Bob Barr: “Let us step back from the shouting and the dire predictions for just a moment, Mr. Speaker, and focus on the facts, as…”

“Let us step back from the shouting and the dire predictions for just a moment, Mr. Speaker, and focus on the facts, as we have been trying to do. The record of this administration is not one that withstands scrutiny on gun prosecutions. Now, one might think if one asked the average citizen in America every time the President comes out and talks about so many hundreds of thousands of people who have been prohibited from purchasing or acquiring a firearm because of the Brady background check that if we were to ask that average citizen how many of those cases do they think the administration might have prosecuted, I doubt that there are many, outside of those of us on the Committee on the Judiciary who have inquired of the administration the answer to those particular questions, who would know that in 1996 there were zero, in 1997 there were zero, and in 1998 that shot up to one prosecution for under the Brady instant background check. If this administration were serious about enforcing existing laws, those statistics, in light of the President's annual trumpeting of how many hundreds of thousands of people not authorized to possess firearms were stopped because of Brady, they would be far different.”