On the recordFebruary 28, 2019
I thank the chairman and Mr. Clyburn, who, for years, has been working on this issue. Madam Chair, H.R. 1112, the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2019, is long in coming. It responds to many people, but it responds to Dylann Roof. In 2015, he went to a gun store to get a gun. He was not the normal purchaser, and it did not approve in 90 seconds, as most of them do. But in a day or two, when it had not yet been approved, Dylann Roof was able to get a gun. And Dylann Roof's whole message was: I am going to start a race war by going into an unlocked church on a prayer night and kill nine worshippers praying to their God and their pastor--whose wife was here today. The question has to be: When are we going to stop the senseless killings and the eons and eons of mass shootings? My good friend from Georgia (Mr. Collins) is a man of faith. I was in the committee room as a senior member on the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations as we were trying to deliberate his concern, a very vital concern, one that I have, to love people with disabilities, to love them and treat them with dignity. The language in this legislation does that as best we could at the time, because it puts the language adjudicated, determined by some objective body, that you have a health problem that deals with a mental concern. The question has to be, if it is not workable, you pass the bill.…
