Frank Lautenberg

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I thank the Senator from Vermont. What we see here--and I apologize if we have exhausted the patience of the Senator from Utah, but we have been in this situation before where patience runs out. I heard the Senator from Utah, who is one of the most concerned people about children and family that I know. But he said: This isn't about guns; it is not all guns. I agree. It is about life. It is about saving people's lives. But we do not focus on that. The argument against the Lautenberg amendment, as originally presented, was: It is bureaucratic and we ought to do more law enforcement. If we are going to do more law enforcement, I assume that means bigger government, I assume that means spending more money for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms personnel. Unfortunately, what we see is this persistent backpedaling, trying to make it up. Aha, the public caught us. They caught us with a mistake, with another error that protects those who want to avoid having background checks, so we had better fix it. They worked like the devil to keep people from voting for the original Lautenberg amendment, which said: Close all the loopholes in the gun shows that permit people to buy guns without background checks. I refer, just for 1 more minute, to the poll which says 87 percent of the people in the country say that all people who buy guns at the gun shows should have background checks. Sixty percent of Americans blame the tragedy in Littleton in significant measure on the availability of guns. That is what we are talking about. As mistakes were made in the presentation on the other side, nevertheless, before I leave the subject, six Republicans voted on the Lautenberg amendment positively, but now we see the errors creep in. First, the statement was made that only 2 percent of the guns bought at gun shows were bought without background checks. Then there was a realization. The distinguished Senator from Idaho said, no, he was wrong. It was 40 percent. It is close--2 percent, 40 percent. How many guns is that? It is a lot when there are 4,000 gun shows a year. Then we had another presentation yesterday that said we are closing the loopholes. Well, we have attempted to close one of the loopholes, but every time they get caught with an error or a decision not to close another loophole, they come back again, because it gets exposed on television. It gets exposed in the newspapers. Last night, there was a program on ABC called ``Extra,'' and they showed a film, a camera secreted in a hidden spot, of a 15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy buying guns. He said, I am 17; she said, I am 15. They were able to buy those guns. Why can't we shut it down once and for all? I have a letter here. The Senator from Utah said there was no response from the administration. It is addressed to Senator Lott. It was sent by Secretary Rubin and Attorney General Reno. It says: This amendment would seriously impede the effectiveness of the national instant criminal background check system. It would reduce from 3 business days to just 24 hours the period of time that law enforcement has to ensure that firearms sold at gun shows are not being sold to felons and other prohibited persons. There is flaw after flaw, and the Senator from Utah said that is why we are here; we are fixing them. We will never fix it that way. Anyone who knows Senate procedure knows that you fix the flaws in the committee or you fix the flaws in a private discussion on the floor. You don't suddenly throw up an amendment and say, I ask unanimous consent to modify my amendment. If you are caught with your hand in the cookie jar, then, by goodness, step back and say, OK, let's find out what we did wrong. Let's find out if we can agree on closing all the loopholes. This may be an exhausting procedure, but it is more exhausting for those people who are threatened by the casual presence of guns all over. We don't need to add to that quantity by not requiring background checks. We close one loophole, but there are others. There is the pawnshop loophole. There is the one that says all records have to be destroyed after 24 hours. What kind of a database do we have that we can refer to?

