Political Quotes

“right now, in a small town in West Virginia 90 miles outside of our Nation's capital, dedicated employees of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) are diligently searching through millions of firearms sales records at the National Tracing Center. They are busily responding to urgent requests from detectives and agents to trace firearms found at crime scenes throughout the country. By the end of the day, they will likely have completed more than 1,000 requests, providing law enforcement with information that can lead to arrests, prosecutions, and ultimately justice for victims of violent crime. The tracing center plays a critical and unique role in keeping our communities safe. It is the only crime gun tracing facility in the country. Its sole purpose is to help track down and hold criminals accountable. One would expect Congress to fully and unequivocally support this mission. Yet, inexplicably, Congress has done the opposite. Relenting to pressure from the gun lobby, Congress placed archaic hurdles on crime gun traces, prohibiting the ATF from digitizing or electronically searching through firearms records. These restrictions were born out of an unfounded fear that can only be described as a conspiracy theory: that allowing records to be electronically searched would lead to firearms--presumably to include my own--being seized by the government en masse, in clear violation of both the Second and Fourth Amendments.…”