On the recordJune 15, 2016
I thank Senator Wyden for his question. It is a really important one because the number is certainly shocking for how high it is and how low it is at the same time. Let us take 2015. In 2015, there were 244 individuals who were on the terrorist watch list who attempted to buy weapons, and 223 of those were successful in buying the weapon. So in 90 percent of the occasions in which someone on the terrorist watch list attempted to buy a weapon, they walked out of that store with the weapon. Now, it gives you, A, a sense of the scope of this. There are only 224 people over the course of the whole year who were on the terrorist watch list and who attempted to buy a weapon. But what we know from this weekend is it only takes one with malevolent intentions to create a path of death and destruction that is almost impossible to calculate. It is just impossible for the American public to understand how that number persists--how we allow for 90 percent of the people on that watch list to walk into a store and to successfully buy a weapon. That is the number from 2015--223 out of 244 were successful. I yield to the Senator for a question.
