Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, my name is Pete Stauber, and I was a law enforcement officer for 23 years in the great State of Minnesota, the city of Duluth. In December of 1995, at 10:32 p.m., at the intersection of 6th Avenue East and 4th Street in Duluth, Minnesota, a criminal who should not have had a firearm tried to take my life. I was shot in the head, and by the grace of God, I survived. A few years after that, while on duty in a hostage situation, another criminal pulled a gun on me. Face-to-face, I was staring down the barrel of a handgun. The suspect pulled the trigger. The gun malfunctioned, and I was in a fight for my life. When it was all over, by the grace of God, I was alive. The individual was handcuffed. Both those individuals were career criminals. Back to when I was shot in the head, Mr. Chair: I begged the U.S. attorney, along with our police department, to charge the individual with possession of a handgun by a felon. They didn't do it. That individual was allowed to circumvent our community for another 8 years before he was finally put in prison, where he belonged. No more harming other people. Representative Collins' Mass Violence Prevention Act gets the county attorneys and our Federal attorneys present to prosecute these individuals who have no respect for life. I carried a handgun for 23 years, Mr. Chair, as a tool to defend my life or somebody else's life from great bodily harm. I support the individual right of law-abiding citizens, the right to keep and bear arms.…”