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I ask unanimous consent to be permitted to do that.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, this is a fairly complicated change, as I see it, from the original Lautenberg amendment. But certainly it has to be considered, in all due respect to the Senator from Utah. I know how hard he worked and how serious he is about it. We have great respect and friendship. But I wonder, because we are not able to reach an immediate time agreement, whether or not we could put it aside so that we can discuss our differences and see if we can come any closer together to try to resolve it. I, too, like everyone else, wish to see this bill moved, but I think we have not had enough time to really debate it.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. One more minute, yes.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I am managing the time on our side. I yield myself such time as remains for my response to what we have heard. Mr. President, I listened very carefully to the speeches. If I may say, the rhetoric that was used here--decrying the Federal Government's efforts to curb crime, incriminating crime fighting within the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, and saying that we are not doing our job--it is outrageous to listen to, I must tell you, because these things are concoctions. There are few people who I have more respect for in this place than the distinguished Senator from Utah, but that does not mean that I do not think he is wrong in some of the things he has just said. I am responding with admiration and respect. When we look at the ATF investigations, I hold here the report that is ``Gun Shows,'' issued January 1999, by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury. It says: Together ATF investigations paint a disturbing picture of gun shows as a venue for criminal activity and a source of firearms used in crimes. Felons, although prohibited from acquiring firearms, have been able to purchase firearms at gun shows. In fact, felons buying or selling firearms were involved in more than 46 percent of the investigations involving gun shows. Firearms involved in the 314 reviewed investigations numbered more than 54,000. A large number of these firearms were sold or purchased at gun shows. What I hear here is concern about protecting average citizens from inconvenience. What a terrible thing. Why should they have this big brother looking over their shoulder? Why should we have speed limits? Why should we have laws against drugs? Why should we have laws against alcohol? Because this is a nation of laws. That is what we are about. That is what makes this society so distinctive. Instead, I haven't heard the pleas for the parents of those kids who have been killed by guns purchased, wherever they are. I haven't heard that. What I have heard is a nagging little complaint about, oh, what a pity, the infringement of the person who wants to go buy a gun who needs it in a hurry, sticks it in his pocket, walks out of the place without identifying himself. Yes, the Hatch-Craig amendment does close some of the avenues for gun purchase, but it does not close them all, because if you are a special licensed purveyor, you don't have to do any checking at all. That is what the amendment says. Perhaps it is careless, perhaps it is deliberate, but it does not protect against that. Then I hear a challenge to the President and his complaints about gun shows. He doesn't say that. He talks about gun shows with a degree of respect, but he says there are problems that have developed as a result of excesses available through gun shows. I think we have to look at what is happening. Federal gun prosecutions: Overall violent and property crimes are down more than 20 percent each; the murder rate is down 28 percent, the lowest level in 30 years; homicides, robberies, and aggravated assaults committed with guns are down by an average of 27 percent. And yet, when we go ahead and talk about what we have to do to protect our citizens, we hear, get more enforcement out there, get more of a bureaucracy. But when it comes to providing the money for ATF agents and Federal prosecutors, we have a heck of a time trying to get it. Despite the rhetoric, the NRA has never supported backing its tough talk with real money for State, local, and Federal law enforcement agencies to investigate, arrest, and prosecute gun criminals. Well, the reason for the decline in prosecutions is that we work more now with State and local agencies than we ever did before. Overall, the rate of convictions and incarcerations has grown pretty steadily. We are looking at what I will call straw men, reasons to find ways of not inconveniencing the gun buyer. Heaven forbid the gun buyer should have to obey the same laws that other people have to when they want to buy an automobile or buy liquor or what have you. There are regulations, and so it should be. That doesn't take away anybody's right to buy a drink or buy a car. You just have