[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]





                                




 
                       THE URGENT NEED TO ADDRESS


                       THE GUN VIOLENCE EPIDEMIC

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                          OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                              JUNE 8, 2022

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-84

                               __________

      Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
      
      [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 

      
       
      
      


                       Available on: govinfo.gov,
                         oversight.house.gov or
                             docs.house.gov
                             
                             
                           ______

             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
 47-803             WASHINGTON : 2024                      
                             
                             
                             
                             
                   COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM

                CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman

Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of   James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking 
    Columbia                             Minority Member
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts      Jim Jordan, Ohio
Jim Cooper, Tennessee                Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia         Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois        Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Jamie Raskin, Maryland               Michael Cloud, Texas
Ro Khanna, California                Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland               Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York   Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan              Pete Sessions, Texas
Katie Porter, California             Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Cori Bush, Missouri                  Andy Biggs, Arizona
Shontel M. Brown, Ohio               Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Danny K. Davis, Illinois             Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida    Scott Franklin, Florida
Peter Welch, Vermont                 Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr.,      Pat Fallon, Texas
    Georgia                          Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland           Byron Donalds, Florida
Jackie Speier, California            Vacancy
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Mark DeSaulnier, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts

                      Russ Anello, Staff Director
                   Greta Gao, Chief Oversight Counsel
          Elisa LaNier, Director of Operations and Chief Clerk
                      Contact Number: 202-225-5051

                  Mark Marin, Minority Staff Director
                                 ------                                
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held on June 8, 2022.....................................     1

                               Witnesses

Panel 1

Zeneta Everhart, Mother of Zaire Goodman, Buffalo, New York
Oral Statement...................................................     6

Roy Guerrero, M.D., Pediatrician, Uvalde, Texas
Oral Statement...................................................     8

Miah Cerrillo, Fourth Grade Student at Robb Elementary School, 
  Uvalde, Texas
Oral Statement...................................................    10

Felix Rubio and Kimberly Rubio, Parents of Lexi Rubio, Uvalde, 
  Texas
Oral Statement...................................................    11

Lucretia Hughes Klucken (minority witness), DC Project, Women for 
  Gun Rights
Oral Statement...................................................    12

Panel 2

The Honorable Eric Adams, Mayor, New York, New York
Oral Statement...................................................    14

Greg Jackson, Jr., Executive Director, Community Justice Action 
  Fund
Oral Statement...................................................    16

Becky Pringle, President, National Education Association
Oral Statement...................................................    17

Joseph Gramaglia, Police Commissioner, Buffalo, New York
Oral Statement...................................................    18

Nick Suplina, Senior Vice President for Law & Policy, Everytown 
  for Gun Safety
Oral Statement...................................................    20

Amy Swearer (minority witness), Legal Fellow, The Heritage 
  Foundation
Oral Statement...................................................    22

 Opening statements and the prepared statements for the witnesses 
  are available in the U.S. House of Representatives Repository 
  at: docs.house.gov.
                           INDEX OF DOCUMENTS

                              ----------                              

The documents entered into the record are listed below.

  * New York Times article regarding mass shootings; submitted by 
  Rep. Lynch.

  * Christian Science Monitor Weekly article; submitted by Rep. 
  Sessions.

  * FiveThirtyEight article; submitted by Rep. Sessions.

  * Fox News article, ``West Virginia Woman With Pistol Shoots, 
  Kills Man at Graduation Party: `Saved Several Lives','' 
  submitted by Rep. Clyde.

  * Wall Street Journal article, ``Why `Do Something' Won't 
  Work,'' submitted by Rep. Foxx.

  * Testimony of Stephen Willeford from a May 25, 2022 Senate 
  Judiciary Committee Hearing; submitted by Rep. Biggs.

  * John Lott of Crime Research Prevention Center Report; 
  submitted by Rep. Biggs.

  * Washington Examiner article regarding the Buffalo shooter; 
  submitted by Rep. Biggs.

  * New York Times article, ``The Mass Shootings Where Stricter 
  Gun Laws Might Have Made A Difference,'' submitted by Rep. 
  Tlaib.

  * Article regarding Uvalde shooter; submitted by Rep. Speier.

  * A 2015 Study, ``Preventing School Violence, Assessing Armed 
  Guardians, School Policy and Context;'' submitted by Rep. 
  Pressley.

  * A 2019 report, ``Cops and No Counselors,'' submitted by Rep. 
  Pressley.

  * Letters from the Federal School Discipline and Climate Group 
  and other community-based organizations regarding mass policing 
  and trauma-informed services; submitted by Rep. Pressley.

The documents listed are available at docs.house.gov.


