Leosa Reform Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, this is Police Week. In colloquial terms, it is Law Enforcement Week. Traditionally, we do two things in Law Enforcement Week. One, we recognize the valor, the sacrifices, and the commitment of the police officers who serve our communities, who serve us in Congress, and who serve across the country.

Two, we try to think of ways we actually can assist them in doing their jobs better so we can make their work more effective and safer, and we can make the police function generally more efficacious for the American people.

Unfortunately, with this bill, we are not doing either. In fact, the majority is really falling down on the job in terms of both of those major objectives.

In 2022, on March 15, we passed H.R. 2471, to post in the Capitol on the west side of the Capitol a plaque in honor of the hundreds of police officers who nobly served us on January 6, 2021 when our institution, when our democracy, came under attack by Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other violent extremists who stormed the Capitol, drove Members of the House of Representatives out of our Chamber, drove Members of the Senate out of their Chamber, and attempted to overthrow a Presidential election.

Now, the new administration has seen fit to pardon more than 1,500 rioters and violent insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow our constitutional form of government on that day, and they succeeded in bloodying, wounding, injuring, and hospitalizing more than 140 police officers on January 6. Several officers died in the subsequent weeks, and several people died on that day.

Now, we have passed a law, not a recommendation, not an idle promise, and not a suggestion in a suggestion box, we passed a law to post this plaque in the U.S. Capitol. Yet Speaker Johnson has done absolutely nothing to post this plaque.

I know that some of my colleagues think that they are being most effective when they are doing nothing. This is a Congress that is getting a reputation for being perhaps the greatest do-nothing Congress in the history of the United States. Here is one thing that this Congress can do, which is to post this plaque which reads: ``On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021. Their heroism will never be forgotten.''

What extraordinary irony that is. Their heroism is already being forgotten, or at least there are some people who would like us to forget their heroism. That is on the symbolic front, because everybody wants to pay lip service to the police, and everybody wants to say that we honor them. Let's really honor them.

Let's put up a permanent plaque for future generations of Americans to see that these officers risked their lives for the people in this Chamber, for the Members of the House and the Senate, for the leadership of the House and the Senate, for the staff who work here, and for the reporters who work here.

We have many officers who have had to leave the police service because they have been wounded and disfigured permanently by the injuries they suffered at the hands of these people. This is the very least we can do at a time when the President of the United States says that he wants to create a fund for January 6, not a fund for Michael Fanone who had a heart attack and had to beg for his life; not a fund for Sergeant Gonell who was forced out of the force because of permanent injuries and now is living on a fraction of the salary he had before trying to support his family; not a fund for Officer Hodges who was tortured in the eyes of the world, who got caught in the doorway while the insurrectionists beat him with all of their weapons that they brought back that day.

No, it is not a fund for them that President Trump is suggesting. He wants a fund for the rioters. He wants a fund for the families of the insurrectionists.

As Sergeant Gonell said recently, it seems like he believes that the rioters and the insurrectionists were the ones defending the Capitol on that day.

Let's get this plaque up. We voted for it on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis.

I appeal to Speaker Johnson to enforce the law even if he doesn't like it anymore and even if he changed his mind about the plaque. This is the law. Let's get it up there.

Now, secondly, we should be talking about how we could actually aid, abet, and assist law enforcement officers in their work. Unfortunately, we have not had from the majority a single bill that they are willing to bring to the floor to increase any funding for local law enforcement. On the contrary, the emissaries from DOGE--and here I don't necessarily hold my colleagues accountable for this because they didn't seem to know about it any more than we did--but the functionaries of DOGE slashed more than $500 million that the Department of Justice was giving to local police departments across the country, community safety groups, and organizations assisting victims of rape and sexual assault.

As far as we can tell, one person in DOGE, one unelected, midnight bureaucrat whose career was made with Elon Musk, who seems to have skipped town now, that guy cut out hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to local law enforcement and community safety groups across America.

I introduced an amendment in the budget reconciliation process in the Judiciary Committee to restore all of that money. Not a single Member, neither a Democrat nor a Republican, spoke against it, and my Republican colleagues did not say a word, but they all voted against it. They voted to uphold that nasty handiwork of DOGE slashing hundreds of millions of dollars, which we appropriated on a bipartisan basis in the House, in the Senate, and it was signed by the President, programmed by the Department of Justice and awarded to their communities, my community, your communities, communities across the country, and one young person, a midnight computer hacker from DOGE, Elon Musk's emissary, destroyed all of it, more than 300 grants.

Now they come forward with a budget for next year that would cut more than $1 billion out of law enforcement: FBI, Department of Justice, and ATF, you name it, Mr. Speaker, right down the line. I will have some more to say about that after.

So what do we have?

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill. In 2004, Congress passed LEOSA, a law that allows both off-duty and retired officers to carry concealed firearms irrespective of State law. It compelled all States to allow off-duty and retired officers to carry concealed firearms under the terms set by Congress overriding the rules of the State.

Now, when Congress debated it 20 years ago, members of the Judiciary Committee on both sides of the aisle expressed anxiety about the bill trespassing on the rights of the States to decide on gun laws for themselves. The Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee at the time, Congressman Sensenbrenner, opposed LEOSA for the reason of federalism and State rights. He voted against it. Several police groups opposed the legislation expressing concerns about how it would affect officer safety, how it would create confusion in the event of an active shooter, how it might expose their agencies to more liability, and the insufficiency of training requirements for retired officers.

Despite all of that, LEOSA became the law after Congress legislated some important limits on it and imposed commonsense training requirements on the former officers. Those have been in place for more than 20 years.

