Date: 2016-07-11
Speaker: MAXINE WATERS (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I take the floor today to continue the discussion that we started in this House about gun violence. Something extraordinary took place here in the House of Representatives. We had Members on this side of the aisle. Democrats. who came to the floor and who sat on the floor in the well of the House. That was extraordinary. No one has ever seen this happen before. Why did this take place? How is it you can get every group in the Democratic Party to basically join in an action that had never taken place before? What am I talking about? I am talking about the Womens Caucus. the Black Caucus. the Progressive Caucus. I am talking about New Democrats. I am talking about all of those in our Democratic Party who do not always agree with each other. We work at it. but we have serious and credible disagreements. However. you did not hear any denouncement from any of our Democrats about what we were doing. Why did we do this. and why did we have basically so much support for what we did? When I say "support." I am not simply talking about Democrats. I am talking about people who left their homes. their businesses. and their workplaces and joined us outside. They even stayed for hours in the rain to say to us: Thank you for finally giving voice to this problem that we have in this country on gun violence. The Members of the Democratic Party and those people who were outside basically said: We are sick and tired of the influence that is exerted by the gun lobby. You have the NRA that owns too many Members of Congress and who can tell them what to do. There are Members who are intimidated by the gun lobby and the NRA. So what they do is they hide behind the Constitution and they will tell you that they are defending their constitutional rights. None of us. in what we sat in about. talked about taking away anybodys guns. What we said was we have got to make sure that guns are not in the hands of people who should not have them. people who have committed crimes. people who have committed murder. people who have shown that perhaps something is wrong with them psychologically or emotionally. We should not make it easy for these people to have guns. What should we do about it? We have two very simple bills. and we begged the Speaker of this House to allow us to take up those bills. to debate those bills. to have them voted up or down. Well. the Speaker wont do it. The Speaker wont do it because. as it has been described. he. too. is a handmaiden of the gun lobby. along with all of the other Members afraid to come and represent and to deal with the tough issues that confront us. What were those bills all about? One is very easy to explain: no fly. no buy. What does that mean? It simply means that if you are on a list that says you cant get on an airplane because you are dangerous. we know something about you that will not allow us to allow you to get on an airplane where you may commit an action that could endanger the lives of everybody on that plane and others even on the ground. no fly. no buy. Why should we sell guns to somebody who we have said are too dangerous to fly on the airplane? That is all we wanted on that bill. was a vote to say: Yeah. that makes good sense. If you cannot fly. you should not be able to buy. What is wrong with that? That is very simple. Why cant they take up that bill? Arent they concerned about who gets on the airplane? Yes. But if you are concerned about who gets on the airplane. you should be concerned about who is able to buy a gun. The other bill is just as clear. just as simple: universal background checks. We need to know who is buying these guns. Somebody will say: Dont we have something about background checks in the law? Ladies and gentlemen. we are not covering what is on the Internet. We are not covering the fact that these gun shows are selling guns out of the back of their cars. They dont know who the people are. They dont care who they are. and they walk away with guns. and they go out and they kill people with them.