Anti-Gun Violence

Floor Speech

Mr. REID. Mr. President, on the anti-gun violence legislation before the Senate, we are making good progress in the effort to schedule a series of votes on amendments.

I have had constructive conversations with my Republican counterpart, Senator McConnell.

The American people deserve to know where we stand on these important antiviolence proposals. There are disagreements as to what we should do with gun legislation, if anything, and I understand that. We have already spent a week and a half on this legislation, so it is time to begin processing these amendments.

I hope we will be able to reach an agreement earlier rather than later--hopefully, sometime by early afternoon--to hold votes on a number of amendments, including both Democratic and Republican amendments.

That series of votes would include a number of issues, not the least of which is the compromise background check proposal crafted by Senators Manchin, Toomey, Kirk, and Schumer. This bipartisan measure has the support of antiviolence advocates and law enforcement groups as well as second amendment advocates, including the second largest gun rights group that exists, consisting of more than 650,000 members.

The measure would keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals by requiring background checks for private gun sales at gun shows and over the Internet.

Mr. President, whether you are from a pro-gun State such as Vermont or Nevada--even in those States, huge amounts, huge numbers of people support this legislation. Nationwide, about 90 percent of the people support this legislation, including 75 percent of NRA members.

So I am optimistic and hopeful that cooperation from both sides will continue and that victims of gun violence will get the debate and votes they deserve, including pro-gun advocates who want votes of their own liking.

So I hope we can move forward. It would be a shame if we got into a procedural hassle on all this stuff. We want to debate the issues. And as I have indicated to the Republican leader, we are not trying to cut off amendments. The ones we agree to start debating, that is not a limit as to what we are going to do. I want to have a full, complete debate on guns, and we will carry this on just as long as possible.

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