Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, today the Democrats give new meaning to the term progressive. This is the first time in American history, I believe, that a Chamber of the Congress will pass a bill openly defying the Supreme Court's explicit declaration of the constitutional rights of the American people.

It represents the farthest-ever reach of the Democrats' long-pursued massive resistance doctrine.

In markup I asked if any Democrat disputed that this bill bans guns and magazines in common use. Chairman Nadler candidly responded: ``That's the point of the bill.''

In other words, the essence of the bill is to stop commerce in weapons as alternatively described by the Court in Heller in 2008 as those ``typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.''

Heller explained the origins of the right to keep and bear arms in militia service. Ordinarily, when called for militia service, able- bodied men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.

The Supreme Court further explained we also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and bear and carry arms. In Miller it said, as we have explained, that the sort of weapons protected were those ``in common use at the time.''

This was explained and recapitulated in Bruen just a month ago on June 23, and we see repeatedly that this is being

defied. In fact, 1 week after Bruen, the Supreme Court granted petitions for certiorari, vacated, and remanded one State ban on MSRs and a State ban on magazines in common use to be reconsidered.

This is in defiance of the Supreme Court.

So as others have said--and this is the language that struck me--when this matter was in committee, before it failed under suspension of the rules here, for good reason, this paragraph struck me.

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, ``imminent threat alerts include natural or human-made disasters, extreme weather, active shooters, and other threatening emergencies that are current or emerging.'' So the existing IPAWS system explicitly covers this issue, which again, takes you back to, then, what this debate has materialized as.

The soon-to-retire gentleman from Michigan on the Republican side recited an event in North Carolina where Little League teams withdrew from a tournament because they heard shots. The police in Wilson say that they had no evidence that there was an active shooter involved.

That incident had nothing to do with what we are talking about today, and yet, the gentleman from Michigan offered it in support of this bill.

The gentleman from Illinois or the gentleman who just spoke about the Highland Park shooting in Illinois--by the way, according to the wisdom of the majority and some Republican Senators, we passed support for red flag laws--well, Illinois has a red flag law. That person had been implicated in all circumstances that a red flag law ought to respond to. It didn't work.

We have been doing gun control since 1968. Are you satisfied with the trajectory? Does it salve your conscience to speak in a loud voice about how outraged you are and do something else that has no capacity to solve the problem?

Because you refuse to grapple with the problem. I have said that all along. I am going to continue to say it. It is not the prevalence of guns. It is but for causation, ladies and gentlemen.

We have always had guns in ample supply across this country. Always. But until the 1960s, you never heard of a mass shooting, and they have increased at a rapid rate in recent years. So it is not the guns that have changed.

Let's look at what may have changed. We have changed the culture. Could that be it? Could that be the reason that some reckless idiot in an automobile leaving the area of that Little League tournament was engaged in gun play, firing off a weapon? That never would have happened at an earlier time in this country.

The same political forces that tried to change the culture and succeeded is the side that wants to eliminate gun rights as the answer to a problem they have created.

So we see it over and over and over again. Accountability would require you to point to the success of your actions. You have engaged in--Mr. Massie detailed them--bill after bill after bill after bill, slowly eroding people's gun rights away.

Yet, the problems that you have caused get worse every year. They get worse every year in the cities that you control.

Let's grapple with the problem, and let's stop the alarmism and the stigmatizing and the fearmongering that you believe to substitute for policy. It does not.

Mr. Speaker, in Dobbs earlier this great morning, and in the New York State RPA decision yesterday, the Supreme Court declared something astonishing, which has electrified the country and left radicals seething: The Constitution means what it says.

In New York State RPA, the Court reiterated what Heller decided in 2008. To paraphrase, the decision said: Like we told you the first time, the Second Amendment protects an individual, fundamental right weighed and decided upon by the people at the founding.

But just as most of the courts of appeals flouted Heller by reweighing that right over and over for more than a decade, the Senate again flouts the new decision before the ink is dry.

What is the historical analog from the founding era under which the right to bear arms could be targeted for complete deprivation upon less than complete process rights? Name it. Name the historical analog. That is Congress' burden.

The renewed assault on the Second Amendment is more than sufficient grounds to oppose this bill, but even the constitutionally permissible components repeat the terrible misjudgment that has afflicted this type of legislation for far too long.

I have said before that you are not grappling with the issue: 60 years of targeted destruction of the American culture by the secular and postmodernist left. Foremost in that destruction has been the unrelenting assault on the family.

