Orrin Hatch: “I thank Senator Domenici, chairman of the Budget Committee, for his outstanding leadership on the budget resolution. Mr.…”

“I thank Senator Domenici, chairman of the Budget Committee, for his outstanding leadership on the budget resolution. Mr. President, I feel compelled to make some short remarks today because the topic has strayed away from the budget and focused once again on gun control. This topic--and many misleading statements about it--are paraded out year after year when the Senate considers the budget resolution. This year, I hope we can see through the rhetoric and focus on what objective observers already know to be true: The statistics prove that the Clinton administration has failed to enforce federal gun laws. For example: Between 1992 and 1998, so-called Triggerlock prosecutions-- prosecutions of defendants who use a firearm in the commission of a felony--dropped nearly 50 percent, from 7,045 to approximately 3,800. Despite over 6,000 incidents of children carrying guns into public schools last year, the Clinton Justice Department prosecuted only eight cases under the federal law against possessing firearms on school grounds in 1998, and only five such cases in 1997. It is a federal law to transfer a firearm to a juvenile, yet the Clinton Justice Department prosecuted only six cases in 1998, and only five in 1997. Similarly, for all its talk about the dangers of semiautomatic assault weapons, the Clinton Justice Department has an equally abysmal record for prosecuting cases under the current laws governing those weapons.”