqualified from purchasing firearms are actually on that list and unable to purchase those firearms.

So perhaps we could consider following up on this resolution with some concrete steps to prevent this from happening again. I know it is important to protect one's individual freedoms, but a little 9-year-old girl should also have the freedom to visit with her Congresswoman, secure in the knowledge that her Congress has the courage to take reasonable steps to protect her and our country from such senseless violence.

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