to fess up to it. If you want to buy a gun, in my view, you have to be able to say: This is my name; this is where I live; this is what I want to do. If the audience was not obscured through a television camera or not away from the folks in front of you but, rather, were the parents and the families of the kids in Littleton, they would find that Americans blame the Littleton incident in significant measure on the availability of guns. They do not say there is too little prosecution. They don't say that the gun laws are cumbersome. What they say is there are too darned many guns in our society. How much are each to blame for Littleton? Percentage responding, a great deal: availability of guns, 60 percent; parents, 51 percent; nearly all Americans support many gun control measures, particularly those aimed at kids; require background checks on explosives and gun show buyers, national poll, 87 percent. In here we have 51 percent who went the other way just yesterday and today want to, in my view, set up a smokescreen, pretend we closed all the loopholes. There is nothing malicious in it. They just happen to be wrong in the approach, because if they looked at their own amendment they would see there are loopholes--whether they are requiring Federal agencies to get rid of records so they are not kept for too long a time, leaving the pawnshop opening that we just heard about for someone who is away. I just spoke to the Senator from Idaho. I said: What would happen if the claimant, to retrieve a gun that is in a pawnshop, comes back 4 months later? Are they required to say anything about where they have been during this period? No. No, there is no requirement. The Senator from Idaho said there is no requirement. The guy could have been in jail for 90 days. But the fact is that he has come back. He has paid his interest. He has paid his $50 to retrieve his gun. Give him his gun back. Don't ask any questions. I ask you, is that bordering on the absurd? I think so. We, again, hear these lame arguments about why we couldn't adopt the Lautenberg amendment as it was originally. And today, shame has filled this place, embarrassment has filled this place, because calls have come in and newspapers have editorialized and said what is the matter with the Senate--87 percent of the people out there think that gun shows are a source of too many weapons. But not here. Here we worry about not the victim, not the parent, not the brother, the sister, or the child. No, we worry about the inconvenience or the big bureaucracy that may be created to make it inconvenient or slow down the pace of gun acquisition. Are there too few guns in this society? I ask anybody, too few guns? I doubt it. Something like over 200 million guns, that is enough to go around pretty well. They blame our culture. We heard a story the other day from the Senator from Michigan who said that in Windsor, Canada, just across the river, they see the same television, are exposed to the same cultural elements, prefer the same music, everything else, yet they have so far fewer crimes with guns--about 30 or 40 times more in Detroit than they have in Windsor. It has to do with the availability of guns, nothing more and nothing less. We ought to face up to it and not find different excuses for why it is that the gun wasn't involved. It is not the gun's fault, no; it is the trigger person's fault. But that trigger person would have had a heck of a time knifing the 13 or 15 people in the Columbine High School in the situation they were in. It was easy, however, with their weapons, with their explosives. It is time to face up to it. I wish we would pay the same attention to the victims: 35,000 victims in a year of handgun death, 13,000 of murder, in rough numbers, 18,000 of suicides, 3,000 of accidents. When you compare us to the other societies with whom we associate and work, there is just no comparison. We are looking at societies that have less than 100 deaths a year from guns--the UK, Japan, and others. It just doesn't happen there. Why? These are similar people with the same kinds of problems we have. They have mixed societies and they have problems adjusting to conditions. But they don't have the guns laying around in every nook and cranny. So I hope that the American people will watch what happens here and see who voted against the Lautenberg amendment yesterday because there are a couple loopholes that have been covered and yet many opened. I hope when we vote tomorrow, the public will be watching because the answers will have to be given to them.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I thank the Senator from Vermont. Mr. President, just to put some order to the debate, to confirm that there is an hour available on each side, I ask what happens in the event of a quorum call in the debate?

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I would be happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. LAUTENBERG. It is.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Is it a gun-related issue?

