On the recordJune 15, 2016
I would be pleased to yield to other colleagues for their questions, but let me just ask the Senator one more quick question. Again, somebody unfamiliar with this topic might be wondering. Convicted felons under law are barred from buying firearms. So someone who has been to prison, paid the price, done probation, been out of our prisons for years and years, and done nothing to repeat that criminal episode--whatever it was--is still barred from buying a gun. Yet someone who is deemed dangerous enough to be on a watch list or a no- fly list--the consolidated list that the Senator from Connecticut referred to earlier--is free to walk into any gun store or any gun show and, in 7 minutes--a reporter of the Philadelphia Inquirer, I believe, was able to do it in 7 minutes--simply present the money and walk out with an AR-15 automatic weapon, a firearm designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible, designed for combat and largely manufactured and used around the world to kill people--not predominantly for hunting or recreation. It is designed to kill people. Isn't there an irony to this kind of an inconsistency? Irony is probably a euphemism. Or isn't that an outrage that the terrorist watch list people can buy an AR-15--no questions asked--in 7 minutes or less or slightly more?…
