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Giffords Implores Senate to Act at Hearing on Guns Giffords Implores Senate to Act at Hearing on Guns
(about 1 hour later)
WASHINGTON — Speaking slowly but with discernible passion, former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically injured in a mass shooting in Arizona in 2011, addressed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday in its first hearing since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., last month. WASHINGTON — The universe of potential changes to federal gun laws seemed to shrink Wednesday during an occasionally tense Senate hearing on gun violence as lawmakers and proponents of more gun rules tussled with gun rights advocates over the availability of some types of weapons and ammunition. In the end, chances for a ban on assault weapons dimmed, and compromise seemed elusive.
Ms. Giffords, who entered a packed hearing room on Capitol Hill, walked slowly by the senators gathered to hear testimony from several witnesses, including her husband Mark E. Kelly, and kissed some of them on the cheeks as she passed. The hearing, the first held by the Senate Judiciary Committee since the mass shooting last month at a Newtown, Conn., school, began on a poignant note as former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically injured in a 2011 shooting, addressed the committee slowly but with passion, essentially begging panel members to come up with legislation to address gun violence.
“This is an important conversation for our children, for our communities,” Ms. Giffords began. “For Democrats and Republicans. Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important. Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something. It will be hard. But the time is now,” she said, emphasizing the last word. “You must act. Be bold. Be courageous. Americans are counting on you.” With that, Ms. Giffords made her way quietly out of the room. “Too many children are dying,” she said to a packed, hushed hearing room. “Too many children.”
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the committee, then began his opening remarks, noting that “the Second Amendment is secure and will remain secure and protected. In two recent cases, the Supreme Court has confirmed that the Second Amendment, like other aspects of our Bill of Rights, secures a fundamental individual right. Americans have the right to self-defense and to have guns in their homes to protect their families. No one can or will take those rights or our guns away. Second Amendment rights are the foundation on which our discussion rests. They are not at risk. But lives are at risk when responsible people fail to stand up for laws that will keep guns out of the hands of those who will use them to commit mass murder. I ask that we focus our discussion on additional statutory measures to better protect our children and all Americans.” After Ms. Giffords’s brief testimony, the four-hour hearing quickly devolved into a litany of competing statistics and chilling anecdotes, laying bare the deep national divide between those who believe gun availability contributes to the nation’s most violent crimes and those who think it helps prevent them.
The first Republican to speak, immediately after Mr. Leahy, was Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who argued that legislation must address violence in video games and said that ample research underscored that the expired ban on assault weapon had been ineffective. Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, spoke ruefully of the many years he has spent trotting to Capitol Hill to testify about gun violence, and grew irritated under the questions of friend (Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a vocal supporter of gun rights) and foe (Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, where an honor student in Chicago was fatally shot hours before the hearing.)
The first witness to speak was Mr. Kelly, who revisited the horror of the day his wife was shot, and its aftermath. “She struggles to walk and she is partially blind,” he said, “and a year ago she left the job she loves serving the people of Arizona.” Mr. LaPierre said he did not support the measure that appeared to be gaining the most support among both parties — enhanced background checks for gun buyers — raising the prospect that perhaps even modest changes to gun laws would be hard to accomplish. “Universal background check, which sounds, whatever,” he said, “ends up being a universal federal nightmare imposed upon law-abiding people all over this country.
Pointing out that he and Ms. Giffords remain gun owners he said, “We aren’t here as victims, we are speaking to you here today as Americans.” Ms. Gifford’s and Mr. Kelly’s group, Americans for Responsible Solution, seeks changes to gun laws that would better weed out mentally ill and criminal gun buyers through improvements to the background check system. Mr. LaPierre’s strong defense of existing gun laws, which he argued were poorly enforced, and his occasional pique were a contrast with Ms. Giffords’s husband, Mark Kelly, a gun-owning former Navy captain and a retired astronaut, who quietly pulled, bit by bit, at the arguments against stronger background checks, which he and Ms. Giffords seek.
“When dangerous people get dangerous guns we are all the more vulnerable,” he said. “I’ve been shot at dozens of times,” Mr. Kelly said. “I would suspect that not many members of this panel, or even in this room, for that matter, have been in any kind of a firefight. It is — it is chaos. I think there are really some very effective things we can do. And one is, Senator, the background check. Let’s make it difficult for the criminals, the terrorists, and the mentally ill to get a gun.”