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Let's divide it equally.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Thank you. Because what happened is we had an extensive delivery by the distinguished Senator from Idaho. And if we are now going to divide up the time, it is a little out of balance. So I say this to the Senator from Utah, that if we agree to give up 10 minutes now, and reserve, perhaps, 15 for our side, just to get a little bit of balance in here, and we are going to continue the debate----

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, the Chamber is not in order. I was unable to hear the request. I would like to hear it before it is agreed to.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. If you eat crow, you have to do it when it is warm.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I do think we need some time on this side to respond, but I do not want to close down the debate, very honestly, because we have patiently, or impatiently, listened to a fairly extensive debate.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to my colleague from New York.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I heard the distinguished Senator from Utah say that the loopholes have been closed in what was initially the Lautenberg amendment request to close the loopholes and now the redesign of the Craig-Hatch response. It says that they closed the loopholes, that they have taken care of the problem. I submit the problems are not taken care of. Maybe it is viewed by those who would like to just get this out of the way that the problems have been dealt with. What were the problems initially? Mr. President, the problem was simply around whether or not there were loopholes through which lots of determinations would be made as to who is the purchaser of a gun. The Senator from Idaho has said his revised amendment is going to close the gun show loophole. But it won't. And I think what we are seeing this evening is a response to what happened yesterday after the public had the chance to see the result of the vote count. It was 51 to 47 against closing the loopholes that derive from gun shows. We had a strong debate. There were six Republicans who joined in with all but two Democrats to say close the loopholes. We don't want people to be able to buy guns. We don't want people to be able to be induced by a so-called dealer at a gun show. Over 4,000 gun shows a year are held, by the way. We don't want a dealer selling guns, someone selling guns who doesn't ask for your name, doesn't have to ask for your name, doesn't have to ask for your address, doesn't have to talk about anything that identifies this buyer. We are talking about buyers anonymous. That is what we are talking about--gun buyers anonymous. That is a pretty horrible specter to contemplate--gun buyers anonymous. Mr. President, I want to make sure everyone understands what is happening here. Yesterday, we had a vote that was defeated on an amendment that I wrote, a vote of 51-47. The 47 votes included all but two Democrats and did include six Republicans. The fact of the matter is, when all was said and done, not enough was done because we lost the opportunity to close a loophole that applies especially to gun shows. Let me take a moment to describe what a gun show is for those who don't know. It is fairly popular across this country. The President, in an address he made a couple of weeks ago, talked about how as a child he would go to gun shows. It was a family event. People would go to see what was being offered. They were curious. I want to remove any suggestion, innuendo, or insinuation that says that gun shows are the gathering place for the degenerates, the thugs, the criminals. That is not suggested at all. There are over 4,000 gun shows a year across this country. That is pretty significant. That is 80 a week, on average. There are lots of legitimate hunters, sports persons, et cetera, who go to these shows. There is, however, an enormous loophole that should scare the life out of everybody in this country. That is the anonymous buyer, the buyer who can go in, step up to an exhibitor's table and say: I want to buy some guns. The person on the other side of the table says: How many? Give me 25. What do you have? Some nice sporting models, small ones with a comfortable pistol grip, those that we can trigger off a lot of shells? Because I like to do some target shooting. The seller doesn't have to say: Who are you? All he has to say is: These 25 guns will cost you $2,500. The man says: OK, here are 25 fresh, hundred dollar bills, take these. They shake hands. The guy gathers up his 25 guns and off he goes, we know not where. We don't know who he is; we don't know what town he comes from; we don't know whether he just got out of a mental institution or, worse, a prison. We do not know anything about this man. Why in the world would there be resistance to closing that loophole? I do not understand it, I must tell you. I come from New Jersey. Maybe we do have different cultural views about how life functions. We do not have much room for hunting and we do not have as many hunters as in our great wide open Western States. But all of us--whether from the East, West, North, South--respect life. I never saw a family whose principal interest was not the safety of their children, the education of their children, the caring for those children. Yet