John Conyers

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), a former member of the judiciary.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time, and I want to thank all of the Members of this body on both sides of the aisle that have joined in for the substitute, particularly, of course, the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell). What is the question? If we want more criminals to get guns from gun shows, vote against Conyers-Campbell. If we do not want criminals to get guns from gun shows then we will vote for Conyers-Campbell. It is as simple as that.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Wexler), a distinguished member of the committee.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased to yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), who has worked indefatigably, and I thank her.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to yield 30 seconds to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin). (Mr. CARDIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), a member over the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. DeGette), who has worked so hard on this whole subject matter.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Chairman, this has been a trying event with this legislation, but this substitute may be able to provide some solace for those of us who want something to take to the American people. This substitute is the Senate-passed gun safety provisions word for word, which many of us were led to believe at one time that the Speaker and the Chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary supported. I had hoped that in the wake of Littleton that this body could pass modest gun safety measures, but leave it to the Republicans to tarnish the memory of those children by putting forth a bill that creates scores of new loopholes. If the bill that is before this body is passed, not only will we have gutted the bill, the gun show provision, and given criminals a virtual license to buy a gun, but we will have actually weakened current law in several important respects, and here is how: Right now, it is illegal to ship weapons across State lines into someone's home. This has been the law ever since Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy. The bill before us repeals that law. Right now the District of Columbia restricts possession of firearms. This bill allows residents to not only own guns, but carry concealed weapons. Mr. Chairman, we have one last chance to turn this sorry situation around and restore some sanity to the process. A yes vote on the bill offered by myself and my dear friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell), on this substitute will eliminate all of the loopholes and return us word for word to the Senate-passed gun safety provisions. The Conyers/Campbell amendment will shut down the gun show loopholes once and for all. Mr. Chairman, if this amendment fails, I will be forced to vote against final passage of this legislation. The gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy) deserves more than this sorry bill, and the parents of 13 school children killed by guns every day deserve far more from this House. I urge a yes on the substitute, a no on final passage. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am appalled this morning that we would be making more guns available in the wake of Columbine which brought us here to restrict gun availability. I think that this is a not-well-thought-out provision. I can see all kind of shootouts between officers who are from another State being shot by officers who have no idea who these people are that have tried to use a weapon. So for us to think that this provides any added security to a policeman or to the community is, I think, shear nonsense. I am totally disappointed that this conversation could be moving in this kind of direction. The fact of the matter is that this would create more problems, far more problems, than it would ever resolve. We have not had hearings on it. It overrides all the State laws. Besides, any officer from another State need only contact the police jurisdiction to get permission to bring his weapon into the State. That is not too hard for him to do. So much for all of these imaginative hypotheticals about what happens at 2 a.m. and how much more secure you will be from some unknown person carrying a gun. Carrying a gun into a community from out of State I think really begs the question. I hope we will think carefully about the dangers that are being introduced as we violate the gun laws of every single State in the union by trying to bring this poorly-thought- out amendment to the floor at this time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong objection to this amendment, an intrusion into local decision-making.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment in the nature of a substitute approved by the Committee on Rules be modified in the manner which I have caused to be placed at the desk.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell) so that he may yield blocks of time at his own discretion.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, we welcome that. This is not an easy problem. It is a very intractable problem. It is deep within our culture. If we could just single out a couple of people and spank them on the hands or pass a condemnation resolution, I guess my colleagues would feel better about it. But it will not change anything. What I am here for yesterday and last night, today and tonight and tomorrow, is to try to come to closure with the entertainment industry as to what it is precisely we want them to do. And in that regard, I would welcome the comments of the gentlewoman and working together with her and everything else that we can.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, yes, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I am happy to join in this discussion. I had some talk with the maker of this particular amendment and we had not reached much of a conclusion, but now I have. There are several problematical things behind a well-intentioned resolution. First of all, this may be, in the 175 amendments that have been submitted to the Committee on Rules, the only sense of Congress resolution in a huge bill. In other words, all of these other measures that are approved have a lot to do with something very, very specific. We have measures, and have debated them, to create increased protection for communities and holding juveniles more accountable; we have created entire new systems of punishment for juveniles. We have done a lot of things, but we have not done a sense of the Congress resolution against anybody yet except the entertainment industry. Now, it is my view that what the entertainment industry really needs is some specific direction from us as to what it is we want them to do. I will shortly have the results of some hearings held in the Committee on the Judiciary in which we had a number of experts, academic, people in the industry, people who are critics of the industry, and industry spokesmen themselves, which I would like to make my colleagues the beneficiary of in terms of the nature of the kinds of things that we can do. And so a sense of Congress resolution would be great if we were not here dealing with the amendments made in order for the Juvenile Offenders Act of 1999. In other words, this is showdown time. The question is not how we feel about the industry or what we do not like about it, the question is what are we going to do about it. And it is to that idea that a sense of Congress resolution is not what we need. What we need are something like the hundreds of amendments that have come forward out of the dozens of hours of debate on this subject. The next thing that I think we ought to put in to some kind of perspective is that the gentlewoman mentioned that there are people that do not want to condemn the entertainment industry but they do want to condemn the gun industry. Well, that may be so. There are probably people that want to do one thing or the other, but this is not condemnation time. This is showdown time. This is what we do about the problems that we believe to exist. The Committee on the Judiciary has debated and discussed this for many, many hours, and what we want is not a sense of Congress resolution but something quite specific. And so I want to point out that we do have an amendment to create an anti-trust exemption so that we will be able to work industry-wide in any corrective action that we need. We also have other recommendations that I will be reporting back to my colleagues. But for sense of Congress resolutions, I am sorry to say the time has come and gone. We are now in the put up or shut up phase. What is it, assuming that everything you say in the resolution is correct, then what do we do? And that is what the amendments that were granted by the Committee on Rules, the substitute that I will shortly be offering today, all try to do. It is in that sense that I wanted to make clear the reservations that I have about a sense of Congress resolution at this point in time in these proceedings.