                       THE URGENT NEED TO ADDRESS



                       THE GUN VIOLENCE EPIDEMIC

                              ----------                              


                        Wednesday, June 8, 2022

                  House of Representatives,
                 Committee on Oversight and Reform,
                                                   Washington, D.C.
    The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in 
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, and via Zoom; the 
Hon. Carolyn Maloney [chairwoman of the committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Maloney, Norton, Lynch, Connolly, 
Krishnamoorthi, Raskin, Khanna, Mfume, Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, 
Porter, Bush, Brown, Davis, Wasserman Schultz, Welch, Johnson, 
Sarbanes, Speier, Kelly, Lawrence, DeSaulnier, Pressley, Comer, 
Jordan, Foxx, Hice, Grothman, Cloud, Gibbs, Higgins, Norman, 
Sessions, Keller, Biggs, Clyde, Franklin, LaTurner, Fallon, 
Herrell, and Donalds.
    Also present: Higgins of New York and Jackson Lee of Texas.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The committee will come to order.
    Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the committee at any time.
    I now recognize myself for an opening statement.
    Today we will examine the destruction and heartbreak that 
gun violence is causing across our country. I want to express 
my deep gratitude to each of our witnesses for being here 
today. I am particularly grateful to our witnesses who will be 
discussing the loss of their loved ones and their personal 
experiences from recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and 
Buffalo, New York.
    Despite their pain, these witnesses expressed their strong 
desire to share their stories with this committee and the 
public. I know that I speak for every member of this committee 
when I say that we are inspired by your bravery. For a parent, 
there is no greater pain than the loss of a child. But across 
the country, this gun violence is claiming the lives of our 
children and loved ones in places where they should be safe: 
our schools, our supermarkets, even our churches and our 
synagogues.
    Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in 
our country. As a society, we are failing our children and we 
are failing each other. This out-of-control gun violence is a 
uniquely American tragedy.
    [Chart]
    Chairwoman Maloney. As you can see in this chart, in 2019, 
the United States suffered 17 times more gun deaths than the 
next highest G7 country. We stand alone in mass shootings. 
Other countries pass sensible gun safety laws and protect their 
children, and no other country comes close to the number of 
school shootings we have.
    Between 2009 and 2018, the U.S. had 288--288--school 
shootings. All other G7 countries combined had just five. Some 
of my colleagues across the aisle have blamed the violence on 
mental illness. They have blamed violent video games. They have 
blamed family values. They have even blamed open doors. They 
have blamed everything, but guns, but we know the United States 
does not have a monopoly on mental illness, video games or any 
other excuse. What America does have is widespread access to 
guns. That includes assault weapons, which were designed to 
kill as many enemy soldiers on the battlefield as possible, as 
quickly as possible. Yet in many states, these weapons of war 
can be purchased by an 18-year-old just by walking into a 
store.
    Assault weapons were used in the recent massacres, in 
Buffalo, Texas, and Tulsa, just as they were in Parkland, 
Newtown, San Bernardino, Orlando, Las Vegas, and so many other 
mass shootings. These weapons have no place in our communities. 
No civilian needs an assault rifle, and the Second Amendment 
does not protect the right to own a weapon of war. It is time 
that we banned assault rifles from our streets, from our 
communities, from our homes. But if we are going to truly 
address the gun crisis, we need to be honest about why our 
country has failed to act sooner.
    The truth is the gun industry is making billions of dollars 
selling the weapons that are killing our children, and they are 
fighting tooth and nail to keep doing it. That is why I have 
launched an investigation into five leading gun manufacturers 
that sell assault weapons used in mass shootings. We need to 
know why these communities are marketing military weapons to 
civilians and how much they are profiting from the death of our 
children.
    Of course, mass shootings are just one part of this crisis. 
We can't forget that gun violence is a steady drumbeat in so 
many of our towns and cities, especially in marginalized 
communities. Black men make up more than half of all gun 
victims in the United States, despite making up less than six 
percent of the population. Latinos are twice as likely to be 
killed by a gun and four times as likely to be wounded by a gun 
as white Americans. We need transparency into how guns are 
reaching the hands of criminals, which is why this committee 
has been working to identify the gun dealers that are selling 
the most guns used in crimes, including across state lines.
    Today, the House is voting to pass commonsense gun safety 
legislation, which is a crucial first step in addressing this 
crisis. I am particularly grateful this bill will include key 
provisions similar to a bipartisan bill I first introduced more 
than 10 years ago, with the strong support of former chairman, 
Elijah Cummings. My bill will make gun trafficking a Federal 
felony and strengthen penalties for straw purchasers, which 
will help stop the flow of guns into the hands of criminals.
    My goal for today's hearing is simple. I am asking every 
member of this committee to listen with an open heart to the 
brave witnesses who have come forward to tell their stories 
about how gun violence has impacted their lives. Our witnesses 
today have endured pain and loss, yet they are displaying 
incredible courage by coming here to ask us to do our jobs. Let 
us hear their voices. Let us honor their courage. Let us find 
the same courage to pass commonsense laws to protect our 
children.
    I now recognize the distinguished ranking member, Mr. 
Comer, for an opening statement.
    Mr. Comer. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney. All of our hearts 
go out to the victims and the families in Uvalde, Texas, and 
Buffalo, New York. To those who are testifying before us today, 
there are no words to describe the horror you have faced and 
the deep anguish you feel. The American people grieve with you.
    As elected representatives in Congress, it is our 
obligation to work to ensure that these violent crimes and 
tragedies never happen again. Americans of all backgrounds 
should be empowered to defend themselves against rising 
violence. The increased violence we have witnessed since the 
summer of 2020 is unacceptable. Murders and aggravated assaults 
are all up. This is a trend we must reverse. We have recently 
witnessed several high-profile senseless acts of murder and 
mayhem that have impacted all Americans, including, tragically, 
our defenseless and innocent schoolchildren. We must respond to 
those heinous acts and provide justice for the families.
    At the same time, we recognize that violence occurs in many 
of our communities on a daily basis, impacting Americans across 
the United States from every background. Too often tragedies 
are politicized for partisan gain. And we have seen many seek 
to leverage these crimes and their victims to push for radical 
left-wing policies or to buttress their campaigns to get 
elected. Instead of rushing to score political points at the 
expense of our justice system working properly, we must learn 
from these senseless acts of violence and take concrete action 
to reduce violence in the future. We owe it to the families of 
the victims. They deserve justice, and we owe it to the 
American people. We must and can prevent similar tragedies.
    We all want to live in a country where we can achieve our 
American Dream without the threat of violence in our 
communities. We must work together to deliver sensible 
solutions to secure our schools, protect our most vulnerable 
among us, and bring to justice those responsible for these 
heinous crimes. Our local officials cannot defund our police, 
and our prosecutors cannot be soft on crime. I believe that we 
must carefully consider the security posture of vulnerable 
targets sought out by evil people. We must ensure that every 
American has a safe environment in which to live their lives in 
peace. And that requires thinking creatively about solutions to 
harden our infrastructure, enforce our existing laws, and work 
to foster a culture that values conflict resolution and dialog 
over violence.
    I strongly believe that there is an important place for 
law-abiding gun owners to serve in protecting themselves, their 
families, and their communities from violence. Our Second 
Amendment is an important tool in securing our individual 
rights to self-defense. Knee-jerk reactions to impose gun 
control policies that seek to curtail our constitutional right 
to bear arms are not the answer. Gun ownership is on the rise 
in America. People want to protect themselves and their 
families. We should commend all law-abiding gun owners who 
safely use, store, and carry those firearms, not vilify them 
for blatantly political purposes. I also believe we must 
continue to empower our law enforcement professionals to serve 
and protect our communities honorably. As I said before, defund 
the police and soft on crime prosecution policies have been a 
failure across the board.
    Efforts to divert violent criminals out of the criminal 
justice system have failed, leading to the victimization of the 
very communities those policies were promised to help. Violent 
criminals should be in jail, not back on the streets to 
reoffend and terrorize. We must recommit ourselves to pursuing 
justice and keeping violent criminals off our street.
    Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. I want to 
clarify that I support the Second Amendment. I support law-
abiding gun owners. I don't support lax gun laws that allow 
guns to get into the hands of criminals and unstable people.
    I now recognize the gentlelady from California, Ms. Porter, 
for an opening statement.
    Ms. Porter. I represent a community in mourning. Less than 
one month ago in Laguna Woods, a gunman locked the doors to the 
Geneva Presbyterian Church and opened fire on my community's 
tight-knit Taiwanese congregation. This shooting was an 
undeniable tragedy, but under different circumstances, it could 
have been an unimaginable massacre. Unlike the shooters 
involved in Buffalo, the shooter in Laguna Woods did not carry 
an assault rifle equipped with high-capacity magazines. He was 
armed with nine-millimeter handguns that forced him to reload. 
That difference gave a hero, Dr. John Chang, a chance to stop 
the carnage. He sacrificed his life to stop the shooter, and 
his bravery was remarkable, but we cannot depend on a hero's 
bravery to save lives. Law enforcement has determined that the 
gunman was ready to kill every person in the church. Had he 
been armed with a military-style assault rifle, he may have 
done so. There is no telling how many more lives would have 
been lost.
    Shootings involving assault weapons are six times as deadly 
as shootings involving handguns, and when assault weapons are 
equipped with high-capacity magazines or bump stocks, the death 
toll rises even further. California has banned these weapons 
for years. Our laws have saved lives, including members of 
Geneva Presbyterian Church. Congress must follow California's 
lead.
    I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The lady yields back. I now recognize 
the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Higgins, for an opening 
statement.
    Mr. Higgins of Louisiana. Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a 
sober day in Congress as we reflect upon the challenges our 
Nation faces. In 2005, as a young cop, I was dispatched to 
reports of a man down in the street in a part of the city that 
was crime ridden and dangerous. I found a victim, a teenager, 
and I held the mortal wound in the back of his head, whispered 
prayer into his ear as his life flowed from his body. He died 
there in my arms on the street. He was killed by an axe handle.
    I am prayerful for America, I am prayerful for healing, and 
I am prayerful for discernment amongst this body and my 
colleagues. As a law enforcement officer, I know what it means 
to swear an oath to protect and serve my community and my 
Nation and the importance of bringing justice to the families 
of those who suffer at the hands of evil. And it is essential 
that the fundamental freedoms--First Amendment, Second 
Amendment, Fourth Amendment--are always protected and preserved 
by this body.
    I was sworn as a man, I swore an oath to uphold the 
Constitution of the United States, and I will never back down 
from defending that Constitution, including the rights of law-
abiding Americans to keep and bear arms.
    Madam Chair, I thank you for this hearing today, and I 
yield.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields. Now we will 
introduce our witnesses. I would like to turn it over to the 
gentleman from New York, Mr. Higgins, to introduce our first 
witness.
    Without objection, Mr. Higgins is authorized to participate 
in today's hearing. He represents Buffalo. And you are now 
recognized, Mr. Higgins.
    Mr. Higgins of New York. Thank you, Madam Chair, and 
Ranking Member, the honorable members of the Oversight and 
Reform Committee.
    The Greek tragic poet, Aeschylus, says that we suffer our 
way to wisdom. He says we suffer our way to wisdom. To live is 
to suffer. To endure the suffering is to give meaning to the 
suffering. We have a problem in this country, and unless we 
learn from the tragic events of the last three weeks, who are 
we as a people? In this brave group of panelists from two 
cities that were devastated, the destruction beyond human 
comprehension, we have to find a way to deal with this.
    In Buffalo, the shooting started at 2:30 in the afternoon 
and was concluded in two minutes and three seconds. One 
shooter, a semiautomatic weapon, 13 people shot, 10 dead, one 
shooter. If you look for a common denominator in all of these, 
it is typically someone that should never have had a gun with a 
high-capacity weapon to kill as many as people--as many 
people--as quickly as possible.
    Zeneta Everhart is here. She is a friend and a proud 
citizen of the city of Buffalo. Zeneta is with us today as the 
mother of the Buffalo mass shooting survivor, Zaire Goodman. 
Zaire was working at the Tops Friendly Market that was targeted 
by a white supremacist racist, deranged gunman. Zaire is also a 
colleague in government. She is the director of diversity and 
inclusion for my friend and colleague, New York State Senator, 
Tim Kennedy. Zeneta's story is both tragic and magic, and with 
that it gives me great honor to present to the committee, 
Zeneta Everhart.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. And after Ms. Everhart, we 
will hear from Dr. Roy Guerrero, who is a pediatrician in 
Uvalde, Texas. Then we will hear from Miah Cerrillo, who is a 
4th grader at Robb Elementary School in Texas. Miah will be 
sharing her experience in a pre-recorded video. Her father, 
Miguel, is with us in the room today and will be making brief 
remarks after his daughter's video, then he will excuse 
himself. Next we will hear from Felix and Kimberly Rubio, who 
are the parents of Lexi Rubio, who tragically lost her life in 
the Texas shooting.
    I now recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Hice, to 
introduce our last witness on this panel.
    Mr. Hice. Thank you, Madam Chair. It is my honor to 
recognize Lucretia Hughes. She is part of my constituency, an 
incredibly bright light in our 10th District, and she has an 
extremely compelling story. I just wanted to publicly recognize 
Lucretia. I want to thank you for being here today. I know it 
is hard to share the story that you come to us with, but we are 
grateful that you are here. Madam Chair, I want to say thank 
you for just these few seconds to recognize Lucretia Hughes and 
welcome her here.
    I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The witnesses will be 
unmuted, so we can swear them in. Please raise your right hand.
    Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to 
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 
so help you God?
    [A chorus of ayes.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. Let the record show that the witnesses 
answered in the affirmative. Thank you.
    And without objection, your written statements will be made 
part of the record.
    With that, Ms. Everhart, you are now recognized for your 
testimony. Please testify, Ms. Everhart.