they are willing, in this house of the people, the U.S. Senate, to say: Listen, one thing you have to do is you have to protect citizens' rights to buy guns. Why do we need more bureaucratic interference with that process? I don't understand, says one. Another says: Why should you have to wait a couple of days to get a gun? If you want to buy a gun, you ought to be able to buy it like a postage stamp--go to the store and buy it and get out of here. Frankly, I think that is the wrong way to go. I am smart enough to know we are not about to propose legislation to take away everybody's gun. There is a serious debate about how guns should be managed. I think it is an earnest debate that ought to be carried on here. But to simply dismiss it because they say it is a bureaucratic intrusion, it is yet another law? I remind everybody that America, this country of ours, is a nation of laws. That is what makes this society as great as it is. When you have laws, you have to have law enforcers, whether it is police, whether it is drug agents, whether it is the FBI, whether it is the Army; we enforce our laws. To deny that is something that ought to be done because we want to protect the anonymous buyer who walks up and says, ``Give me a couple of guns, here is the money'' and not think about protecting the well-being of the children is not to look at Littleton, CO. By the way, that is not a phenomenon that just existed there --Pearl, MS; West Paducah, KY; Oregon; Illinois. It has been throughout our society. School violence--we all tremble at the thought that our children are in a classroom where other kids have a gun, where other students are bent on violence, where they may be deranged, on drugs, psychotic. We all worry about that. I saw one of the parents from Columbine High School who said: This gun-toting society of ours is out of control. The worst thing is the accessibility of guns. We get into a perennial argument here about whether or not it is the gun or the person who does the killing. It is not just criminals, unfortunately, who do the killing--until sometimes they become criminals for the first time--an enraged husband; a mentally deranged person, young, old, who suddenly, in a fitful moment, takes out a gun and commits his or her first crime with the murder of another person. So what are we talking about? Frankly, I think at times we are talking gibberish, because the American public will not understand it. In a recent poll, 87 percent said it is necessary to close the loophole of anonymous buying at gun shows. That is what we are talking about. We failed to agree to that yesterday. Honestly, it was a very sorry defeat for us. Not for me personally--the fact that I authored the law. I authored the law with people's faces in mind, with an understanding about how much I love my children, four of them, and my six grandchildren. Heaven forbid anything ever happens to them. I know there is not a parent who can hear me who does not feel the same way about his or her children. There is no asset more valuable than our children--money, jewelry, houses--nothing means anything when it comes to our children. Why do we insist that the buyer, the anonymous buyer of a gun, has to have protected his right or her right to be free from this bureaucratic society, this great country that everybody loves? Everybody wants to move to America, but we call it the great bureaucracy at times, instead of the great democracy. It is foul language, as far as I am concerned. So we are offered a substitute. It is a substitute produced by two distinguished Senators, one from Utah and one from Idaho, who say they are going to close the loophole. But it does not. It does not require a background check for all gun sales at gun shows. Some licensees, Federal licensees, on a special form, do not require a background check. The provision for people who are not licensed would enable them to sell guns without, again, going through a background check. There is another loophole. There is a category now called ``special licensees,'' that the Hatch-Craig amendment would create--a new bureaucracy, by the way, strangely enough. They are willing to concede a bureaucracy that would issue these special licenses is OK. But other bureaucracies are dangerous, dangerous to your individual rights. They would not have to conduct background checks. He did not change his original position, which makes background checks voluntary for special licensees. So, if you want to sell a gun and you are a special licensee, you can do it if you feel like it. But you do not do it unless you feel like it. You do not have to go through that nonsense-- background check. It could take 10 minutes for a background check. Who wants to waste 10 minutes when you have a hot deal and you have other people there? What happens at the gun shows, as I understand it--and I have never been, but this is as I hear it--is that there are often discounts by these unlicensed dealers who have acquired their guns--who knows how in many cases. They could say: We are special collectors. It has been established some of these collections are from criminals. Special collector? Hey, we will give you a cheap deal on these guns. Where a legitimate licensed dealer has a price, it is out there, it is public. They do have some expenses in maintaining their license--not a lot, but the unlicensed dealer: Here, I'll give you a real discount. Come