Political Quotes

“First of all, in response to my friend from Wyoming, the number of arrests and prosecutions are up significantly since 1992. They are obviously not adequate enough, but if we had more BATF enforcement officers, that would help that situation. Certainly public safety officers are not endangered when they can obtain guns, when they are licensed, when they are trained. And I would think many of them would like to have a child safety lock on their gun when it is at home and their kids might have access to it. But, Mr. Chairman, I want to try to paraphrase from Dante's Inferno. He talks about the fact that the lowest level and the depths of hell is reserved for those who, knowing the difference between good and evil, choose not to become involved, thereby letting evil prevail. In fact, Rabbi Saperstein, in his letter to all of us, urging rejection of the Hostettler amendment, quotes Leviticus and Jewish tradition that we should not sit idly by the blood of our neighbors. How can we not get involved when more than a dozen kids a day are dying of firearms. Maybe we do not believe that. Maybe we do not care, because most of those deaths are in urban minority low-income communities. When it happens in a white suburban middle-class community we read about it at least. Or maybe we do not even read about it; maybe we do not care about it. But the fact is we ought to do something about it. It is wrong. These children are losing their lives because guns are all over the place.…”