STATEMENT OF ZENETA EVERHART, MOTHER OF ZAIRE GOODMAN, BUFFALO, 
                            NEW YORK

    Ms. Everhart. Thank you, Chairwoman. Zaire Mysaun Goodman, 
my son, or, as I like to call him, ``The Kid,'' was shot and 
injured by a domestic terrorist on Saturday, May 14, 2022, at 
the Tops grocery store where he was an employee in a 
historically Black community on Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo, 
New York. Zaire, ``The Kid,'' is now a 21-year-old man. He is 
pure joy. He is everything that is good in this world. And as I 
sit here before you today, I can hear my son telling me to stop 
being extra and get to the point. I was going to tell you all a 
bunch of fluffy funny stories about Zaire, but I have a 
message, so I will get to the point.
    As director of diversity and inclusion with New York State 
Senator Tim Kennedy's office, stories of gun violence and 
racism are all too familiar, but now these stories are Zaire's 
stories. These problems literally knocked on my front door. 
These are issues that as a country we do not like to openly 
discuss. Domestic terrorism exists in this country for three 
reasons. America is inherently violent. This is who we are as a 
Nation. The very existence of this country was founded on 
violence, hate, and racism with the near annihilation of my 
native brothers and sisters. My ancestors brought to America 
through the slave trade were the first currency of America. Let 
me say that again for the people in the back. My ancestors, the 
first currency of America, were stripped off their heritage and 
culture, separated from their families, bargained for on 
auction blocks, sold, beaten, raped, and lynched. Yet I 
continuously hear after every mass shooting that this is not 
who we are as Americans and as a Nation. Hear me clearly. This 
is exactly who we are.
    Education. The majority of what I have learned about 
African-American history, I did not learn until I went to 
college and I had to choose those classes. Why is that? Why is 
African-American history not a part of American history? 
African-Americans built this country from the ground up. My 
ancestors' blood is embedded in the soil. We have to change the 
curriculum in schools across the country so that we may 
adequately educate our children. Reading about history is 
crucial to the future of this country. Learning about other 
cultures, ethnicities, and religions in school should not be 
something that is up for debate. We cannot continue to 
whitewash education, creating generations of children to 
believe that one race of people are better than the other. Our 
differences should make us curious, not angry. At the end of 
the day, I bleed, you bleed. We are all human. That awful day 
that will now be a part of the history books, hopefully. Let us 
not forget to add that horrific day to the curriculum that we 
teach our children.
    Guns. The 18-year-old terrorist who stormed into my 
community armed with an AR-15, killing 10 people and injuring 
three others, received the shotgun from his parents for his 
16th birthday. For Zaire's 16th birthday I bought him a few 
video games, some headphones, a pizza, and a cake. We are not 
the same.
    How and why and what in the world is wrong with this 
country? Children should not be armed with weapons. Parents who 
provide their children with guns should be held accountable. 
Lawmakers who continuously allow these mass shootings to 
continue by not passing stricter gun laws should be voted out. 
To the lawmakers who feel that we do not need stricter gun 
laws, let me paint a picture for you. My son, Zaire, has a hole 
in the right side of his neck, two on his back, and another on 
his left leg caused by an exploding bullet from an AR-15. As I 
cleaned his wounds, I can feel pieces of that bullet in his 
back. Shrapnel will be left inside of his body for the rest of 
his life.
    Now I want you to picture that exact scenario for one of 
your children. This should not be your story or mine's. As an 
elected official, it is your duty to draft legislation that 
protects Zaire and all of the children and citizens in this 
country. Commonsense gun laws are not about your personal 
feelings or beliefs. You are elected because you have been 
chosen and are trusted to protect us, but let me say to you 
here today, I do not feel protected.
    No citizen needs an AR-15. These weapons are designed to do 
the most harm in the least amount of time. And on Saturday, May 
14, it took a domestic terrorist just two minutes to shoot and 
kill 10 people and injure three others. If after hearing from 
me and the other people testifying here today does not move you 
to act on gun laws, I invite you to my home to help me clean 
Zaire's wounds so that you may see up close the damage that has 
been caused to my son and to my community.
    To the families of Ruth Whitfield, Pearl Young, Katherine 
Massey, Heyward Patterson, Celestine Chaney, Geraldine Talley, 
Aaron Salter, Andre Mackneil, Margus Morrison, and Roberta 
Drury, I promise that their deaths will not be in vain. Zaire 
and I promise to use our voice to lift their names, and we will 
carry their spirit with us as we embark on this journey to 
create change. I know that their collective souls watched out 
for Zaire that day, and I am eternally grateful to them for 
that.
    To the east side of Buffalo, I love you. I am speaking 
directly to my people, to my hood. From Bailey, to Broadway, to 
Kensington, to Fillmore, to Delavan, to Jefferson, and every 
street in between, just like the potholes that we want filled 
in--yes, I keep it real--together we will continue to fill 
those streets with love. No matter what people say about the 
East Side of Buffalo, we will not be broken. I was born there, 
raised there. I raised my son there. I still live there, and I 
do the majority of my professional work on the East Side of 
Buffalo. I vow to you today that everywhere I go, I will make 
sure that the people hear the real stories of our people. For 
too long, our community has been neglected and starved of the 
resources that we so greatly need. I promise that I will not 
stop pushing for more resources to be funneled into the East 
Side of Buffalo. Each and every person that lives within that 
community, we are family, not a perfect community, but I know 
that we are love.
    To the greater Buffalo area, to everyone from around the 
country and the world who have reached out and loved on us, on 
behalf of Zaire, Zaire's father, Damien Goodman, my mother, my 
father, my sisters, my brothers, and myself, we thank you. We 
thank you for all of your thoughts and your prayers. Thank you 
for all of the love and support you have shown us during this 
difficult time. But I also say to you today with a heart full 
from the outpouring of love that you also freely gave us, your 
thoughts and prayers are not enough. We need you to stand with 
us in the days, weeks, months, and years to come and be ready 
to go to work and help us to create the change that this 
country so desperately needs.
    And I will end with a quote from Charles Blow in his book 
The Devil You Know: ``Race, as we have come to understand it, 
is a fiction, but racism, as we have come to live it, is a 
fact.'' The point here is not to impose a new racial hierarchy, 
but to remove an existing one. After centuries of waiting for 
white majorities to overturn white supremacy, it is clear to me 
that it has fallen to Black people to do it themselves, and I 
stand at the ready.
    Zaire, this is for you, Kid. Happy birthday.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Dr. Guerrero, you are now 
recognized for your testimony.