here young man. You want to buy some nice guns? It ought not be that way. These loopholes are still available. It would not cover a flea market where there are tables with 100 or 200 or even more guns. It would not cover a gun show that had 10 exhibitors or fewer. Ten exhibitors could sell 500 guns, but they would not be covered. That is, if you will forgive me, a nonsensical hurdle. A couple of people could get together and say: You know what, let's put up one table. I have some of these to sell, she has some of those to sell, he has some of these to sell, and we will sell at one table, and that gets rid of two others, and we can reduce ourselves to 10 tables. Then we do not have to worry about those bureaucrats who want our names. Who are they? Imagine, those guys want our names, while we buy these lethal weapons. Then there is another category. It says that if firearm exhibitors are not more than 20 percent of all exhibitors, they are exempt as well. So you have to have more than 20 percent of the materials being exhibited--it could be sporting materials, could be lifeboats, could be all kinds of things, skis, you name it--but if the firearms people do not have more than 20 percent, they do not have to do anything to get these people registered who are buying these guns. It creates other loopholes. Even though prohibited persons are five times more likely to pawn their guns at a pawnshop than other citizens, this proposal from that side, those who say they are closing the loopholes, would say that anyone who has a claim ticket--whether they borrowed the money, they borrowed $200 for the gun--if they have the claim ticket, even if they do not show up for 60 days, if they pay the interest, they say the pawnshop dealer/owner has to just give them their gun without any questions--no questions asked. This bird may have been in jail for 60 days, but they are not allowed to ask: Where have you been for the last 60 or 90 days? Oh, no, that is a bureaucratic imposition; we do not want that. Another loophole. I do not, frankly, understand that. Why are we protecting those who might be criminals who want to redeem their guns when the ordinary citizen who goes to buy a gun from a legitimate licensed dealer has to identify himself and undergo a background check? There have been so many suggestions that the people who man this agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, are some kind of ogres, they are out to rob you of your independence, rob you of your thought. That is not true. They are there because we want them there to enforce the law. The right to own a gun is one that is often debated, but so far I have not seen anything that confirms the fact that every citizen has a right to bear arms. We are not considering that question now, but the Court has ruled many times since 1939 that in order to have a well- regulated militia, the citizenry shall have the right to bear arms. That is quite a qualification. In addition to the pawnshop loophole, there is another loophole, and that is, now suddenly federally licensed gun dealers who may be in the State of Massachusetts or the State of New Jersey or the State of Illinois--you name it--now can only sell firearms at a gun show in the same State as that specified on the dealer's license. The Craig amendment will give dealers an out-of-State license. It will broaden the geography of where that license can be used to all across the country without any checking. Without any further discussion, that license now is a lot broader than what was intended. That is not closing a loophole to me; It is creating another one. It will make it harder for law enforcement people to crack down on shady dealers, and we do have some. Years ago, there were more gun dealers than there were gas stations in this country. Not too many years ago, there were over 250,000; now it is slightly over 100,000. What we did was change the fee for licensed gun dealers from $30 for 3 years--$30 for 3 years, $10 a year and you never were checked or asked any questions--to $200 for 3 years, and that includes some kind of a check and some kind of a test you must pass in order to get that license. While we have reduced the number of dealers, the Craig amendment will open it up. Everyone knows what the NRA response is going to be. That is the National Rifle Association. Their views were represented amply on the floor of the Senate. They say gun laws do not work; otherwise we would not have the kinds of killings that we do. I do not think it is the gun law. I think it is the accessibility of guns. But I do point out that the number of murders by guns have reduced somewhat, not significantly enough, but they have been reduced. This country of ours, this wonderful democracy in which we live, sees 35,000 people a year die from handguns--35,000; 13,000 of them are murdered. Thirteen kids die every day from handguns, 4,000 a year. In 20 years, over 75,000 children will have died from gunshots. We have 18,000 suicides. We have 3,000 accidents from guns--guns, guns, guns, guns, guns, and people are dying from them. Yet, I hear this cry through this place: Protect the liberty of the gun owner. I want to hear them say one time: My God, we are sorry about what happened in Littleton, CO. Our hearts bleed for them. When we look at the families, when we look at the children who lost their schoolmates, when we look at those who were so frightened, we have