So what does this ``do something'' bill do?

It displaces families further by building a massive new mental health delivery bureaucracy into public school agencies; it connects Medicaid and CHIP directly to schools for early and periodic screening, diagnostic, and treatment services in schools; and it supports the provision of culturally competent and trauma-informed care in school settings.

Americans who have been watching will hear a familiar refrain in that jargon. It means beyond the reach of parents and the reach of common sense.

Who is it that is delivering this double down on woke to your child at school? Republican Senators.

Moms and dads across the country, if you thought that Washington has heard you loud and clear, you are sorely mistaken.

Washington has yet to recognize that it is the author of the devastation we confront, and Washington is still failing to grapple with the core issue. They are taking another step down the long path we have trod that has transformed America just as they want.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is, at the same time, an attack on constitutional rights and a dangerous, poorly thought out, ill-defined improvisation.

Wringing your hands and doing something instead of the right thing will continue having the same result it has had since the 1960s.

Show that honesty and courage does not reside only in the Supreme Court building across the street. Defeat this bill.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor and congratulate the Providence High School baseball team for winning the North Carolina High School 4A State championship.

Not only did Providence win the championship, but they also dominated the season, compiling a record of 34-0. Never before in North Carolina 4A baseball history has a team gone undefeated.

Along with these extraordinary young men, I congratulate Head Coach Danny Hignight, who told his coaching staff on the night of their big win: ``We . . . went 34-0. That is unreal.''

Well, Coach Hignight, it is my honor to say on the floor of this Chamber that it is real and that I and all of Charlotte, North Carolina, are proud of this amazing school and team.

Congratulations, Providence High Panthers, on an incredible season.

Madam Speaker, I often think it is helpful to think about what Americans must be thinking as they watch debates here on this floor.

In this instance, I am sure that Americans think, as Mr. Massie suggested, and as I just have been thinking and was thinking in our markup: Aren't we already doing this? Aren't there alert systems that go out all the time for times when a child has been abducted, an elderly person has gone missing, all sorts of things?

Sure enough, Federal, State, and local officials already use the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, IPAWS, to alert the public to emergency situations. Government officials use the IPAWS Wireless Emergency Alert, the WEA--a lot of acronyms, sure; it is government--to send emergency alerts to mobile devices and use the Emergency Alert System, EAS, to alert media platforms.

According to FEMA, ``Imminent threat alerts include natural or human- made disasters, extreme weather, active shooters, and other threatening emergencies that are current or emerging.''

So, wait a minute, active shooters are already specifically covered by FEMA under the existing alert system? So, what is going on?

A hint emerged in our committee markup when the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa) offered an amendment to broaden the name of the bill, not just to cover active shooters. The gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline) opposed the amendment--not only opposed it, but he termed Mr. Issa's proposal offensive. Now, we are getting to it.

The gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Dean), who spoke a moment ago, called it gun legislation. An alert system is gun legislation?

It comes down to another messaging opportunity--doesn't it?--the yearning to sensationalize an admittedly awful problem. But I have to say to my fellow Members of the House of Representatives, sensationalizing this problem is not a solution to it.

The examples given by Ms. Dean on the floor today she herself said reflected her desire for radical change, but all of her examples avoided the topic at hand, this alerting system.

How would a redundant emergency alerting system of national scope have impacted the Juneteenth day shooting on 14th Street here in the District of Columbia or the shooting last week, a gang-related shooting in Philly? How would an alerting system have changed that?

Here is what I would say to the Members on the other side: You are still not grappling with the real issue. The Juneteenth shooting did not occur because the existing public alerting systems were inadequate nor because, in fact, guns are available or even prevalent, as they have always been in the United States since its founding.

If you do not address what has changed, your efforts will only grow government and reduce freedom.

Mr. Cicilline just said, well, small police departments don't have the resources to access alerting systems or to learn about best practices. Really? I was in the State legislature in North Carolina. I know what resources we made available.

Madam Speaker, we would never fail to make available--and it is not beyond the resources of any State in this Union--public alerting systems and to consider such issues as whether or not we wish to activate vigilantes who might respond to such an alert.

This makes no sense. You are not grappling with the issue. For that reason, this is not the answer. It should be defeated.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio for yielding.