     STATEMENT OF ROY GUERRERO, PEDIATRICIAN, UVALDE, TEXAS

    Dr. Guerrero. Thank you. Thank you, Chairwoman. My name is 
Dr. Roy Guerrero. I am a Board-certified pediatrician and was 
present at Uvalde Memorial Hospital, the day of the massacre on 
May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School. I was called here 
today as a witness, but I showed up because I am a doctor 
because many years ago I swore an oath, an oath to do no harm. 
After witnessing firsthand the carnage in my hometown of 
Uvalde, to stay silent would have betrayed that oath. Inaction 
is harm. Passivity is harm. Delay is harm. So, here I am, not 
to plead, not to beg or convince you of anything, but to do my 
job and hope that by doing so, it inspires the members of this 
House to do theirs.
    I have lived in Uvalde my whole life. In fact, I attended 
Robb Elementary School myself as a kid. As often is the case 
with us grownups, we remember a lot of the good and not so much 
of the bad, so I don't recall homework or detention. I remember 
how much I loved going to school. What a joyful time it was. 
Back then were able to run between classrooms with ease to 
visit our friends, and I remember the way the cafeteria smelled 
at lunchtime on hamburger Thursdays.
    It was right around lunchtime on a Tuesday that a gunman 
entered the school through a main door without restriction, 
massacred 19 students and two teachers, and changed the way 
that every student at Robb and their families will remember 
that school forever. I doubt they will remember the smell of 
the cafeteria or the laughter ringing in the hallways. Instead, 
they will be haunted by the memory of screams and bloodshed, 
panic and chaos, police shouting, parents wailing. I know I 
will never forget what I saw that day.
    For me that day started like any typical Tuesday in our 
pediatric clinic: moms calling for coughs, boogers, sports 
physicals right before the summer rush. School was out in two 
days, then summer camps would guarantee some grazes and ankle 
sprains. Injuries that could be patched up and fixed with a 
Mickey Mouse sticker as a reward. Then at 12:30, business as 
usual stopped, and with it, my heart. A colleague from the San 
Antonio Trauma Center texted me and said, ``Why are pediatric 
surgeons and anesthesiologists on call for a mass shooting in 
Uvalde?'' I raced to the hospital to find parents outside 
yelling children's names in desperation and sobbing as they 
begged for any news related to their child. Those mothers' 
cries I will never get out of my head.
    As I entered the chaos of the ER, the first casualty I came 
across was Miah Cerrillo. She was sitting in the hallway, her 
face was still clearly in shock, but her whole body was shaking 
from the adrenaline coursing through it. The white Lilo and 
Stitch shirt that she wore was covered in blood and her 
shoulder was bleeding from the shrapnel injury. Sweet Miah, I 
have known her my whole life. As a baby, she survived major 
liver surgeries against all odds, and once again, she is here 
as a survivor, inspiring us with her story today and her 
bravery. When I saw Miah sitting there, I remember having seen 
her parents outside. So, after quickly examining two other 
patients of mine in the hallway with minor injuries, I raced 
outside to let them know that Miah was alive. I wasn't ready 
for their next urgent and desperate question: ``where is 
Elena?''
    Elena is Miah's eight-year-old sister who was also at Robb 
at the time of the shooting. I had heard from some of the 
nurses that there were two dead children who had been moved to 
the surgical area of the hospital. As I made my way there, I 
prayed that I wouldn't find her. I didn't find Elena, but what 
I did find was something no prayer will ever relieve: two 
children whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at 
them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart, that the 
only clue as to their identities was blood-spattered cartoon 
cloths still clinging to them, clinging for life and finding 
none.
    I could only hope these two bodies were a tragic exception 
to the list of survivors, but as I waited there with my fellow 
Uvalde doctors, nurses, first responders, and hospital staff 
for other casualties we hoped to save, they never arrived. All 
that remained was the bodies of 17 more children and the two 
teachers who cared for them, who dedicated their careers to 
nurturing and respecting the awesome potential every single 
one, just as we doctors do.
    I will tell you why I became a pediatrician, because I knew 
that children were the best patients. They accept the situation 
as it is explained to them. You don't have to coax them into 
changing their lifestyles in order to get better or plead them 
to modify their behavior as you do with adults. No matter how 
hard you try to help an adult, their path to healing is always 
determined by how willing they are to take action. Adults are 
stubborn. We are resistant to change even when the change will 
make things better for ourselves, but especially when we think 
we are immune to the fallout. Why else would there have been 
such little progress made in Congress to stop gun violence?
    Innocent children all over the country today are dead 
because laws and policy allows people to buy weapons before 
they are legally old enough to even buy a pack of beer. They 
are dead because restrictions have been allowed to lapse. They 
are dead because there are no rules about where guns are kept, 
because no one is paying attention to who is buying them. The 
thing I can't figure out is whether our politicians are failing 
us out of stubbornness, passivity, or both.
    I said before that as grownups, we have a convenient habit 
of remembering the good and forgetting the bad, never more so 
that when it comes to our guns. Once the blood is rinsed away 
from the bodies of our loved ones and scrubbed off the floors 
of the schools, and supermarkets, and churches, the carnage 
from each scene is erased from our collective conscience, and 
we return again to nostalgia, to the rose-tinted view of our 
Second Amendment as a perfect instrument of American life, no 
matter how many lives are lost.
    I chose to be a pediatrician. I chose to take care of 
children. Keeping them safe from preventable diseases, I can 
do. Keeping them safe from bacterial and brittle bones, I can 
do. But making sure our children are safe from guns, that is 
the job of our politicians and leaders. In this case, you are 
the doctors and our country is the patient. We are lying on the 
operating table riddled with bullets, like the children of Robb 
Elementary and so many other schools. We are bleeding out, and 
you are not there.
    My oath as a doctor means that I signed up to save lives. I 
do my job, and I guess it turns out that I am here to plead, to 
beg, to please, please do yours.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. We will now play the video 
from Miah.
    [Video shown.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. Mr. Cerrillo, you are now recognized.

