Patricia Schroeder: “I am here today, first of all, to say that over the weekend I was very pleased to hear the Speaker say he had no problem…”

“I am here today, first of all, to say that over the weekend I was very pleased to hear the Speaker say he had no problem with reporting to the floor the bill that I have been pushing for a very long time. That is a bill that takes the Brady bill and says, if you are also found guilty of domestic violence abuse, you should be denied the purchase of a gun. I think all of us understand how terribly critical that is. This bill passed unanimously in the other body, the Senate. Unanimously. Not one vote against it. The President has promised he would sign this bill if we could get it to him. He restated that promise on the train as he was coming to the convention. So, I would hope that this body would at least get that bill up there, now that the speaker has said he had no problem with it. He is the last remaining roadblock in getting that forward. So I hope everybody joins me in sending a letter or speaking to the Speaker and getting it here before we go home. If you know the history of violence in the home, there is a tremendous number of incidents every single year where a weapon brings this to a terrible conclusion. Furthermore, the taxpayer funds most of the damage done by those weapons because people end up in the emergency wards in America. Very often 80 percent of those costs are funded by the taxpayer.”