we are defending your Second Amendment right. I should mention as
speaker of the house, we expanded concealed carry rights of North
Carolina at levels that people couldn't imagine.
  I am a concealed carry permittee. I have more than one gun, but I am
a responsible gun owner who also finished the concealed carry class and
also hunter safety. And I think we all need to be responsible gun
owners.
  But at the end of the day, you have got to decide whether or not a
kid going into a gun store on their 18th birthday, if that is their day
to buy a gun.
  So let's talk a little bit about what this bill really does versus
what the mercenaries were trying to do to raise money and kill this
bill.
  All we are saying--show of hands, do we have any pages that are 18
years old? OK. Younger or older? Younger, OK.
  So these kids right now, whatever--sorry, these young adults right
now, whatever they are doing, if they have got a committal, a
behavioral health committal, if they assaulted a police officer, shot
at one, got prosecuted for it when they were 16\1/2\ years old or 17
years old, on their 18th birthday, it is like that device in--what was
it--``Men in Black,'' where you erase that. Can you imagine that?
  If you were 18 years old on your birthday and you had been convicted
of a crime or had a serious legal entanglement, when you go to the NICS
system, it was as if you were a day old. Does anybody think that really
makes sense, that the crime you committed a couple of months, let's say
a month, 60 days, 90 days earlier, would have not been relevant? That
is absurd.
  Of course if you are under 21, we need to have some insight into what
your life looked like when you were 16 or 17 years old. That is what
the enhanced background check was, and yet some of these gun advocacy
organizations thought that was horrible. It was going to lead to a mass
confiscation of guns. It was a backdoor, I think. It was a backdoor
into just taking all of our guns away.
  It was going to devastate the Second Amendment protections of our
Constitution. I heard them all saying it, saying some of it. Let me
tell you what actually happened. All we did was say: If you are under
21, we are going to try and find out as much as we need to know about
you for your safety and for the safety of your community.
  So all we did was say: We are going to go to local law enforcement.
We are going to try and get information out there and encourage States
to provide the information to our national center for clearing gun
purchases in West Virginia sooner so that those who do not have a bad
record can get their gun purchased sooner so that we can in a matter of
3 to 10 days get this done.
  All the people that were opposed to this bill said that we were not
going to get any approvals done, that even the good law-abiding over
21s were going to get swept into this somehow.
  Well, let me tell you what has happened since June of this year. The
NICS system is doing just fine. About 4,000 people who were going to be
denied based on the law have been denied.
  So look at these numbers again. Talking about mass confiscation, how
disruptive this was, how nobody was going to be able to get guns,
right? That is what all the people said: Send money, we are defending
your Second Amendment right here in Washington.
  Almost 551,000 transactions for purchasing guns have been processed
as of June of this year. About 3,800 of them were denied for reasons
that existed before we ever passed this law. What we have done though
is found some 1,630 young people that that was not their day to buy a
gun.
  That was--I could go through a long list. I could talk about people
being convicted of assaulting a police officer. I could talk about
people who had a long gun after they had been convicted of a crime in
their car. I could talk about people who accidentally in North Carolina
shot their girlfriend a year before and all of a sudden--at 17 and
wanted to get a gun.
  Does anybody in their right mind think that is a good day for that
kid to get a gun?
  I am not talking about a 38-year-old person going in. I am talking
about an 18-year-old. I am talking about a 19-year-old. I am talking
about a 20-year-old. All we did was say: Guys, let's make sure that
this is a safe decision for the child and for the community. That is
what this bill did, and that is why this bill has withstood the test of
time and not a single--not one scintilla--and I would defy anybody who
was against this bill to find one of the things that they predicted and
guaranteed would happen have actually occurred.
  What has happened is we may have saved 1,600 people who may have been
buying that gun to hurt themselves, maybe to hurt their community--
maybe not. But what we know is that day was not the day that we should
allow them to leave that gun store with a weapon for their safety and
the safety of the community.
  This is Congress at its best. It is looking at the people that you
generally support--and Senator Cornyn was first among them--and the gun
rights community and saying: Guys, I can't take the top-line arguments
against this because you all know it is not really true. It is this
black-and-white world that we live in here, and it requires the very
seldom impactful language like, and legislation like, the Communities
Act ever get done because people get afraid of the noise and they back
into their corners.
  And I want to give Senator Cornyn an enormous amount of credit for
stepping up and doing what he did to make Texas safer, make the country
safer, and make these people and their loved ones and their neighbors
in the community safer.
  The last thing I will leave you with is, to the States that do have
red flag laws--including, I believe, the State of the Presiding
Officer--let's get those red flag laws consistent with due process and
show respect to gun owners because I am not aware of any red flag law,
even in red States, that come close to the sorts of protections that we
also put into this bill.
  So let's give them an incentive to get it right. Let's make sure that
every law-abiding citizen who wants to have a gun can--like me and like
Senator Cornyn and like so many other people--but let's be smart about
it.
  And let's make sure that we continue this trend of being sure that
when a person applies for a weapon, that they can safely own it, they
are going to be safe for themselves and their community, and stop this
nonsense of fearing any sort of positive change because of political
repercussions.
  This bill is one of the best bills that I had the privilege to work
on. And the thing that is amazing about this bill is, it went from
concept to implementation in fewer than 6 weeks. That is what happens
when Congress gets together, they set aside their partisan differences,
they refuse to listen to the false information trying to kill a bill,
and they do something good for their State and their country. That is
exactly--on this anniversary of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act--
what we accomplished.
  I want to thank Senator Cornyn for his partnership. It was not an
easy bill. It was a lot of work, but we got it done. I thank Senator
Murphy, and I should have mentioned Senator Gillibrand--or not
Gillibrand--wrong Kirsten--Senator Sinema for working together.
  I mean, we had people across the political spectrum, folks. Chris
Murphy, whom I consider a friend and colleague, about as liberal as
anybody in this Chamber--and I think he would admit that. And we have
got John Cornyn, who is one of the most conservative. And then you have
got me and Sinema probably somewhere in the middle.
  We got together, and we got this done. And there are more people
safe, and I believe there are people alive today that may not have been
if this bill hadn't passed.
  So, Senator Cornyn, I appreciate the work that you did on this bill.
I believe we have got something that we should be proud of. And I also
believe, Senator Cornyn, that the straw purchases, the gun trafficking,
all the other things that we didn't spend a lot of time on--we can come
down here and do a colloquy and talk about more and more of the
positive aspects of this bill. And I appreciate your leadership in
moving it.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I just wanted to say there is one thing
that Senator Tillis said that I disagree with, and that is that he said
he is not a statesman. He is. And it took a lot of