Gun Violence Prevention
Floor Speech
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Mrs. CAROLYN B. MALONEY of New York. Thank you so much to Jackie Speier for organizing this. She has told me she's going to continue working with her colleagues in Congress to raise this issue, to focus on it. She's going to try to get us here at least once a week to keep the focus on this priority of the American people and our President.
We see here some important information. I think what we should do every week, Jackie, is print the names of the innocent children, men, and women who are murdered every day in our great country because of senseless gun violence like my dear friend's husband and her son who was critically wounded. She told me how hard it was for her to tell her son that he had lost his father. And I want to publicly thank Carolyn for making this a priority in her time in Congress and giving so selflessly of her time to help us pass meaningful gun legislation.
I'm a cosponsor of all my colleagues' bills. I think they all are common sense and important and should pass. But I want to focus on one that I think every NRA member should be for, and that is to take the guns out of the hands of traffickers, people who are selling guns to criminals, to cartels that are used only to kill, whether it's gangs or robberies or whatever they use them for. Why can't we do that? Why can't we make that a felony and put teeth behind the punishment?
When we were having hearings on the Fast and Furious program in the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, law enforcement came and testified. They said: Help us. Trafficking and guns is not even a felony. It's not even a crime. You can be a drug kingpin selling guns all over the place, and you won't be convicted because it's not a crime.
No law-abiding person is a kingpin and trafficking guns. One thing that's good about this bill and why we have so much support on the other side of the aisle is that it doesn't in any way infringe on Second Amendment rights. Law-abiding Americans, if they want a gun for recreation or shooting practice or defense, fine. But these are guns that are being sold to criminals, to thugs, who then go out and kill more people.
Mr. Speaker, yesterday in a Federal courtroom in Las Cruces, New Mexico, two people were convicted of being part of a larger conspiracy to smuggle guns to some really bad people, criminals. They had smuggled guns to folks who worked as ``muscle'' for a vicious Mexican drug cartel. In fact, one of the defendants had purchased three semiautomatic weapons that showed up a month later at the scene of a triple homicide. Another of the guns he bought surfaced at a Juarez drug seizure. These two men were found guilty, but they didn't get much of a sentence because it's not a crime.
The sad fact is that about all the prosecutors could reasonably hope for in the case--under Federal law, gun traffickers can expect to do about as much time as people who illegally traffic in livestock. Illegally sell an assault weapon to a known killer or drug kingpin or sell a chicken without a permit, and you can expect to do about the same amount of time for each. This is ridiculous.
Mr. Speaker, there is something dreadfully wrong with this picture. Right now people known as straw purchasers can buy multiple guns and immediately resell them to cartels or killers and know that if they are caught that they will not be charged with anything but paperwork violations. Law enforcement told us at the committee that they don't even bother to arrest and try to prosecute straw purchasers because there's no penalty. Well, our bill changes that and can give up to 20 years in prison for being a straw purchaser.
Tragically, this is what happened in my own State of New York last Christmas Eve just 10 days after the massacre at the Sandy Hook children's school. Last December in Webster, New York, a convicted felon set fire to a house and then set himself up as a sniper to shoot down law enforcement when they came to protect him. He shot and killed two firefighters and seriously injured two others before taking his own life.
This is a heart-wrenching tragedy, and it is one that could never have happened but for the fact that the gunman's neighbor had acted as a straw purchaser for him. Authorities say she purchased a 12-gauge shotgun and a Bushmaster rifle for the man who, as a convicted felon, could not have purchased a gun in his own name. For knowingly acting as a straw purchaser for a felon, the neighbor has been charged with the only law that really applies: State and Federal paperwork violations.
I believe she would not have been buying these weapons for him if she knew she could have faced 20 years in prison. That's what prosecutors all too often have to rely on--a toothless Federal law that prohibits ``engaging in the business of selling guns without a Federal license.'' Little wonder then that, according to the ATF, straw purchasers is the most common channel of illegal gun trafficking in America.
Believe me, if guns made us safer, we'd be the safest country on Earth. We are the most armed country on Earth, and we know from statistics that, if you own a gun, the degree of probability of being hurt or injured or killed by a gun is 8 to 15 percent higher than it is for other individuals. It is no surprise then that U.S. Attorneys are forced to decline to prosecute 25 percent of gun trafficking cases. This is an outrage. This is a crime. This is causing the loss of lives. The investigation can take longer than the sentence a trafficker might receive. In the wake of recent tragedies, the voice of the American people has been clear on this issue: They want something done, and they want it done now. They want us to do something to address this problem. They want something done that shows some bipartisan cooperation.
As our President said, we came here to do a job. Let's have a vote. Let's put this bill out on the floor of Congress, and let's have a vote. If some of my colleagues would like to vote against making trafficking in guns a felony, then let them do it. If some of my colleagues would like to vote against having meaningful penalties for trafficking and a straw purchaser's buying guns to be given to criminals, then let them do it, but let's have a vote. That's a democracy.
I introduced a bill in the last Congress and have reintroduced it in this Congress, H.R. 452. I hope that the listening public will urge their Members of Congress to cosponsor this bill and help us pass it for the American people. It is called the Gun Trafficking Prevention Act. It is a bipartisan bill, cosponsored by my friends and colleagues on the other side of the aisle: Mr. Rigell of Virginia, who happens to be an NRA member, said this doesn't infringe on any gun owner's rights. He owns guns, but he just wants to go after the kingpins and the murderers and the illegal traffickers; and Mr. Meehan of Pennsylvania, who is a former prosecutor and knows firsthand why law enforcement needs these tools.
This bill will help keep guns out of the hands of felons and domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill, who cannot and should not be able to legally buy guns on their own. This bill prohibits the purchase or transfer of a firearm if the intent is to deliver the firearm to someone else who is prohibited by Federal law or State law from possessing a firearm. Persons who commit this offense are subject to up to 20 years of imprisonment. For the first time, our bill makes firearms trafficking a Federal crime--something law enforcement officials have been asking for in hearings, in letters. They have been asking for this for years.
The bill also establishes significant penalties for straw purchasers who buy firearms on behalf of someone else. Buy a firearm for a convicted felon and you could look at 20 years in prison. These increased penalties will provide law enforcement officials with the critical tools that they've been asking for, tools that Bobby Scott knows from his judiciary work are critically needed. The increased penalties can be used to encourage straw purchasers to cooperate with prosecutors in order to make it possible to go on up the food chain--after the cartels and the kingpins who now have little to fear.
Let me be absolutely clear that this bill has no impact whatsoever on the Second Amendment, on legal gun ownership or purchases.
As the President pointed out in his speech last night, this bill will not put an end to all gun violence. No bill can do that. No bill can prevent any particular act of violence, but we can stop some. We can do something and we can do this, and law enforcement is begging for the passage of this bill. We can begin the healing. We can restore some trust. We can stop putting guns in the hands of criminals. We can do it in a bipartisan way, and we can do it together.
Again, I thank my good friend and wonderful colleague, Jackie Speier from the great State of California, for organizing this. I will be with you at all of your future events.
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