Political Quotes

“I say to Senator Heinrich, it is hard to understand why we wouldn't do that, especially when, as you noted, people on that list go in and buy a gun and they are almost universally successful in walking away with that weapon. It doesn't happen very often; let's be realistic about what the numbers are. I think I read them earlier and from 2004 to 2014 there were 2,233 instances where suspected terrorists attempted to purchase a gun. And as my colleague mentioned, in 91 percent of those instances they were successful. So we are only talking about 200 or so instances a year. Now, of course, those are the only ones we know about because those are the ones that actually went through a background check. We don't actually know about all those people on the no-fly list who tried to buy a weapon successfully online or at a gun show. We know about these that rated about 200 a year. The reality is that terrorists today who are trying to perpetrate attacks on American citizens have lately not been using a bomb or an explosive device to carry out that attack. They have been using weapons--in the latest attack, an assault weapon. So we should just wake up to the weapon of choice of terrorist attackers and adopt this commonsense measure. I yield for a question.”