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Floor Speech

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Mr. TILLIS. Senator Cornyn, I would describe as probably the ultimate statesman and gentleman here in the Senate. I am not.

And so Senator Cornyn talked about all the merits of the bill, and we stand by them. I should also say he gets special credit for a lot of those provisions because they are in there because of his participation.

I have long said that I don't hold grudges, but I settle scores. And today is a good day to settle a score on another anniversary of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

We had a lot of people, actually organizations I have been a member of in the past, spread a lot of false information about this bill. They said it was going to be a red flag bill.

Well, the fact of the matter is, there is funding in this bill for red flag, for States that have implemented red flag laws. Here is the little secret: not even Republican red flag States satisfy our rigorous standards for due process, which is why they haven't applied for any funding. They wouldn't qualify for it unless they changed their plans.

So this didn't cause a wave of red State laws to be implemented. Quite the contrary, it provided resources in behavioral health and veterans courts and drug courts and family courts to help people that may be in crisis ahead of them.

Those same people who were saying: Send money now, support us because we are defending your Second Amendment right. I should mention as speaker of the house, we expanded concealed carry rights of North Carolina at levels that people couldn't imagine.

I am a concealed carry permittee. I have more than one gun, but I am a responsible gun owner who also finished the concealed carry class and also hunter safety. And I think we all need to be responsible gun owners.

But at the end of the day, you have got to decide whether or not a kid going into a gun store on their 18th birthday, if that is their day to buy a gun.

So let's talk a little bit about what this bill really does versus what the mercenaries were trying to do to raise money and kill this bill.

All we are saying--show of hands, do we have any pages that are 18 years old? OK. Younger or older? Younger, OK.

So these kids right now, whatever--sorry, these young adults right now, whatever they are doing, if they have got a committal, a behavioral health committal, if they assaulted a police officer, shot at one, got prosecuted for it when they were 16\1/2\ years old or 17 years old, on their 18th birthday, it is like that device in--what was it--``Men in Black,'' where you erase that. Can you imagine that?

If you were 18 years old on your birthday and you had been convicted of a crime or had a serious legal entanglement, when you go to the NICS system, it was as if you were a day old. Does anybody think that really makes sense, that the crime you committed a couple of months, let's say a month, 60 days, 90 days earlier, would have not been relevant? That is absurd.

Of course if you are under 21, we need to have some insight into what your life looked like when you were 16 or 17 years old. That is what the enhanced background check was, and yet some of these gun advocacy organizations thought that was horrible. It was going to lead to a mass confiscation of guns. It was a backdoor, I think. It was a backdoor into just taking all of our guns away.

It was going to devastate the Second Amendment protections of our Constitution. I heard them all saying it, saying some of it. Let me tell you what actually happened. All we did was say: If you are under 21, we are going to try and find out as much as we need to know about you for your safety and for the safety of your community.

So all we did was say: We are going to go to local law enforcement. We are going to try and get information out there and encourage States to provide the information to our national center for clearing gun purchases in West Virginia sooner so that those who do not have a bad record can get their gun purchased sooner so that we can in a matter of 3 to 10 days get this done.

All the people that were opposed to this bill said that we were not going to get any approvals done, that even the good law-abiding over 21s were going to get swept into this somehow.

Well, let me tell you what has happened since June of this year. The NICS system is doing just fine. About 4,000 people who were going to be denied based on the law have been denied.

So look at these numbers again. Talking about mass confiscation, how disruptive this was, how nobody was going to be able to get guns, right? That is what all the people said: Send money, we are defending your Second Amendment right here in Washington.

Almost 551,000 transactions for purchasing guns have been processed as of June of this year. About 3,800 of them were denied for reasons that existed before we ever passed this law. What we have done though is found some 1,630 young people that that was not their day to buy a gun.

That was--I could go through a long list. I could talk about people being convicted of assaulting a police officer. I could talk about people who had a long gun after they had been convicted of a crime in their car. I could talk about people who accidentally in North Carolina shot their girlfriend a year before and all of a sudden--at 17 and wanted to get a gun.

Does anybody in their right mind think that is a good day for that kid to get a gun?

I am not talking about a 38-year-old person going in. I am talking about an 18-year-old. I am talking about a 19-year-old. I am talking about a 20-year-old. All we did was say: Guys, let's make sure that this is a safe decision for the child and for the community. That is what this bill did, and that is why this bill has withstood the test of time and not a single--not one scintilla--and I would defy anybody who was against this bill to find one of the things that they predicted and guaranteed would happen have actually occurred.

What has happened is we may have saved 1,600 people who may have been buying that gun to hurt themselves, maybe to hurt their community-- maybe not. But what we know is that day was not the day that we should allow them to leave that gun store with a weapon for their safety and the safety of the community.

