On the recordMay 21, 2018
I thank the gentlewoman for leading us in this Special Order hour on such an important topic. It is safe to say that we are past the point of enough is enough because, apparently, enough is not enough. Every time we face down another mass shooting, we have another moment of silence. The United States has more gun deaths than any other developed nation, and it has far higher levels of gun ownership than any other country in the world. The U.S. has nearly six times the gun homicide rate of Canada, more than seven times that of Sweden, and nearly 16 times that of Germany, according to United Nations data. Mass shootings constituted less than 2 percent of gun deaths in 2013. However, the U.S. makes up less than 5 percent of the world's population, but holds 31 percent of global mass shooters. We can go on and on and on and on and on with statistics. We know what researchers have found. Researchers have found that when there is commonsense gun safety legislation, the number of deaths associated with guns decreases. We know that there was a 2016 review of 130 studies in 10 countries, published by Epidemiologic Reviews, which found that new legal restrictions on owning and purchasing guns tended to be followed by a drop in gun violence, a strong indicator that restricting access to firearms can save lives. Since 2012, there have been 46 moments of silence on the floor of the House of Representatives addressing the tragic deaths in mass shootings. And what have we done?…