to ask: What kind of protection are they entitled to? I think they are entitled to a lot of protection, but we continue here with loophole heaven. I thought that Littleton would shock some of our friends into the realization that the public is sick and tired of it. They do not want it, and I do not understand why it is that the NRA insists that this is an encroachment on their freedom just to say: Put your name down if you want to buy a gun. If you want to buy a car, you better put your name down or you are not going to buy the car. Yet, that rage, that sense of grief, that sense of anguish has not yet reached this place. Mr. President, 87 percent of the people in America in a poll said they want these loopholes closed. We lost that vote yesterday, and now they come back with this wolf in sheep's clothing wanting to pretend that the loopholes are closed. But they are not. I hope we will be able to get some control of gun violence in our society. There are a couple of ways we can do it: make parents responsible for what their kids do. If you give your child who is underage a car and he or she goes out and kills somebody, do you know who is responsible? It is the parent. Why then shouldn't a parent be responsible when a child takes a gun and kills his brother or his sister or his friend accidentally? We ought to get ahold of these things. This is an opportunity to show good faith to the American people, but we failed to take advantage of that opportunity to close it down. This will not take away their guns, except those we know do not qualify. We hear complaints about the Brady bill. The Brady bill stopped over 250,000 unfit persons from fulfilling their desire to buy a gun-- 250,000. That is a lot to me. I see my friend and colleague from Illinois is on the floor. If he wants to make some remarks, I will be happy to yield 10 minutes to the Senator.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, if we could have order, we can get this debate started.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Just to be sure.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. If the distinguished manager would yield, we are talking about a sequence including the Senator from Maine for 5 minutes, then over here?

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Then back to the other side? I have no problem with that as long as the time that we get over here is a reasonable slot of time.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I thank the Senator from Vermont, and I thank the Chair. If the audience here or out there is mystified, I wouldn't be surprised, because I think we, too, are mystified. We are buried under a volume of language and words, and we are not addressing the point. The point is whether or not we are willing to say, if guns are sold, there has to be a measure of identification of the buyer. That is the question. Ask the parents in Littleton, CO, what they think. Should we have identified everybody who walks into a gun show? Describe the gun show as you will, we will talk about that in a minute. Should everybody who buys a gun at a gun show be identified? I think yes. The shallow arguments about, we have 40,000 laws on the books and therefore why do we need one more--well, you tell me what happened when Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh were out at a gun show selling guns to raise money for their terrorist operation. What is the point? Obviously, the laws that we have do not cover all of the situations. I say this. I just heard the distinguished Senator from Maine say it, I have heard the Senator from Idaho say it and others. There is no blanket accusation here that says everybody who goes to a gun show is a felon, an anarchist, a crook, a thug--not at all. But we want to protect those families who do go to gun shows with an earnest interest in seeing what is around and maybe buying a hunting rifle or what have you. Why should they be ashamed? Why should anybody be ashamed or unwilling to leave their name behind when they take this lethal weapon and stick it in their pocket? That is the problem. No matter how much language is thrown out here, we ought to try to cut through it and see what the mission is. The mission is to try to protect the NRA, not to protect the people of our country, the innocents who send their kids to school every day of the week and now pray that the children come back not only learned but safe and sound. That is the message we are trying to get across here. We hear this obfuscational language: Well, if they had this and they had that and they didn't have measles and they had some other condition, then it is all right. Stop with the loopholes. I offered an amendment yesterday which was clear and concise, which said that everybody who buys a gun ought to be identified and that those dealers who are unlicensed dealers, call them what you will, who can sell guns out of the trunk of their car in any quantity they want, to anybody they want, without getting so much as a name, except the cash on the barrelhead, walk away, someone buys 10 guns, there is not an ounce of suspicion raised about that. We heard the Senator from Idaho yesterday say, well, a measly 2 percent, that is all, 2 percent of the guns sold in these gun shows, only 2 percent, are unlicensed. Then he was gentleman enough and sincere enough to say, I made a mistake; it wasn't 2 percent; it is 40 percent. Forty