Mark Souder

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for his leadership. It has been alleged here on the House floor that this is a trade for CAFTA, to get some of our votes. Let me be real blunt. It was for me. I took it to the President, the Vice President, our trade ambassador, the Secretary of State, because we have had no action on China. Whether it was a Democratic President or a Republican President, we have had no action on China. Whether it was a Democratic Congress or a Republican Congress, we had no action on China. Every single time we come up for a vote, we get rolled. We have to hold China accountable. This is not perfect, but a vote against this bill is a vote for China, not for the United States. It is a small step, but a critical step. Without the data, if they do not let their currency float, how in the world do we measure how much they are manipulating the currency? And those critics of those of us who have been putting pressure on China in the last few weeks said we could never get them to reevaluate their currency. It was a little, piddly step, but 2 percent is 2 percent. It is a big admission that they have been manipulating their currency. So rather than declare victory and rather than saying we finally, it looks like, are going to pass a bill on China, the other side wants to take it down, or at least a few Members. We had better pass this bill, or this is yet another victory for China, and we will never get anything done except at critical moments when they need our votes. I rise in support of H.R. 3283, the United States Trade Rights Enforcement Act. The outcry from American manufacturers has never been louder. China is destroying many American businesses. For too long, warnings of these businesses have been ignored. The American government has negotiated with China, talked to China, cajoled China, but has declined to act decisively and with concrete measures to combat China's policies and help American manufacturers. I applaud those at the United State Trade Representative office who have the daunting task of dealing with the Chinese government, but unless talk is backed-up with action, it really doesn't matter. Congress has also been reluctant to help where China is concerned. Although we have passed several resolutions condemning Chinese trade practices, they are meaningless, and do nothing to actually help businesses. Often it seems that the piracy of music and movies is worth administration and congressional action but the piracy of manufactured goods or China's deliberate undercutting of manufacturing through suspect trade policies does not warrant action. The hollowing out of American manufacturing does warrant action. Although China's economy is moving toward the free market, China remains an avowed communist country. The Communist government and the army own countless businesses, including the Chinese National Overseas Oil Company, which recently made a bid for Unocal. They prop up many businesses with free or reduced-cost energy, low cost or no-cost loans and financing, and sometimes forced labor. Because of Chinese government intervention in the economy, Chinese businesses are not subject to the same market forces as American businesses. American businesses have also been enticed to set-up shop in China. In addition to cheaper labor costs, businesses in China do not have to worry about clean air, clean water, OSHA, or compliance with a crushing regulatory burden. Although these things put American businesses, particularly manufacturers, at a disadvantage, the biggest distortion of the market is China's currency manipulation. Until last week, China pegged its currency at 8.28 yuan to the dollar. Despite huge growth in the Chinese economy and explosive international trading, the Chinese government refused to revalue its currency. Estimates of China's currency manipulation were anywhere from 20-80 percent. This meant that Chinese goods entering the United States were 20-80 percent cheaper than they should have been. And American goods were 20-80 percent more expensive. Last week, the Chinese government revalued the yuan by slightly over 2 percent. While I applaud this movement on the part of the Chinese, there is much more that needs to be done. I realize that the Chinese cannot adjust their currency overnight but I expect this latest devaluation to be the first of many. I also expect the Bush administration and future administrations to keep pressuring China to restructure their financial sectors and currency schemes so that they better match those of the market-oriented world. Their currency needs to flock and let markets determine the value, not the government. As American manufacturers have been severely damaged by unfair Chinese policies, the necessary tools to fight this unfair competition have not been available to them. One important tool is tHe countervailing duty, CVD. Countervailing duties are taxes assessed to counter the effects of subsidies provided by foreign governments to goods exported to the United States. Subsidies cause the price of such merchandise to become artificially low, which may cause economic ``injury'' to U.S. manufacturers. One thing is sure, the artificially low price of Chinese merchandise has caused injury to American manufacturers. Unfortunately, the most recent interpretation of American trade laws does not allow CVDs to be applied to non-market economies. H.R. 3283 will explicitly allow them to impose CVDs on non-market economies. It will allow investigators to compare China with comparable market economies, most likely India, in order to see just how much the Chinese government is unfairly aiding its businesses. This will not save American manufacturing overnight but it will help to level the playing field, and allow fair competition in the global marketplace. This legislation comes to the Floor at the same time as legislation to implement the Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA. I am one of many Members that withheld support for CAFTA in exchange for concrete action on China. Some have criticized the efforts to link China and CAFTA. They argue that they are two different issues. I disagree. CAFTA has been sold with the promise that it will open up new and bigger markets for American manufacturers. That may be, but if manufacturers in my district are put out of business because of unfair competition from China, whether or not they have access to markets in Central America will be irrelevant because they will be out business. I urge all of my colleagues in the House and the Senate to vote for this necessary tool against unfair trade practices.