Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that today we are considering H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019. We have promised the American people that Congress would take steps to reduce gun violence, and this bill is a critical first step toward doing so. During the past 4 weeks, as the Judiciary Committee, and now the full House, have discussed the issue of gun violence, I have cited grim statistics. Nearly 40,000 Americans lost their lives because of guns in 2017. In fact, every day in America, on average, 34 people are murdered with a firearm, and more than 183 people are injured in an attack. Gun violence of this magnitude is a distinctly American problem. A country-to-country comparison is shocking. For example, in 2011, the United Kingdom had 146 deaths due to gun violence; Denmark, 71; Portugal, 142; and Japan, just 30. The United States, that year, about 35,000. A recent study in the American Journal of Medicine found that, compared to 22 other high-income countries, the gun-related murder rate in the United States is 25 times higher. Even when you adjust for population differences, Americans are disproportionately killed by gun violence. Almost 25 years to the day after the Brady Act was first implemented, expanding our current background check requirement to cover virtually all gun transfers is one of the steps we must take to address this crisis.…”