Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the Army has a surplus of pistols. The M-1911 A-1, a .45-caliber pistol--the Armed Forces standard issue sidearm for more than 50 years--was replaced in the 1980s by a newer model. Since then the Army has accumulated stores of surplus M-1911 pistols which are housed at taxpayer expense in Alabama. There is no national security reason to keep these pistols. The Army stopped issuing them 30 years ago, yet the Army has been prevented from disposing of them due to parochial interests tied to the Civilian Marksmanship Program, or CMP. The CMP's proponents basically want to transfer the pistols to a private corporation so that it can sell them. Do we want this to happen? We have the opportunity in this year's NDAA to stop this transfer of tens of thousands of M-1911 A-1 pistols which constitutes a multimillion-dollar government giveaway. It is also important to note that this would make our streets more dangerous at a time when gun violence is all too common. The CMP was established in 1903--just to put this in historical context--following the Spanish-American War when American militiamen demonstrated distressingly poor marksmanship. At that time, our Nation needed a better trained and organized militia, and the CMP helped the government build a broader base of able citizen-soldiers. Now, the program was an important component of our national defense back then. But today, Mr.…”