percent. Two percent. That is a significant difference. So he said he realized only too late that 40 percent of the people who bought guns at gun shows bought them from unlicensed dealers--or 40 percent of the guns sold, forgive me, were from unlicensed dealers. Well, that is pretty significant. That is a lot of guns floating out there that nobody has any record of, unless someone volunteers to leave their name. I do not see a lot of volunteers coming up throwing their photo ID on the counter and saying, hey, give me a dozen guns, will you. You don't see that happening. We ought to clear the air, clear the language here, tell the American people, as they were told yesterday--I want everybody within earshot to remember this--yesterday there were 47 of us who voted to close a loophole. There were 51 people who voted to leave it open, to make sure that those who want to buy a gun without identifying themselves could still have the liberty to do so. We hear all kinds of specious arguments--another bureaucratic imposition on free citizens in this country. We have laws in this country. We are a country of laws. It says so in our Constitution. If you have laws, you have to have a structure. You have to have an orderly process by which those laws are developed and enforced. Our job here is to develop them. So what is wrong with having people enforce laws that we think otherwise might bring harm and injury to innocent people? I do not want my grandchildren going to school with other kids who might be able to get their hands on a gun because a father or a relative left the gun unattended. I think it is terrible. I think they ought to be responsible for the actions that that child who takes the gun brings upon his or her classmates or friends. So we ought to clean up the language here so the American people know what we are talking about. Some of us are for closing the loophole and some of us are for leaving it open. The vote yesterday was quite a revelation. It should have been for the American public. Yesterday 51 percent of the people in this room said: Do not close the loophole. Do not take away the rights of someone who wants to be unidentified, anonymous, buying guns out there. Permit them to do it, because otherwise it is an infraction of their rights. If a neighbor wants to sell a gun to a neighbor, why shouldn't he be able to do it without having to go through the trouble of identifying him? Try to give your neighbor your car and not take note of the transfer. If that neighbor has that car and it still has your name on it, you are responsible for it, whatever it is that happens. We see immediately now in the presentation today some apologies. The apology is not for the American people. The apology is to those who might be inconvenienced because they have to identify themselves when they buy a gun. We ought not to be apologizing to them. We ought to apologize to every parent, to every family, to everyone who might be injured by a gun that is bought, 40 percent of those guns that come out of gun shows without any identification. That is what we are talking about. We are clearly divided on the issue. Now what has happened, there is kind of a fail-safe that has developed, because yesterday not only brought the picture into focus, but it also said to the American people, who are enraged by what is happening in these schools, enraged, pained--87 percent of the people in this country said close the loophole. But in this Senate, 51 percent said: No, don't close the loophole; we want to protect the rights of those who would buy guns as if it was in the dark of night. So today we see an attempt at a legislative redress for the error that was made yesterday that was caught by the newspapers. It was caught by television. It was caught by the public at large, who are indignant. We hear it couched in flowery phrases--I didn't know there was that exception, or I didn't know there was this exception--when they heard from their constituents and the constituents were angry and mortified by the fact that their representative voted to keep open the loophole. So now we are trying to figure out what it is exactly that is being proposed. If we are cynical and suspicious, we should be, because yesterday the vote was one way and today it suddenly dawns on them that maybe people who buy guns ought to really leave their name behind, regardless of whether the dealer is a federally licensed dealer or just someone who throws up a table and pays a $10 fee at a gun show. We are talking about the definition of ``gun show'' and the definition of ``dealer.'' Nonsense. We ought to talk about the lives that we can save, about the children that we can protect. I hope that the debate is going to get into that area before this discussion is over. I hope that we look carefully at what is being proposed and study it because it came up all of a sudden--suddenly, to have an agreement that, OK, some people ought to have their names identified with their purchase but not for others. Mr. President, I yield back my time with the understanding that we are going to be discussing this after the votes we are going to take.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, if the manager will yield.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, our sympathies go out to the family of Meg Greenfield. She was, indeed, an extraordinary person, a thoughtful and brilliant writer and reporter.