Amo Houghton

Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing a bill to provide for an income tax

credit relating to the purchase of a gun safe. Experts agree that firearms should be stored unloaded and locked up, with ammunition stored separately. This bill, if enacted, would help protect our children and others due to accidents, suicides, and other acts, all connected with unguarded guns.

The non-refundable credit would amount to 25 percent of the total costs of purchasing, shipping, and installing a gun safe in a taxpayer's residence. The maximum credit would be limited to 25 percent of the total costs up to $1,000, or a total credit of $250.

Over 22 million children in the U.S. live in homes with at least one firearm. A study by the prestigious Rand Corporation found that fewer than 50 percent of American families with firearms stored their firearms safely--unloaded, locked and away from the ammunition. Storing firearms unloaded in a well constructed gun safe with a keyed combination or electronic lock is the most secure method for preventing unauthorized access by children, adolescents and criminals to firearms in a home.

The FBI estimates there are more than 341,000 incidents of firearm theft from private citizens annually. Nearly one-third of these firearms will be used in the commission of another crime. Increasing the use of gun safes with keyed, combination or electronic locks would decrease the number of firearms stolen from homes and used by criminals to intimidate, harm and kill their victims.

There is nothing mandatory about this legislation. The decision to purchase a gun safe remains a personal decision as does a person's decision to take advantage of the tax credit. The legislation is designed to encourage a voluntary act and does not in any way intrude into the American home. I ask your support for this legislation, which would help protect families, especially the children, from untimely deaths due to unguarded guns.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) for the time.

I have got to approach this issue from the standpoint of somebody who was in business for 35 years. This is a bill whose time has come. International commerce is always a balancing act, a balancing act between expanding markets overseas and protecting our job base. We did not ask for this fight. Europe did, and a man called Pascal Lamy forced it.

The concept in our tax situation, whether it was DSC or FSC or whatever, my colleagues want to call it, ETI, was to neutralize the differences in the tax system, the regional value-added tax versus our income tax, and it was accepted. We did a good job, and we flourished under this.

Then there were grumbles, and then, all of a sudden, Europe came back and challenged our position. We should have challenged theirs, but we did not, but then we tried to make an accommodation with the World Trade Organization, not once, not twice, but three times. It did not work.

So this is the only way it seems to me that we can accommodate the European community. It is a good bill. It is not perfect. It does not shift jobs abroad. It allows American companies to produce abroad as it allows people abroad to produce here in this country, but basically, it firms up our economy, and that means it firms up our job base.

I think it is something we ought to encourage, we ought to support, and we ought to defeat the motion to instruct.

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to support this bill. I do not believe it is right. I think court-stripping is wrong. I do not think it is sound; and frankly, I do not think it is going to work. How are we going to resolve the issue between States?

I used to be in business, and Congress could have passed a law in the 1950s when the civil rights issue was heating up that would have prohibited any challenges to the segregated businesses that existed all around me. There never would have been a civil rights law, never would have been a Brown v. Board of Education.

I voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. It defines marriage for a Federal purpose as a legal union between one man and one woman, and that is good enough for me.