     STATEMENT OF MIGUEL CERRILLO, FATHER OF MIAH CERRILLO

    Mr. Cerrillo. Hello. Today I come because that girl was my 
baby girl, but she is not the same little girl that I used to 
play with, and run with, and do everything because she was 
daddy's little girl. I have five kids, and she is middle child. 
I don't know what to do because I think I would have lost my 
baby girl. My baby girl is the world because not only once, but 
twice she came back to us. She is everything, not only for me, 
but her siblings and her mother.
    I thank you all for letting me be here and speak out, but I 
wish something will change not only for our kids, but every 
single kid in the world because schools are not safe anymore. 
Something needs to really change. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you for your testimony, and I 
understand you are now leaving. We thank you for sharing your 
story. Thank you.
    And Mr. and Mrs. Rubio, you are now recognized for your 
testimony.

 STATEMENT OF FELIX RUBIO AND KIMBERLY RUBIO, PARENTS OF LEXI 
                      RUBIO, UVALDE, TEXAS

    Ms. Rubio. I am Kimberly Rubio. This is Felix Rubio. We are 
the parents of Alexandria Aniyah, best known as Lexi Rubio, and 
five other children who all attended Uvalde Public Schools 
during the 2021-2022 school year: Kalisa, who completed high 
school this year; Isaiah, who attends Uvalde High School; 
David, Morales Junior High; Jahleela, Flores Elementary; and 
our two youngest children, Julian, 8 and Lexi, 10, who were at 
Robb Elementary.
    On the morning of May 24, 2022, I dropped Lexi and Julian 
off at school a little after 7 a.m. My husband and I returned 
to campus at 8 a.m. for Julian's award ceremony and again at 
10:30 a.m. for Lexi's award ceremony. Lexi received the good 
citizen award and was also recognized for receiving all A's. At 
the conclusion of the ceremony, we took photos with her before 
asking her to pose for a picture with her teacher, Mr. Reyes. 
That photo, her last photo ever, was taken at approximately 
10:54 a.m. To celebrate, we promised to get her ice cream that 
evening. We told her we loved her and we would pick her up 
after school. I can still see her walking with us toward the 
exit. In the reel that keeps scrolling across my memories, she 
turns her head and smiles back at us to acknowledge my promise, 
and then we left. I left my daughter at that school, and that 
decision will haunt me for the rest of my life.
    Afterward, Felix dropped me off at my office, the Uvalde 
Leader-News and returned home because it was a rare day off for 
him between normal shifts and security gigs he takes to help 
make ends meet. I got situated at my desk and began writing 
about a new business in town when the news office started 
hearing commotion on the police scanner, a shooting on Diaz 
Street near Robb Elementary. It wasn't long before we received 
word from my son's teacher that they were safe, secure in the 
classroom. Once evacuated from campus, the children reunited 
with parents and guardians at the Civic Center. My dad picked 
up Julian from the Civic Center and took him to my 
grandmother's house. One of our Robb kids was safe.
    We focused on finding Lexi. Bus after bus arrived, but she 
wasn't on board. We heard there were children at the local 
hospital, so we drove over to provide her description. She 
wasn't there. My dad drove an hour and a half to San Antonio to 
check with the University Hospital. At this point, some part of 
me must have realized that she was gone in the midst of chaos. 
I had the urge to return to Robb. We didn't have our car at 
this point, and traffic was everywhere. So I ran. I ran 
barefoot with my flimsy sandals in my hand. I ran a mile to the 
school, my husband with me. We sat outside for a while before 
it became clear we wouldn't receive an answer from law 
enforcement on scene. A San Antonio firefighter eventually gave 
us a ride back to the Civic Center where the district was 
asking all families who had not been reunited with their 
children to gather. Soon after we received the news that our 
daughter was among the 19 students and two teachers that died 
as a result of gun violence.
    We don't want you to think of Lexi as just a number. She 
was intelligent, compassionate, and athletic. She was quiet, 
shy unless she had a point to make. When she knew she was 
right, as she so often was, she stood her ground. She was firm, 
direct, voice unwavering. So today, we stand for Lexi, and as 
her voice, we demand action. We seek a ban on assault rifles 
and high-capacity magazines. We understand that for some 
reason, to some people, to people with money, to people who 
fund political campaigns, that guns are more important than 
children. So, at this moment we ask for progress. We seek to 
raise the age to purchase these weapons from 18 to 21 years of 
age. We seek red flag laws, stronger background checks. We also 
want to repeal gun manufacturers' liability immunity.
    You have all seen glimpses of who Lexi was, but I also want 
to tell you a little bit about who she would have been. If 
given the opportunity, Lexi would have made a positive change 
in this world. She wanted to attend St. Mary's University in 
San Antonio, Texas on a softball scholarship. She wanted to 
major in math and go on to attend law school. That opportunity 
was taken from her. She was taken from us.
    I am a reporter, a student, a mom, a runner. I have read to 
my children since they were in the womb. My husband is a law 
enforcement officer, an Iraq War veteran. He loves fishing and 
our babies. Somewhere out there, there is a mom listening to 
our testimony, thinking, ``I can't even imagine their pain,'' 
not knowing that our reality will one day be hers unless we act 
now.
    Thank you for your time.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you for your testimony.
    Ms. Hughes, you are now recognized for your testimony.