Now, H.R. 2243 would terminate the realm of discretion that States have to limit when and where individuals may carry their concealed firearms under LEOSA. It would force States to allow off-duty and retired officers to carry concealed firearms onto all private property open to the public, including restaurants, bars, parks, national parks, and playgrounds. It would also force States to allow off-duty and retired officers to carry concealed firearms on buses, trains, and subways. It would even force States to allow for the concealed carry of firearms in gun-free school zones. It also allows the off-duty and retired officers to completely disregard State laws prohibiting high- capacity magazines.

This legislation not only supersedes the considered policy judgments of the States, but it threatens the safety and security of Federal agencies by forcing them to allow concealed carry in many Federal buildings. Forcing Federal offices and buildings to allow concealed carry is a completely unnecessary and dangerous risk.

The legislation also weakens training standards. Under current law, a person carrying a firearm must meet State training requirements every year, but this bill would allow individuals to do concealed carry with training certifications obtained every 3 years. This is troubling given that the bill extends nationwide concealed carry to retired officers who are no longer receiving the training that accompanies their old employment.

Our colleagues have different reasons that they advance for this, which I think are pretty refutable. In the big picture, this bill does nothing for existing police officers right now. It does nothing to enhance public safety, and our friends have completely missed the mark I think in terms of what law enforcement week should be all about.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my distinguished colleague's suggestion that I may have the wisdom of somebody who has been here for 21 years, but actually I wasn't here either. I got it just from the books myself.

I was here, I should say, in 2021, when the Chamber was stormed, and that is a day I will never forget. Forgive my passion on the point of getting that plaque up. I wish our colleagues would just help us convince the Speaker of the House that this is something that is simple, and it should be done. It is not a partisan issue.

On that day, we were not Democrats or Republicans. We were Americans, and we were legislators together being hounded and chased out of this Chamber by people who did not accept the constitutional rules of the game.

To me, it is a matter of great regret and melancholy that somehow it has become politicized to the point where people can't even acknowledge what they were saying at the time. We had Republican leaders who were describing it as terrorism and saying it was absolutely inexcusable and indefensible. Now, all of a sudden, we have the majority which will not even follow the law by posting a plaque in honor of the officers who gave blood and sweat and tears on that day.

One of them, Officer Hodges got caught in the doorway. The whole world saw him screaming to high heaven for probably--I don't know if it was 45 seconds or maybe it was up to 90 seconds, as he was being beaten and pummeled, and he was being crushed in the doorway. When they finally dislodged him, they took him back where they were taking the officers. We were very short-handed. They wanted to tell him to just stay there and wash his eyes out. He took about 5 to 10 minutes while they were pouring water in his eyes, and he got up. Do you know what he did? He went back outside, and he rejoined the battle because he said he knew that they needed him. We were outmanned, and we were outflanked by the forces of violence that came down on us on that day.

That is the kind of bravery that we should be at least acknowledging, if not praising. I know at the time we thanked them for saving our lives, and people did die that day. Again, there were more than 140 officers who were wounded and brutalized and injured, and many still have the physical injuries and scars that they are dealing with, as well as the mental scars, because there is a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Several of the officers who were there had been in the Iraq war, and they had been in the Afghan war. They testified before the January 6th Select Committee, and several of them testified they had never seen violence as brutal and as bloody as what took place on January 6, 2021, with the various extremist groups that came and led the attack on the Chamber and then gave bloody instructions to the rest of the mob about how to treat police officers in their effort to go and ``hang Mike Pence.'' That was the chant. I can still hear in my mind, ringing off the walls of the Capitol: ``Hang Mike Pence.'' ``Hang Mike Pence.'' ``Where's Nancy?'' ``Where's Nancy?''

We are not going to allow this to be buried into some kind of Orwellian memory hall. We have got a law requiring that that plaque go up, and we are going to see that that plaque goes up and that the law is enforced.

As for the LEOSA reform, again, it doesn't even purport to do anything for police and law enforcement. Today, it would, I suppose, increase some of the mobility of retired officers, off-duty officers to go to places like restaurants, bars, public parks, national parks, metros and buses, and so on, if they are police. I think that that should be decided by our communities, whether people are doing concealed carry there.

I thought that a belief in federalism was something that unifies us. That is something that the State governments can decide in cooperation with the local governments. The Congress of the United States does not need to be making decisions about restaurants in Charleston, South Carolina, or bars in El Paso, Texas, or what have you. Why don't we let the people of the States and the localities make those decisions.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent presentation of the bill. I wish it were one that we could be together on, but I think it just goes way too far in terms of trespassing on States' rights and States' powers. We have a nice equilibrium and stasis in terms of where the law has been for the last two decades, and this seems unnecessary. It does seem to me like a diversion from the things we actually could be doing to be making the lives of police officers safer.

The reason why so many police organizations are with 90 percent of the American people in supporting a universal violent criminal background check is because nobody should be accessing guns, any kind of gun, if they are not able to pass the Brady background check. That background check has saved countless lives since it was instituted. The reason the vast majority of the people support it is because we need to close those loopholes. You should not be able to skip a background check by finding a gun online. You should not be able to skip a background check by going to a private gun show or engaging in a so- called private sale or transfer.

We need a universal violent criminal background check. That will do far more than anything we are looking at today to make the lives of police officers better, to make their jobs easier, because they are on the frontlines of these killing fields across the country.

America's rates of gun violence are completely out of control when compared to the nations in the European Union or Canada, our next-door neighbor. We are losing 5, 10, or 20 times the number of people that the residents of those countries are losing because our gun laws are like Swiss cheese. They are filled with holes. Let's close those loopholes. It doesn't diminish anybody's Second Amendment rights.

Justice Scalise said it himself in District of Columbia v. Heller. You can have criminal background checks to make sure that only the right people are getting guns and not the wrong people are getting guns. There are things we can do to improve public safety and to assist police officers, and we should be working on those.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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