Protecting Our Kids Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. FITZGERALD. Madam Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 7910.
I thought I would take this opportunity to do my own fact check on some of the inaccurate claims my colleagues on the other side of the aisle presented at last week's markup.
My Democrat colleagues will often claim there are loopholes in the current background check system, sometimes specifically citing the Charleston loophole. This is simply not true. Federal firearms licensees cannot transfer a firearm without performing a background check on the purchaser.
The FBI is notified immediately if a prohibited person attempts to purchase a weapon, and the FBI has 3 days to follow up. The 3 days for follow-up prevent the FBI from sitting on their hands and not following through with background checks as a way to deny a person a firearm by bureaucracy and, therefore, take away their Second Amendment rights.
Another claim frequently made by my colleagues is that banning so- called assault weapons, a term they rarely define, would reduce mass shootings. Despite automatic weapons already being illegal to the general public, the left uses the term ``assault weapons'' to describe scary-looking guns, regardless of the actual characteristics of the firearm. Even weapons mischaracterized as assault weapons are used in less than 1 percent of all homicides.
Many of my colleagues claim mandating so-called safe storage of firearms is a commonsense approach to reducing gun violence. Not only does a requirement to keep a firearm within the home unloaded or locked up not comply with Supreme Court precedent, but it also puts them at a disadvantage.
Listen, if you want to accomplish something today, pass what many States have done, and that is to make resources available to secure schools. Madam Speaker, $100 million, and over 1,300 Wisconsin schools have removed themselves from the list of the most vulnerable with State dollars. Let's do that today and really accomplish something.
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