STATEMENT OF LUCRETIA HUGHES KLUCKEN, DC PROJECT, WOMEN FOR GUN 
                             RIGHTS

    Ms. Hughes Klucken. Honorable Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking 
Member Comer, distinguished members of the committee, thank you 
for allowing me to be here today to address the violence in our 
country. My name is Lucretia Hughes Klucken. I have four 
children and nine grandchildren. On the night of April 2, 2016, 
my family got a phone call that would change our lives forever. 
My ex-husband answered the phone and let a blood curdling 
scream, a scream of pain from the depths of his soul. He 
screamed, he cried, ``He is gone. He is gone.''
    Our 19-year-old son Emmanuel went to a party early that 
night. After we got the call, we were frantic. We called his 
phone. No one answered. We called even the police. I went to 
Facebook and I had to ask, ``Is my son dead?'' I found out that 
he was shot point-blank in the head and killed while playing 
dominos. No one spoke up for weeks, and the killer was on the 
run. No one was going to snitch, but that is the street life.
    Words can't describe how hard it is to bury a child, I ache 
for anyone and all who have done the same. My son's death was a 
result of a criminal with an evil heart and a justice system 
failing to hold him accountable for the laws he had already 
broken. You see, a convicted felon killed my son with an 
illegally obtained gun. Our gun control lobbyists and 
politicians claim that their policies will save lives and 
reduce violence. Well, those policies did not save my son. The 
laws being discussed are already implemented in cities across 
this country. We have decades of evidence proving they do not 
work. St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Washington, Atlanta are gun 
control utopias, and they are plagued with the most violence. 
Ten more laws, 20 more laws, 1,000 more won't make what is 
already illegal more wrong or stop criminals from committing 
these crimes.
    And you all are delusional if you think it is going to keep 
us safe. I am a walking testimony of how the criminal justice 
system and the gun control laws, which is steeped in racism, by 
the way, have failed the Black community. By the age of 25, I 
had already went to 18 young Black men's funeral at the age of 
25. I have one Black man in jail, one Black man in the grave, 
and my young grandson going to be raised without a father. And 
it is a curse on the Black community and everyone else's.
    Something has to change. Thoughts and prayers and calls for 
more gun control isn't enough. How about letting me defend 
myself from evil? You don't think that I am capable and 
trustworthy to handle a firearm. You don't think that the 
Second Amendment doesn't apply to people that look like me? Who 
and you who would call for more gun controls are the same ones 
that are calling to defund the police? Who is supposed to 
protect us? We must prepare to be our own first responders to 
protect ourselves and our loved ones. I am a legal, law-abiding 
citizen, and I don't need the government to save me.
    I teach people how to use a firearm. I empower others to 
look at me to understand that Second Amendment is their right. 
I am a proud member of the D.C. Project, Women for Gun Rights. 
We believe that education is the safety, not ineffective 
legislation. We support meaningful solutions that will actually 
save lives. We support the Safe Student Act, H.R. 7415, which 
would immediately make school safer in hindsight of Parkland. 
We saw failure of the government at every level, failing the 
students. Students saw something and they said something, and 
the school did not act. Police were called to his residence 
over 30 times, and they did not act, and finally the police did 
not go into the school that fateful day and failed to protect 
those kids. We need to secure our schools, and we got to secure 
this building like you all do. What is the difference?
    We call on Congress to ban gun-free zones, fund nonpartisan 
firearm education programs, like KidSafe Foundation, and non-
governmental mental health organizations like Hold My Guns. And 
in closing, I claim that nothing in these bills do anything to 
make us safer or address the mental health crisis in this 
country. Despite living with the heartache of losing my son on 
a daily basis, I believe it is our God-given right to defend 
ourselves from any act of violence. Making it more difficult or 
even more expensive for me, and people that look like me, and 
other law-abiding citizens will not make us safer. It will 
embolden the criminals. Gun owners are not the enemies, and 
these gun control policies are not the solution.
    Thank you. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Thank you all for your 
powerful and meaningful and gut wrenching testimony.
    You are excused, and we will pause while we seek the next 
panel for their testimony.
    [Pause.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. The meeting will resume. We are now 
ready for our second panel, and I would like to introduce our 
witnesses. The first witness is the Honorable Eric Adams, who 
is the mayor of the city of New York. Then we will hear from 
Greg Jackson, who is the executive director of the Community 
Justice Action Fund. Next, we will hear from Becky Pringle, who 
is the president of the National Education Association. Next, 
we will hear from Joseph Gramaglia, who is the police 
commissioner of Buffalo, New York. Then we will hear from Nick 
Suplina, who is the senior vice president for law and policy at 
Everytown for Gun Safety. Finally, we will hear from Amy 
Swearer, who is the legal fellow at the Edwin Meese Center for 
Legal and Judicial Studies in the Heritage Foundation.
    The witnesses will be unmuted so that we may swear them in. 
Please raise your right hand.
    Do you swear to affirm that the testimony you are about to 
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 
so help you God?
    [A chorus of ayes.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. Let the record show that the witnesses 
answered in the affirmative. Thank you.
    Without objection, your written statements will be made 
part of the record.
    With that, Mayor Adams, you are now recognized for your 
testimony. Thank you for coming.
    [No response.]
    Mr. Adams.
    [Inaudible.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. Turn on your mic.

  STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ERIC ADAMS, MAYOR, NEW YORK, NEW 
                              YORK

    Mr. Adams. Thank you. Thank you very much. Again, I want to 
thank you, Madam Chairwoman Maloney, for the invitation to 
testify today. I also want to thank all the members of the 
House Committee on Oversight and Reform, members from the New 
York City congressional delegation, and everyone who has 
testified today, especially those who have so bravely shared 
their stories of losing loved ones to gun violence. I was 
particularly touched by hearing the husband and wife that lost 
their baby girl. As a father with one son, it was extremely 
impactful to all of us.
    I am Eric Adams, and I am honored to appear before you 
today as the 110th mayor of the great city of New York to 
discuss the ways we can protect public safety and prevent gun 
violence.
    Ladies and gentlemen, it is high noon in America, time for 
every one of us to decide where we stand on the issue of gun 
violence; time to decide if it is more important to protect the 
profits of gun manufacturers or the lives of our children; time 
to decide if we are going to be a Nation of laws or 
confederation of chaos, and we must do it now. It is high noon 
in America, our country, the country I love. The clock is 
ticking every day, every minute toward another hour of death.
    I am here today to ask every one of you and everyone in 
this Congress to stand with all of us to end gun violence and 
protect the lives of Americans. We are facing a crisis that is 
killing more Americans than war, a crisis that is now the No. 1 
cause of death for our young people, a crisis that is flooding 
our cities with the illegal guns faster than we can take them 
off the street. The New York City Police Department has taken 
over 3,000 illegal guns off our streets this year alone, but 
the guns just keep coming. This is a crisis that transcends 
party lines and affects both rural and urban communities. I 
know this firsthand as the co-chair of Everytown's non-partisan 
Coalition on Mayors against Illegal Guns.
    No matter what our party affiliations, we are united in our 
mission to stop crime, save lives, and bring an end to gun 
violence because this isn't about blue versus red. This is 
about right versus wrong. Whether it is on the street wearing a 
badge or in these chambers taking a vote, we must stand for 
what is right.
    First, we need Congress to take the handcuffs off the 
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, known as 
ATF, and let them do their jobs. That means confirming 
President Biden's nominee as soon as possible. We must work 
together to dam all the rivers that lead this to the sea of 
violence. Commonsense gun reform must become the law of the 
land. I am pleased that today the House will vote on H.R. 7910, 
the Protecting Our Kids Act, and I urge the passage of the gun 
violence prevention package for consideration in the city. I 
also urge the Senate to pass H.R. 8, the bipartisan Background 
Checks Act of 2021, and H.R. 1446, the Enhanced Background 
Checks Act of 2021. These are bipartisan gun safety bills that 
will make our cities and our people safer.
    I stand with President Joe Biden in calling on Congress to 
act now to regulate or ban assault weapons in this country. 
Even if we only raise the age required to buy one of these 
weapons, lives will be saved. We need Congress to direct 
Federal aid to localities and states that support not just law 
enforcement and violence prevention, but also access to high-
quality healthcare, childcare, education, and housing. We must 
build the society while youth on a path to fulfillment, not a 
road to ruin.
    As mayor, my greatest responsibility is protecting the 
lives and the safety of the people of New York City. This is my 
call, and my duty, and my life's work. I did it as a police 
officer in a uniform and wearing the badge, and I do it now as 
the elected leader of our largest American city, but I need 
your help to further protect our people and to save lives. The 
time is right now. It is high noon in America.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Mr. Jackson, you are now 
recognized for your testimony. Mr. Jackson?

 STATEMENT OF GREG JACKSON, JR., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY 
                      JUSTICE ACTION FUND