This is Congress at its best. It is looking at the people that you generally support--and Senator Cornyn was first among them--and the gun rights community and saying: Guys, I can't take the top-line arguments against this because you all know it is not really true. It is this black-and-white world that we live in here, and it requires the very seldom impactful language like, and legislation like, the Communities Act ever get done because people get afraid of the noise and they back into their corners.

And I want to give Senator Cornyn an enormous amount of credit for stepping up and doing what he did to make Texas safer, make the country safer, and make these people and their loved ones and their neighbors in the community safer.

The last thing I will leave you with is, to the States that do have red flag laws--including, I believe, the State of the Presiding Officer--let's get those red flag laws consistent with due process and show respect to gun owners because I am not aware of any red flag law, even in red States, that come close to the sorts of protections that we also put into this bill.

So let's give them an incentive to get it right. Let's make sure that every law-abiding citizen who wants to have a gun can--like me and like Senator Cornyn and like so many other people--but let's be smart about it.

And let's make sure that we continue this trend of being sure that when a person applies for a weapon, that they can safely own it, they are going to be safe for themselves and their community, and stop this nonsense of fearing any sort of positive change because of political repercussions.

This bill is one of the best bills that I had the privilege to work on. And the thing that is amazing about this bill is, it went from concept to implementation in fewer than 6 weeks. That is what happens when Congress gets together, they set aside their partisan differences, they refuse to listen to the false information trying to kill a bill, and they do something good for their State and their country. That is exactly--on this anniversary of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act-- what we accomplished.

I want to thank Senator Cornyn for his partnership. It was not an easy bill. It was a lot of work, but we got it done. I thank Senator Murphy, and I should have mentioned Senator Gillibrand--or not Gillibrand--wrong Kirsten--Senator Sinema for working together.

I mean, we had people across the political spectrum, folks. Chris Murphy, whom I consider a friend and colleague, about as liberal as anybody in this Chamber--and I think he would admit that. And we have got John Cornyn, who is one of the most conservative. And then you have got me and Sinema probably somewhere in the middle.

We got together, and we got this done. And there are more people safe, and I believe there are people alive today that may not have been if this bill hadn't passed.

So, Senator Cornyn, I appreciate the work that you did on this bill. I believe we have got something that we should be proud of. And I also believe, Senator Cornyn, that the straw purchases, the gun trafficking, all the other things that we didn't spend a lot of time on--we can come down here and do a colloquy and talk about more and more of the positive aspects of this bill. And I appreciate your leadership in moving it.

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Mr. TILLIS. Purchased later.

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Mr. TILLIS. That is exactly right.

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Mr. TILLIS. You take a look at the--I spend a lot of time and focus on behavioral health, Senator Cornyn, and the data is compelling.

There is no question in my mind--just the sheer number here--there is no question in my mind that we saved the life of somebody who is buying a gun for that purpose. There is no doubt in my mind the numbers stipulate that.

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Mr. TILLIS. No, quite the contrary. That is why I am saying--look, I love saying I told you so, and I believed that that was going to be the case here.

But, Senator Cornyn, let me just say it for anybody--for the 20 people watching on C-SPAN--and, hopefully, some will cover our statements--I defy anybody--anyone--who opposed this bill, who scored it, who threatened Members to vote against it, I defy them to come to my office and find one example of what they were telling people to oppose this bill that actually came to pass--one.

Here it is: Public challenge. Guys, you who so--you were out there. You were emailing. You were raising money. You were saying the world is going to end, guns are going to be confiscated, that straw purchases were going to destroy--you know, that we weren't going after trafficking, that we were going after law-abiding officers, and their licenses were going to be--all these things, all this noise.

I will dedicate an hour to somebody who wants to come into my office and prove to me that one--one--negative behavior by any State or local government or Federal Government has occurred. This is what happened, folks.

But you want to come to my office, I will guarantee you, you refer to this C-SPAN segment and you want to come to my office and prove that something bad happened, I will take that. My guess is, I will get that hour back, and that is what I mean.

You know, at some point on these tough issues, we keep kicking the can down the road because we let people off the hook for saying things that are patently untrue and then not hold them to account a year or two later. Well, I am here to tell you: I am here for the next 173 days before I retire. Anybody who wants to come in and prove one bad outcome from this bill, give me a call.

And, Senator Cornyn, again, you and I are both--we are both here for another 173 days. We got--and I say that not because I am counting the days to leave, but I am counting the days that we have to make an impact. And I hope I can continue to work with you on this and other bills to even make it better.

We are, unabashedly, unapologetically, pro-Second Amendment Republicans. But we are smart about it, and we have the courage to step up when we see a change can be made that will keep us true to those values but also keep our communities safer. And I appreciate your leadership on this.

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