Wayne La Pierre, head of the National Rifle Association, also testified Wednesday. Under intense questioning from Mr. Leahy, Mr. La Pierre said he did not support the expansion of background checks for firearm sales. “I do not believe the way it is working now that it does any good to extend to law to private sales,” he said. The greatest area of disagreement centered around the availability of so-called assault weapons, which some Democratic senators seek to ban, and restrictions of large-size magazines, which several Republican senators and their witnesses argued would endanger potential victims of crime and infringe on the rights of law-abiding Americans.
In his testimony Mr. La Pierre also reiterated his call for armed security in schools and his resistance to new gun control measures. Ms. Giffords, who made her way through the hearing room slowly, passing by several senators to bid them hello and give them a kiss, sat next to her husband and slowly began her remarks.
“It’s time to throw an immediate blanket of security around our children,” Mr. La Pierre said. “About a third of our schools have armed security already — because it works. And that number is growing. Right now, state officials, local authorities and school districts in all 50 states are considering their own plans to protect children in their schools.” “This is an important conversation for our children, for our communities,” Ms. Giffords said. “For Democrats and Republicans. Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important. Violence is a big problem,” she continued. “We must do something. It will be hard. But the time is now,” she said, emphasizing the last word. “You must act. Be bold. Be courageous. Americans are counting on you.”
Mr. La Pierre added: “In addition, we need to enforce the thousands of gun laws that are currently on the books. Prosecuting criminals who misuse firearms works. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a dramatic collapse in federal gun prosecutions in recent years. Over all in 2011, federal weapons prosecutions per capita were down 35 percent from their peak in the previous administration. That means violent felons, gang members and the mentally ill who possess firearms are not being prosecuted. And that’s unacceptable.” With that, Ms. Giffords made her way quietly out of the room.
Scores of regular people lined the hallways of the Hart Senate Office Building on Wednesday morning, waiting to enter and signaling the most intense interest in a Congressional hearing since the days of the debate over the health care law, and perhaps the Iraq war. Several law enforcement officials lined a front row of seats in the hearing room. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the committee, began by noting that “the Second Amendment is secure and will remain secure and protected,” adding, “Americans have the right to self-defense and to have guns in their homes to protect their families.”
Many Democrats have hoped to harness the emotional impact of the Newtown tragedy, and recent polling that suggests many Americans including gun owners support some new legislation aimed at stemming at least illegal gun use, to pursue legislation that has become, in many ways, the third rail of American politics. Mr. Leahy, who has a record of supporting measures like an assault weapons ban but also of defending the rights of gun owners in his largely rural state, said: “No one can or will take those rights or our guns away,” and added: “But lives are at risk when responsible people fail to stand up for laws that will keep guns out of the hands of those who will use them to commit mass murder. I ask that we focus our discussion on additional statutory measures to better protect our children and all Americans.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California has already introduced legislation that would ban the sale and manufacture of 157 types of semiautomatic weapons, as well as ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds. Bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines were among the proposals being pushedby President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Leahy promoted his own bill that would give law enforcement officials more tools to investigate so-called straw purchasing of guns, in which people buy firearms for others. But he did not push for a ban on assault weapons, and except for Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who has her own bill in which a ban renewal is central, most people’s comments focused on background checks and mental health provisions to prevent the wrong people from obtaining guns.
But Mr. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has introduced his own far more modest measure that would give law enforcement officials more tools to investigate so-called straw purchasing of guns, in which people buy firearms for others who are prohibited from obtaining them on their own. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, set the tone for gun-rights advocates, by noting that while the tragedy of Newtown has shocked and rattled the nation, the events should not “be used to put forward every gun-control measure that has been floating around for years.”
Other senators are pushing their own bills. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, and Senator Mark Steven Kirk, Republican of Illinois, have agreed to work together on gun trafficking legislation that would seek to crack down on illegal guns. Mr. Kirk is also working on a background check proposal with Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who is considered somewhat of a bellwether among Democrats with strong gun-rights records. The hearing took some turns into gender and class politics, as Mr. LaPierre suggested that armed security detail were the purview of the wealthy and the well connected, leaving regular Americans in peril.
“If you’re in the elite, you get bodyguards,” he said, adding, “Criminals don’t obey the law anyway.” He also said that to the hard-working American “we’re going to say you can have a bolt-action rifle, but you can’t have an AR-15.”
While advocates of more gun control tugged at emotions with anecdotes of random gun violence, one witness, Gayle Trotter, a senior fellow at the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, argued for female gun ownership, citing the case of women protecting their children against an intruder. “An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon,” she said.