    Mr. Jackson. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member 
Comer, and the rest of the committee for inviting me on this 
really important topic. My name is Greg Jackson. I am the 
executive director for the Community Justice Action Fund, the 
only national gun violence advocacy organization led by 
survivor of color, but I am not here by choice. I am here by 
circumstance.
    In 2013, just miles from this chamber, I was shot as an 
innocent bystander while I was simply walking home, and when I 
arrived at the hospital, I wasn't welcomed with nurses and 
surgeons. No, I was met with investigators. They questioned me 
as a suspect first and a patient second. I spent 21 day is in 
the hospital, six months learning how to walk again. But what 
was most terrifying and tragic was that when I turned on the 
TV, I was watching Members of Congress have the same debates 
that we are having right now. That was nine years ago.
    Every year, over 110,000 people are shot or killed by gun 
violence. So, that means nearly a million lives have been 
directly devastated since I laid in that hospital, looked up at 
that television and watched the members of this chamber debate 
this topic. Most of the stories of those who have been impacted 
by gun violence like mine will never make the headlines. You 
know, just two miles from here, Makiyah Wilson was shot, 10 
years old while going to get ice cream. Karon Brown, one of my 
mentees, who hosted his own Stop the Violence event in this 
neighborhood, was shot down that same summer and killed in 
front of a McDonald's. And Pamela Thomas, here in D.C., who was 
so afraid of gun violence in her community that she wrote her 
own eulogy, just to be shot by a stray bullet in front of her 
son.
    These stats are not stats. These are stories of real 
people, real people that are dying in our streets every single 
day. Every day, 110 Americans are killed with guns and 200 are 
shot and wounded. And we have talked a lot about this being the 
No. 1 cause of death for all youth, surpassing car accidents, 
drug overdoses and COVID-19. But amid this pandemic, we have 
also seen a 35-percent increase in homicides, and this still 
remains the No. 1 cause of death for Black men, the No. 2 cause 
of death for Latino men, and the No. 2 cause of death for Black 
women. We are here because we cannot and let's not hide from 
the harsh truth. Gun violence is destroying communities around 
the country, and every day, families experience firsthand the 
devastation gunfire brings. To eliminate gun violence, we must 
swiftly recognize that this is a public health crisis that 
deserves a public health response.
    At Community Justice, we address gun violence by focusing 
on those who have been most impacted by the crisis, and we urge 
Congress to invest in community-based solutions that we know 
can address those public health risk factors, that can reduce 
the risk factors of those impacted by gun violence, but also 
address the root causes. But we also strongly urge that any 
supply side approach not only focus on the shooter, but on the 
supplier and the source of firearms that are flooding into our 
communities.
    In moments of crisis, Congress has proven to be as 
resilient as the American people and take action. When 
coronavirus struck our country, Congress authorized bipartisan 
legislation to provide resources and regulations to save lives. 
When Ukraine was in crisis, Congress sprang into action and 
mobilized bipartisan authorization to authorize immediate aid, 
economic investments, mental health resources, and other 
services to support those communities. But I am here to say 
that we are in crisis in America today. Each time we did the 
hard thing because it was the right thing to do, and this 
crisis is no different. This crisis now has taken away 
grandparents in Buffalo, elementary kids in Uvalde, fathers in 
Chicago, mothers in Atlanta, nephews in Chicago, even pastors 
in Charleston, and we are here still asking for action.
    There are three direct things that we know can be done. 
First, we must acknowledge this as a public health crisis and 
craft policies to combat it as such. Second, we must advance 
commonsense legislation that not only addresses the hardware, 
but promotes community-based solutions to end gun violence, 
such as the Break the Cycle of Violence Act. And last, I urge 
you to create a select committee on the gun violence crisis to 
investigate the health impacts of gun violence and its 
disproportionate impact on Black and brown communities across 
the country.
    Now is the time to take action before another person loses 
their life, before another child opens his last textbook, 
before another parent hugs that child for the last time, and 
also before someone like me isn't alive to ask you to do so.
    Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Ms. Pringle, you are now 
recognized for your testimony.

   STATEMENT OF BECKY PRINGLE, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL EDUCATION 
                          ASSOCIATION

    Ms. Pringle. Good morning, Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking 
Member Comer, and committee members. I appreciate the 
opportunity to offer testimony on behalf of the 3 million 
members of the National Education Association and all devoted 
educators who teach and nurture and protect our students.
    As a teacher with three decades of experience, I am 
frustrated, I am heartbroken, I am angry that this is where we 
are 23 years after Columbine. On April 20, 1999, I had been a 
middle school science teacher in Pennsylvania for 23 years. No 
experience or training had prepared me for the questions my 
middle-level learners asked me as I joined my fellow teachers 
in shock and disbelief of the carnage that ended the lives of 
12 students and one teacher. The only thing that comforted us 
was the belief that this society would never let it happen 
again. But the list continued to grow, didn't it? Virginia 
Tech, Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and now Robb 
Elementary: kids were celebrating at the end of a successful 
school year. For dying teen children and two teachers, it would 
be the last day of their lives.
    These massacres occurring in suburban, urban, and rural 
schools are not isolated incidents. Tallying up the number of 
killed or wounded children does not begin to tell the full 
horrific story. Camille, a student who survived Sandy Hook, 
experienced severe panic attacks for years. She is one of the 
more than 311,000 students exposed to gun violence since 
Columbine. Their trauma will likely endure for the rest of 
their lives. Students across our country are writing goodbye 
notes and wills just in case. Unfortunately, their fear is 
perfectly rational.
    Here in America, we are 25 times more likely to die by gun 
than people in other developed nations. So, the question we 
must ask: is this who we are? Is it? Our country has already 
experienced nearly 240 mass shootings in 2022 alone, but that 
number does not begin to capture the scope of this epidemic. 
Every day, gun violence kills 111 people. That means that we 
can expect 22,255 more deaths by guns this year. Inaction 
equals acceptance of the unacceptable, and this crisis is worse 
in Black and Latino communities where 78 percent of adults or 
their loved ones who are victims of gun violence. The evidence 
is clear. Where there are more guns, more people are killed by 
guns every single day.
    The politicians who fail to take action ignore the majority 
of Americans who want stricter gun laws. You tell our children 
protecting them matters less than protecting the status quo. A 
high school teacher in Arlington, Texas, survived a workplace 
shooting in a corporate setting only to experience school 
shootings himself and countless lockdowns. He is now leaving 
our profession with these words: ``As much as I love teaching, 
I can't fully represent and protect my students. I am not going 
to be the educator they need.'' Enough with so-called solutions 
that do not address the problem. We cannot place enough armed 
guards at every school building in America to protect our 
babies. We cannot ask educators to carry weapons and wear body 
armor while teaching and nurturing our students because by the 
time someone has shown up with a military weapon, it is already 
too late. We need for our students more resources, not more 
revolvers.
    You can help us to not only heal, but to hope. Pass 
commonsense gun control legislation so that not one more 
community is shattered and not one more anguished parent, like 
we heard today, has to lay a precious child to rest. Our 
children deserve the chance to grow and to thrive to live into 
their brilliance.
    Thank you for what I know you will do for our babies.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Commissioner Gramaglia, you 
are now recognized.