I have missed most of the debate on the floor. Mr. Jordan just made reference to an item that bowls me over. You wonder after you have been in Washington for a little while whether anything will surprise you. Yes, Madam Speaker, that tweet by the pro-abortion group, Ruth Sent Us, that identified Justice Barrett's church and identified the school that her children attend and encouraged protestors to ``voice your anger'' by demonstrating there, is a new low.

Not just the identification of Justices' home addresses, which I never thought we would see, not just the crowds materializing there, which I never thought we would see, not just the appearance of an assassin at the home of a Justice, which we have never seen, and yet, the response is: What about January 6?

As the gentleman from Ohio made the point, I have never encountered any Republican who declined to condemn the violence and rioting at the Capitol that day. I have never found one. I have never heard one. And yet, I never hear condemnation of such conduct as I have described from Democrats. I might be missing it. I am not hearing it now. I am hearing this, What about January 6?

I condemn the rioting and the violence at the Capitol on January 6.

I condemn the Democrat leader of the Senate standing in front of the Supreme Court to say to two specific Justices that, You have released the whirlwind. You will suffer the result. I don't remember the exact words. And then what I do remember, the phrase that sticks in my mind: ``You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.'' I never hear condemnation for that. I don't know why.

I do think I know why this bill had to be delayed from last week when we were here and could have passed it. That is because you want to protect the leaker. That implies that although this has been pending for a month and a half and the Nation doesn't know who the leaker is, somebody knows who the leaker is; and that is who you want to protect, amazing as that is, unprecedented as that is.

We certainly ought to pass this legislation and protect the Justices of the United States Supreme Court from assassins, assassins responding to the unprecedented advocacy on the left.

Madam Speaker, the Fifth Amendment states: ``Nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.''

It is the paradox of the American experience that so many who swear to

preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, the supreme law enshrining our fundamental rights, are so often predisposed to strip those rights, always with noble motive.

Weeks ago, the Biden Department of Homeland Security formed a Disinformation Governance Board to become the arbiter of right think, even since disbanded. Bad idea.

In 2020, State Governors ordered the healthy to stay out of their churches for fear of the virus. Do you remember?

In 1971, the Department of Justice obtained a TRO, a prior restraint, to abridge freedom of the press by forbidding The New York Times to continue publishing the Pentagon Papers. Lower courts approved that, too.

In February 1942, another progressive Democrat, FDR, issued an executive order to intern U.S. citizens and residents of Japanese descent. It was greatly popular; 60 percent of Americans polled supported sending their fellow American citizens to concentration camps. It was approved not just by lower courts but by the United States Supreme Court in Korematsu, 1944. It took until 2018 for it to be repudiated. Look again at what you justified.

The long-existing Baker Act provides due process. New York had a red flag law and did not detect the Buffalo shooter.

The fierce urgency of now meets the protections of fundamental rights in the United States Constitution, and they must be vindicated.

Madam Speaker, it is repeated over and over again that the Second Amendment is not unlimited, it has limits. No one contends otherwise.

What are the limits? Wouldn't it be nice to hear that in the debate?

The limits as set forth in Heller and McDonald is that it is improper, and you cannot ban weapons that are ``in common use at the time.'' You cannot require that firearms in the home be ``rendered and kept inoperable.''

The Ninth and Fourth Circuits have said that, like other constitutional rights, all of them, the Second Amendment protections apply to 18- to 20-year-olds. The dissenting judge in that opinion in the Fourth Circuit acknowledged that there is ``persuasive evidence of that.''

This bill bans for 18- to 20-year-old adults guns that are in common use. It bans for everyone ammo magazines that are in pervasive use. It requires that weapons be disabled in the home. This one doesn't violate the Constitution, I admit, but it even criminalizes a neighbor who buys a gun for self-protection for a victim of domestic violence.

The Democrats say more is coming. They use the terminology ``weapon of war.'' They intend to ban this class of weapons entirely. You have made it clear in the House Judiciary Committee.

Ms. JACKSON LEE: Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Madam Speaker, I will not yield. She has had a lot of time.

Madam Speaker, you made it clear that you will proceed regardless of what the Second Amendment says. Mr. Jones made it clearer than anyone. If the filibuster obstructs us, we will abolish it. If the Supreme Court objects, we will expand it.

Do something, is the mantra. It is probably worth remembering that that is short for the commonly heard phrase, ``do something, even if it is wrong.'' The last thing we need is something that is wrong. What is needed is an answer. You are not pursuing an answer because, frankly, you are not grappling with the problem.