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the distinguished chairman of the Committee on International Relations for yielding me this time and for his continued leadership on narcotics issues as we tackle these questions at the international level. The preceding speaker said that some of these amounts might be fairly small. Well, in Madrid it probably was fairly small. Spanish authorities have said that the Muslim militant cell exchanged for hashish and cash to fund it. I do not know how much it was. It probably was not a truckload of hashish. It may not have been a big thing, but there are a lot of people dead. The link between narcotics and terrorism is growing, as the distinguish chairman pointed out; and we have heard the same thing in the drug policy subcommittee, and that is anywhere from slightly below half to slightly over half of the major terrorist organizations in the world are funded by drugs, most likely heroin and hashish, but also cocaine. As we get better at driving them underground, we are going to see an increase in narcotrafficking and terrorism around the world, as we will see in human trafficking, as well, as we drive this underground. As far as mandatory minimums, I hope there are mandatory minimums on people funding direct terrorist attacks on the United States. If you are selling drugs, and even inadvertently, and these groups often are hear no evil, see no evil, and they pretend like they are not involved in narcotics trafficking, but as they swap with different cells and work with these cells around the world, I hope they have a mandatory minimum, if they blow up and terrorize America, terrorize London and terrorize Spain. We need stiff penalties. We need to look for these gaps and these holes so we can go after these groups and break them up. We have had multiple efforts around the world where we see some of these terrorist organizations starting to interact with each other. We need to have conspiracy clauses that enable us, as they start to interconnect from South America, Asia and the Middle Eastern gangs as they swap cocaine for other things and convert and move in the underground market. We need to stay up with how the terrorists are working. As they start to interconnect, we need laws that can address this, and I commend the chairman from the Committee on International Relations with trying to address this rapidly growing threat in all regions of the world. I urge this Congress to send a strong message that this needs to be part of the PATRIOT Act as we look at the international efforts and the international connection in the funding of terrorism.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment offered by my friend and colleague, Representative Steve King. This amendment seeks to obtain information necessary for Congressional oversight of State Department activities, to ensure that the Congressional policy against prostitution and human trafficking for the sex trade is reflected by those activities. The King amendment will assist the Congress in ensuring compliance with current law. Specifically, this amendment would require a report (within 90 days) describing by name all non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which received funding for AIDS relief after the enactment of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief or the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003 (Public Law 108-25). That law required that any recipient of funding under the act have taken an official, public stand opposing the legalization of prostitution. Regrettably, many NGOs involved in AIDS-related work have promoted legalizing prostitution, in the misguided belief that this will somehow reduce the spread of AIDS. In fact, promoting prostitution not only threatens to increase risky sexual behavior and thereby worsen the AIDS epidemic, it also legitimizes this degrading ``business'' that has enslaved so many women and children in the Third World and elsewhere. Despite the enactment of Public Law 108-25, we have learned that the State Department in fact awarded grants to NGOs that support legalizing prostitution. The Department has refused, however, to provide a complete accounting of this funding. Hence, this amendment would require the State Department to inform Congress about the dates on which funding was awarded, the date each identified NGO filed a statement with the Federal Government asserting the NGO has a policy ``explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking,'' and a copy of the statement. Mr. Chairman, I thank Congressman King for his efforts on this important issue, and I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) again, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), and the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) for their support on these amendments. It is important that we have a bipartisan effort to send a message, whether it is to methamphetamine traffickers, pseudoephedrine, cocaine traffickers around the world, or heroin traffickers in Afghan. The fact is we lose 20,000 to 30,000 Americans every year to drug deaths. Because they do not happen on the same day at the same place, it is not as dramatic as what happened on 9/11, but they are still dead. I thank the leadership of the committee for their support on these important amendments so we can, in a bipartisan way, make a dent in this terrible scourge, drug use. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, I want to again thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) for his steadfast leadership against drug traffickers around the world, as well as the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith). They have been yeomen in the fight against narcotics, human trafficking, terrorism, and in defense of international human rights. I urge unanimous consent, if not an overwhelming majority, asking that these drug traffickers be extradited and we get adequate information from the State Department so we know what we are requesting because we have not been able to get that data.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I also rise in support of the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley), together with the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird), myself, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy), and many others, to H.R. 2601. This amendment addresses the growing problem of meth production as we have talked about, in particular in Mexico. Like the amendment just offered by the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy), this amendment is targeted at the superlabs in Mexico that produce most of the meth. Cooperative efforts with Mexico can work if they are vigorously pursued by the State Department and other Federal agencies. For example, until only recently, Canada was the primary conduit for illegal pseudoephedrine tracking, largely because Canada has no internal regulation for the chemical, which obviously presents a problem as you go to the Internet and start to move this. But under pressure from the U.S., Canada adopted controls on the chemical. And that, combined with better joint law enforcement, helped dry up the U.S.-Canadian smuggling. The gentlewoman from Oregon recently introduced, and the House adopted, an amendment to the fiscal year 2006 foreign operations appropriation bill that added $5 million to the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement Affairs. This amendment was intended to help INL work much more closely with Mexican law enforcement officials to stem the tide of illegal diversion and superlab meth production. This amendment would build on that approach by requiring INL to provide assistance to Mexico to prevent the production of methamphetamine in that country and to encourage Mexico to stop the illegal diversion of meth precursor chemicals. The amendment would authorize the use of $4 million of the $5 million for these purposes. The remaining funds would be available to help the State Department implement the amendment of the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy). Mr. Chairman, I want to again thank the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley) for her leadership, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy) for his leadership, and continuing to work with those of us who are committed to trying to tackle the scourge of methamphetamines before it overwhelms the United States. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to engage in a colloquy with the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith). Mr. CHAIRMAN, I would like to seek the support of the chairman in acquiring three cables from the State Department: one cable from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul describing the lack of assistance from the Afghan government on heroin trade, and two cables from the U.S. Embassy in Bogota regarding lack of U.S. support thus far for the demobilization program.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I rise to ask my colleagues' support for this amendment which seeks to obtain vital information necessary for congressional oversight of our policies in Afghanistan. I first want to commend the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) for his leadership in bringing this legislation before the House. Chairman Hyde has been a consistent champion in the fight against international drug trafficking, and I thank him for his tireless efforts in that regard. This amendment is quite simple. It would require a report from the State Department identifying all requests made by the U.S. Government for extradition of drug traffickers from Afghanistan, the status of those requests, and the response of the Afghan government. This report will enable Congress to evaluate the level of cooperation from the Afghan government on this vital aspect of counterdrug activity. The U.S. will not be able to take effective action against the heroin trade if the Afghan government refuses to apprehend and extradite major opium traffickers. Mr. Chairman, extradition is one of the most important tools in the struggle against international narcoterrorism. We need to be very sure that tool is functioning properly in Afghanistan, the epicenter of the world's heroin trade. As we vote to keep our troops still in Afghanistan, they are not being shot at by missiles and bullets and guns bought by making microcomputers or by sales from their local Wal- Mart. It is coming from the heroin trade. The men and women dying in Afghanistan are dying because of illegal narcotics and the heroin trade, which funded al Qaeda and the Taliban when they were in charge of Afghanistan and continues to fund those who are shooting at us. We have to understand, and the Afghan Government has to understand, the necessity of going after these traffickers aggressively. To do that, we need information here in Congress. Because of that, although I know that the committee supports this, I am going to ask for a rollcall vote because I believe it is important that we in a bipartisan way go on record and say we must pursue in Afghanistan, for the protection of our soldiers and families and workers all over the world, as heroin pours out of Afghanistan at three times the level of anything that ever happened under the Taliban. The greatest flow of heroin in world history is occurring now, and we have to get to the traffickers behind this. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. SOUDER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition, though I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I ask my colleagues for their support on this amendment which would authorize new resources for our drug interdiction efforts. I again want to commend the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) for his assistance in getting this much-needed help for drug interdiction throughout the world. The amendment I propose seeks to build on the efforts of the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman Hyde) by authorizing the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, INL, to acquire a refueling vessel for the benefit of the U.S. and allied drug interdiction activities, such as the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy, operating in the eastern Pacific region. That would be the area on the west side of Mexico and as you come down through Central America. According to testimony provided by the Coast Guard, Department of Defense, Office of National Drug Control Policy, and other agencies to the Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, which I chair, drug traffickers have increasingly pushed their routes into that area further and further west from landfall. U.S. vessels have no refueling capability in that area, often coming from San Diego, and thus cannot operate for any significant length of time. The traffickers, by contrast, have developed their own sophisticated refueling system and can now simply bypass our interdiction forces. Today we face an almost unique situation in drug interdiction history. We now have more intelligence about drug trafficking than assets to act on it, meaning that we have to watch helplessly while some shipments of poisonous narcotics are brought to the U.S. The testimony provided to the subcommittee by Federal agencies has indicated that the acquisition of a refueling vessel would be of significant benefit in stopping this gaping hole. By allowing Coast Guard and other ships to carry out longer patrols in the eastern Pacific region, we will no longer be at such major logistical disadvantage vis-a-vis the drug kingpins. Moreover, although the amendment authorizes up to $25 million for the refueler, it also authorizes INL to purchase or lease the vessel, thus allowing INL to obtain this vital asset at the lowest cost. Again, I thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) for his leadership and support in the fight against drug trafficking, and I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy), the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley), the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne), and the others who have been working on this amendment and many others over the last few weeks on methamphetamines, a scourge that is sweeping our country, starting to hammer some of our major cities, and is going to be something that we have not seen for a long time in America unless we can get control of this. Starting in Oklahoma, many States, including my home State of Indiana, have tried to regulate pseudoephedrine through drug stores and grocery stores by putting it behind the counter. But unless we control it internationally, it is irrelevant because what they will do is they will go to the Internet. These large trafficking organizations will bring it in. We have to get at it at the manufacturing level and the wholesale level. Laws like these at the State level may work for a year, but they are not a long-term solution. We have to address it from an international perspective. In Mexico alone, the Mexican imports of pseudoephedrine, and these are coming from just a few countries in the world, with India having most of the plants, China, and one in Europe, they are estimating imports have risen from 100 tons to 224 tons and their demand is 70 tons. That means we have 150 new tons of pseudoephedrine pouring across the border from Mexico. We must get control of this from a national and international perspective.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, in the press for the past few days, I have reportedly heard all sorts of allegations and innuendoes against Karl Rove. Most of these seem to be political, rather than factual. I believe this Wall Street Journal article puts the debate about what was said by whom into a proper context. Former Ambassador Wilson has been largely discredited. Karl Rove, though it has been implied that he broke the law, does not appear to in fact have done so. It is Wilson whose politically motivated comments who should be under scrutiny, not Rove. [From the Wall Street Journal, July, 2005] Karl Rove, Whistleblower Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the ``Truth- Telling'' award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud. For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real ``whistleblower'' in this whole sorry pseudoscandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove. Media chants aside, there's no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband's selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that she was an undercover agent and using information he'd obtained in an official capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove didn't even know Ms. Plame's name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists. On the ``no underlying crime'' point, moreover, no less than the New York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do the 36 major news organizations that filed a legal brief in March aimed at keeping Mr. Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller out of jail. ``While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from clear--at least on the public record--that a crime took place,'' the Post noted the other day. Granted the media have come a bit late to this understanding, and then only to protect their own, but the logic of their argument is that Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either. The same can't be said for Mr. Wilson, who first ``outed'' himself as a CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times op-ed in July 2003. At the time he claimed to have thoroughly debunked the Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection that President Bush had mentioned in his now famous ``16 words'' on the subject in that year's State of the Union address. Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert Novak first reported that his wife had played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. He promptly signed up as adviser to the Kerry campaign and was feted almost everywhere in the media, including repeat appearances on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' and a photo spread (with Valerie) in Vanity Fair. But his day in the political sun was short-lived. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report last July cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent recommending her husband for the Niger mission. ``Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip,'' said the report. The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. And it said the CIA interpreted the information he provided in his debrief as mildly supportive of the suspicion that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger. About the same time, another inquiry headed by Britain's Lord Butler delivered its own verdict on the 16 words: ``We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that `The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well- founded. In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission. The media and the Kerry campaign promptly abandoned him, though the former never did give as much prominence to his debunking as they did to his original accusations. But if anyone can remember another public figure so entirely and thoroughly discredited, let us know. If there's any scandal at all here, it is that this entire episode has been allowed to waste so much government time and media attention, not to mention inspire a ``special counsel'' probe. The Bush Administration is also guilty on this count, since it went along with the appointment of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in an election year in order to punt the issue down the road. But now Mr. Fitzgerald has become an unguided missile, holding reporters in contempt for not disclosing their sources even as it becomes clearer all the time that no underlying crime was at issue. As for the press corps, rather than calling for Mr. Rove to be fired, they ought to be grateful to him for telling the truth.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Do I have the right to close at this point?

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the right to close.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer an extremely simple, commonsense amendment that is a first step towards restoring the rights of self- protection, a right guaranteed under the second amendment to the citizens of the District of Columbia. My amendment would restrict funds from being used to enforce section 703 of the D.C. Firearms Control Act. This section requires that every registered gun owner ``shall keep any firearm in his possession unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device unless such firearm is kept at his place of business or while being used for lawful recreational purposes within the District of Columbia.'' This amendment does not legalize anything that cannot be legally owned now: No machine gun, sawed-off shotguns, AK-47s, or Uzis. All it does is let people keep the handguns purchased before 1976, shotguns, or rifles unlocked or loaded that they already have registered in their homes. My amendment gives D.C. citizens the same rights at home as they have at work. Under the current law, a legal gun owner who owns a business in the District of Columbia can register a gun at their place of business to defend their business against criminals. The same person cannot use a legally registered gun to protect his or her life or family at home. Over the past 30 years, there have been too many times where staffers or residents who live and work right here on the Hill have been at home and have come under attack from dangerous criminals. The way the current law is set up, these law-abiding citizens are forbidden from using a legally registered gun in defense of his or her home or family. I believe the good people of D.C. deserve the recognition of this basic civil right. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes. I thank the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia. She serves on my subcommittee. We work together on many issues and we have a deep disagreement on this one. I believe a constitutional right to bear arms supersedes local authority. A couple of facts here are very stubborn things: One is that as far as accidents, the total rate of firearm accidents from 1981 to 2002 in the District of Columbia was 2.5 times higher than across the border in Maryland which does not have a storage law. The fact is that it has not reduced accidents. It is a nice thought to talk about that, but the facts don't bear that out. Secondly, this has nothing to do with businesses. This is about self-protection in your home. If a rapist is breaking into your house or a murderer is coming after you and your children and you are struggling to find the key to the lock and then have to get your gun out and put it together, odds are pretty good you are not going to make it. And under current D.C. law, if you find the lock and get your gun out and get your gun put back together and defend yourself, you can be prosecuted. What in the world is going on? We heard that the crime rate has dropped in the District of Columbia. For 15 of the last 16 years, the District of Columbia has been the murder capital of the United States. In the last statistics, they were again for the fourth year in a row. How can it get worse than that? Former Mayor Barry has one of my favorite quotes: Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in America.