if you have 76,000 people fail a background check and only 13 people plead guilty, I am not so sure we are sending the right signal to our citizens at large that we are really serious about you trying to get a gun illegally.

Well, we will never know what he was up to because it ended in a way where the family was safe, and we all agree that no one who is mentally unstable or criminal should have one bullet with any gun.

And I would just end this by saying that Vice President Biden has made the case--and I think he is very sincere--to his wife that if you live in a wooded area, you have got a double-barrel shotgun, to ward off the bad guys go outside and…

I could not agree with you more, but the reason we have hearings like this is to try to paint the picture for America of the problem we are trying to solve.

I would suggest that in some situations six bullets is not enough for a person defending their family and one bullet in the hands of the wrong person is way too many, and that is what we are trying to accommodate here.

But being civil and being firm in your convictions are not inconsistent, are they?

Almost 80,000 people fail a background check and 44 people are prosecuted. What kind of deterrent is that? I mean, the law obviously is not seeing that as important -- if it is such an important issue why aren't we prosecuting people who…

I think the argument would be that it is in common use.

This is an editorial about the nomination of Senator Hagel to be Secretary of Defense. The Washington Post said: Mr. Hagel's stated positions of critical issues ranging from defense spending to Iran fall well to the left of those proposed…

We reported Senator Hagel's nomination out at 5 o'clock. I would argue that the hearing was interesting, I think at times unnerving. Here it is Thursday. So there are some questions being asked by our colleagues that I think are…

I thank the Presiding Officer. While they were killing our soldiers in Iraq. He refused to sign a letter to President George W. Bush, he said, to engage in direct unconditional comprehensive talks with the Government of Iran. He was for…

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an opinion piece by the editorial board for the Washington Post dated December 18, 2012. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows…

I have 5 minutes. Would the Presiding Officer let me know when 4 minutes has elapsed. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.

Sequestration undercuts all the gains we have made in terms of securing our border.

I just don't see how you fix our education and immigration system if we are going to cut the budgets like this.

I think we have used every adjective known to man to say this is dumb.

I wish we had more native-born Americans getting into the hard sciences, but we need to welcome people from throughout the world to come here and get an education.

But if I have to make that choice, I am going to pick DOD. And I hope I don't ever have to make that choice.

We should make it easier for them to stay and be part of our country; you agree with that?

I think it would be very wise for us to follow your lead as Members of the United States Senate, that if we can't figure this out with the President, that all of us ought to follow your model.

Obama of putting his own reelection ahead of the interests of working Americans and our national security.

I think we can all agree that border security has to be part of a comprehensive plan.

I just do not see how you could ever solve this problem if you do not deal with the magnet, which is jobs.

the payoffs for the Nation are enormous, we improve our national security, we improve our economy, and we deal with real people who have real problems, and we are trying to give them a second chance on our terms, and some of the people we…

I think the country is tired of talking about it. I think it is time for us to fix it with the goal in mind that there will be no third wave of illegal immigration.