Political Quotes

“last week, I delivered my first weekly report to the Senate on the number of homicides by gunshot in New York City. I rise again today to announce that last week, there were 23 such homicides in the city of New York. Mr. President, we are in the midst of a public health epidemic. These often random killings will continue unless we restrict or heavily tax handgun ammunition. Not ammunition used primarily to hunt or for target practice. But rounds used by drug dealers, rounds that emergency room doctors must remove from the bleeding bodies of gunshot victims, rounds that injure, rounds that maim, rounds that kill. Some opponents of ammunition or handgun control assert that ownership of a handgun could very well thwart an attempted burglary, homicide, rape, or assault. This could not be further from the truth. According to New York Newsday, at 11:45 p.m. on Tuesday January 25, 1994, Mr. Ray Simms "was shot twice in the side with his own gun after he shot his landlord during a dispute over heat in his building. * * * Simms died later at Harlem Hospital Center." Killed with his own gun, Mr. President. None of us know why Mr. Simms had purchased this gun. But what a tragic irony indeed if he did buy it for protection. According to the October 7, 1993 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, keeping a firearm in the home is associated with a risk of homicide nearly three times as high. Simms' death, sadly, illustrates this point.”