Could we begin with candor? Are these disasters enough to prompt candor? Could we have some truth? You have been doing gun control since 1968. Has it worked to your satisfaction? The gentlewoman from Pennsylvania said earlier: The country is sick. She has misdiagnosed the problem.

They say it is the guns. Madam Speaker, guns have been prevalent in the United States of America since before our founding. We did not suffer the mass shootings. We did not suffer the chaos in the cities like she described. Why do we have this now?

Chesterton, a British gentleman, came closest, he said: ``The disintegration of rational society started in the drift from the hearth and the family; the solution must be a drift back.'' Everybody knows it is true.

If there is a sickness in the country, it is the product of 60 years of disintegration of American culture by the liberal project: Assaults on the family; hostility to God; cheapening life; pervasive expansion of the welfare state; ridicule for individual and parental responsibility; Soros DAs ending punishment for crime; delegitimizing, defunding, and abolishing police.

Behold your handiwork. Stripping Americans of constitutional rights won't cure what ails us. Not the Second Amendment, not the First Amendment to which you are hostile, not the Fourth Amendment, not the Fifth Amendment. Join us to solve the problems you have caused. We can find answers together.

Mr. Speaker, this bill, or a bill substantially like it, has come up before, and it enjoyed substantial bipartisan support, and now that has changed. Why is that? It is because it has become evident that the majority seeks, for political reasons, to conflate the extraordinarily serious issue of domestic terrorism with half of the country with their political opposition.

It is evident that the administration has pursued a concocted attack on the credibility on the First Amendment activity of parents who were engaging in First Amendment-protected activism in school boards. The administration has engaged in a deceitful refusal to account for that activity, and whistleblower accounts have now revealed that, indeed, FBI agents went to interrogate parents over their activism.

When Members of the majority recite events in every one of their comments today, they are selective and mischaracterized.

They do not mention the Brooklyn subway shooter. They do not mention the Wisconsin fire bombing. They do not mention Waukesha, Wisconsin. They do not mention Boulder, Colorado. Why do they not? Why is it so consistent that those are not mentioned?

It is exactly the same issue in which there is always a focus on a particular type of hate--white supremacy. Let me tell you something. I have no hesitancy to say that the twisted butcher in Buffalo, New York, was a white supremacist. More than that, it is evident that he was mentally ill.

That does not mean that Republicans writ large are domestic terrorists or white supremacists. It is a smear, and it is deliberate. Worst of all, this preoccupation, to the exclusion of all else, that smears the right, smears people center right, as racists, white supremacists, is a device, a demagogic device to distract from abysmal policy disasters led and created by advocacy and policy of Democrats.

The defund police debacle that led to a 30 percent increase in homicides--not as tragic as 10 or 20 killings of people by domestic terrorists on occasions--but 5,000 additional homicides a year. Do you know what? Sixty-five percent of those are suffered by Black Americans. There were 3,250 additional killings in 2020 and more in 2021.

The abandonment of the southern border that has resulted in a flood of fentanyl into the country so that you see mass killings by exposure to drugs laced with fentanyl; poison coming in and killing. The figure of 100,000, they tell me, is not current. It is not even getting at the essence of the problem.

Under those circumstances, and having committed that sort of policy malpractice upon the American people with those abysmal results, Democrats would bring a partisan bill to the floor and conflate the egregious evil of domestic terrorism with some kind of a political smear of your political opposition. What would it take to do that?

This bill should be bipartisan because it is promoted, it is brought, it is worked out with the political opposition. This problem is too significant to be cheapened as a political stunt.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, it is hard to overstate how concerning the problem is that has so invaded our politics. We have seen in so many ways institutional norms be trampled underfoot in this Congress. The metal detectors at the door are one example, but they go on and on and on.

The hearing in the Judiciary Committee today aimed at intimidating the United States Supreme Court while it is in the midst of a particular decision is another one. Concepts about packing the Court, ideas by Democrats to pack the Court by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and they go on and on and on. This one might be the worst.

You wonder what in the world the majority may be thinking to turn the issue of terrorism--any form of terrorism--into a partisan cudgel. It is beyond belief. If this issue returned to a nonpartisan posture, you would find that Republicans would be pleased to join it. It has been grossly distorted and turned into a political weapon that should never happen. It should never happen in this country. It should never happen in this Congress. This bill should be defeated.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.