 STATEMENT OF JOSEPH GRAMAGLIA, POLICE COMMISSIONER, BUFFALO, 
                            NEW YORK

    Mr. Gramaglia. Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member Comer, 
and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the 
opportunity to participate in today's hearing. I appear before 
you today as a police commissioner in Buffalo, New York. It is 
also my privilege to testify on behalf of the Major Cities 
Chiefs Association. We are here today to discuss gun violence 
epidemic plaguing our Nation. This hearing comes in the 
aftermath of multiple mass shootings that have devastated 
communities throughout the country, including my home city and 
Buffalo. Our communities are hurting, and we must continue to 
support them, the loved ones of the victims, and our brave 
first responders.
    On May 14, 2022, an 18-year-old white supremacist invaded 
our city and inflicted terror on the Black community in a way 
never seen in Buffalo's history. He legally purchased a 
military-style weapon and body armor and then spent months 
practicing his shooting skills. He entered the Tops Supermarket 
and opened fire on civilians, striking 13 and killing 10. He 
livestreamed this with a GoPro he had affixed to his helmet. 
Retired Buffalo Police Officer, Aaron Salter Jr., who I 
posthumously promoted to lieutenant and issued the department's 
highest honor, the Medal of Honor, was working Tops security 
that day. Aaron was helping an elderly shopper leave with her 
groceries when the shooting began. He did his best to warn 
customers while in a completely defensive position. He engaged 
the shooter as he entered, hitting him with at least one shot. 
It is often said that a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy 
with a gun. Aaron was the good guy and was no match for what he 
went up against, a legal AR-15 with multiple high-capacity 
magazines. He had no chance.
    Assault weapons like the AR-15 are known for three things: 
how many rounds they fire, the speed at which they fire those 
rounds, and body counts. This radicalized 18-year-old adult 
should have never been able to have access to the weapons he 
used to perpetrate this attack, and laws needs to be enacted to 
ensure it never happens again.
    Buffalo Police Officers responded to Tops and were able to 
take the shooter into custody within minutes. I have no doubt 
in my mind that their swift response time and handling of the 
situation saved lives. I would like to publicly thank them and 
the rest of the Buffalo Police Department for the heroism they 
showed on that day. Buffalo is known as the city of good 
neighbors. We are a resilient, culturally diverse community. We 
came together after this horrific tragedy, and we will continue 
to heal together. However, no city should have to go through 
this, and it is time to make changes to a system that is 
leaving blood on the sidewalks of our communities every day.
    In 2018, the MCCA adopted a firearms violence policy that 
would help mitigate the threat of gun violence without 
infringing on the constitutional rights or weakening due 
process. These reforms include requiring universal background 
checks, strengthening NICS definitions and improving access to 
records, supporting the use of extreme risk protection orders, 
aggressively prosecuting straw purchasers and prohibited 
possessors, and banning assault weapons and high-capacity 
magazines. Polling shows the majority of Americans support 
these commonsense reforms, and Congress must act immediately to 
close the loopholes in our current system and the gaps that 
allow easy access to military-style weapons.
    Events like the Buffalo massacre, the shooting in Uvalde 
that took 21 lives, including 19 children, and the mass 
shootings in Laguna Woods and Tulsa are the situations that 
capture headlines. However, we must remember that gun violence 
epidemic extends well beyond these events. The grim reality is 
that shootings have become a daily occurrence in American 
cities. Emerging trends, like ghost guns and guns modified with 
switches, continue to pose a challenge for law enforcement. 
Congress must update our laws to account for these new threats 
and carnage that has accompanied them. It will be nearly 
impossible to address the gun violence epidemic without first 
addressing the underlying violent crime problem. Unfortunately, 
the proactive policing to help drive down violent crime has 
become a luxury for many departments. Law enforcement needs 
additional resources to bolster its response to violent crime, 
and overall lack of accountability for violent offenders is 
contributing to rising gun violence. In some major cities DAs 
are not prosecuting serial firearm offenders, and judges 
continue to release offenders on low or no bond. To address 
these challenges, Congress must provide resources for U.S. 
attorney's offices to support additional Federal prosecutions 
as appropriate.
    Police chiefs see the horror of gun violence every day. 
Members of Congress share our solemn duty to protect the 
public. The MCCA will continue to call on elected 
representatives to issue politics and take the necessary steps 
to address the gun violence epidemic. Your leadership is needed 
now more than ever. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Mr. Suplina, you are now recognized for 
your testimony.
    [No response.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. Turn on your mic, please.

  STATEMENT OF NICK SUPLINA, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR LAW & 
                POLICY, EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY

    Mr. Suplina. Good morning, Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking 
Member Comer, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. My 
name is Nick Suplina. I am senior vice president for law and 
policy at Everytown for Gun Safety. We are the largest gun 
violence prevention organization in the country. I am honored 
to be here today and grateful for the spotlight you are shining 
on America's gun violence crisis.
    Once again, we are grieving. Frequent public mass shootings 
terrorize the country and are a uniquely American problem. Mass 
shootings often focus the public's attention and our grief, and 
with good reason, but they represent a small fraction of all 
gun deaths in this country, which include other homicides, 
suicides, and unintentional shootings. Every single day, some 
110 Americans are killed with a gun and 200 more physically 
wounded. We estimate that one-half of all Americans have been 
touched by gun violence, either directly or someone they care 
for. In other words, we are a Nation of gun violence survivors.
    To be clear, this burden has not been borne equally. 
Talking about our children, guns are now the leading cause of 
death for children and teens. I am talking about people of 
color. Black Americans experienced 10 times the homicides of 
their white counterparts. Clearly, we are in the middle of a 
serious public health crisis, one that is crying out for 
sensible gun policy solutions, especially at the Federal level. 
And while gun deaths are hitting all-time highs, the gun 
industry is breaking profit records year after year. The gun 
industry uses fear to sell guns, and it believes that mass 
shootings are great for gun sales. They are making money on 
these tragedies right now.
    So, when we talk about the shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, 
when we talk about the toll of gun violence on our children, 
when we talk about the disproportionate impact on Black 
Americans, when we talk about how gun violence costs taxpayers, 
survivors' families, employers, and communities--$280 billion a 
year--we need to also talk about how the $9 billion civilian 
firearms industry is shielded from the scrutiny and 
accountability that has led other industries to better and 
safer practices.
    The gun industry, for its part, has innovated not to make 
guns or us safer, but to make them more dangerous, more likely 
to evade regulation, more profitable. Instead of designing 
firearms that can't be fired if stolen, or that make it easy 
for law enforcement to trace, gun makers have created 
modifications to mimic automatic fire. They have created 
impossible-to-trace ghost guns that help circumvent background 
checks, and they have designed AR-15s that can be modified in 
minutes to bypass the state's assault weapons law as we saw in 
Buffalo. And now in a crowded field, gun manufacturers are 
trying to market in increasingly brazen ways, often touting the 
deadliness of products, glorifying combat, and attempting to 
appeal to younger and younger audiences.
    Finally, let's not forget the industry has done almost 
nothing to take steps to prevent diversion of guns into the 
criminal market and to gun traffickers. Between 2016 and 2020, 
over 1 million of the industry's firearms were recovered by law 
enforcement in connection to crimes. More and more of these 
guns carry the telltale signs that they were purchased with the 
intent to traffic or illegally use them, yet the industry is 
rarely held accountable. This committee's investigation found a 
dealer in Georgia where 10 percent of the guns that sold ended 
up on crime scenes--10 percent. And we wonder why it is so easy 
for criminals to get guns.
    So, why is no one holding the gun industry accountable for 
its dangerous practices? In 2005, at the behest of the NRA, 
Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, 
which insulates the industry from most legal threats. And 
again, at the behest of the NRA, Congress passed the Tiahrt 
Amendment, a budget rider that purports to limit sharing of 
data about guns used in crimes, which keeps the industry out of 
the conversation about how criminals get armed. These laws have 
to go.
    In spite of these barriers, I am heartened that public and 
private actors in legislatures, city halls, courts across the 
country are taking action to reveal the gun industry's role in 
gun violence, and I am grateful to this committee's 
investigation into gun trafficking and its recent letters to 
gun manufacturers. I hope you have the CEOs appear here for 
testimony because America hears every day from the families who 
have lost loved ones to gun violence, and our country deserves 
to hear from the CEOs who are profiting off of their loss and 
pain.
    Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. And, Mrs. Swearer, you are 
now recognized for your testimony.
    Ms. Swearer. Madam Chairwoman and distinguished member----
    Chairwoman Maloney. We can't hear your mic.
    Ms. Swearer. Madam Chairwoman and distinguished members.
    Chairwoman Maloney. We still can't hear you. Turn your mic 
on. Pull it closer to----
    Ms. Swearer. It says it is on.
    Chairwoman Maloney. It is not on.
    Ms. Swearer. The green light is on. I will try to speak a 
little bit louder.

STATEMENT OF AMY SWEARER, LEGAL FELLOW, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION

    Ms. Swearer. Madam Chairwoman and distinguished Members of 
Congress, my name is Amy Swearer, and I am a legal fellow at 
the Heritage Foundation where my scholarship focuses on the 
Second Amendment and gun violence prevention. I have testified 
before various legislatures after several mass shootings: 
Parkland, Virginia Beach, El Paso, and unfortunately, too many 
others, and I hope to God this is the last time I ever have to 
testify before a legislative body after a mass shooting again.
    I fear that it won't be. My fear that it won't be is 
because the conversation has become predictable. An unspeakably 
horrific event, like Uvalde or Buffalo, happens, reflexively, 
almost compulsively, calls for Congress to pass a whole host of 
gun control measures, largely targeting peaceable law-abiding 
citizens. Should anyone dare question the constitutionality, 
practicality, or even the effectiveness of any of these 
policies, their opposition is immediately framed as callous 
obstructionism, and their legitimate concerns are brushed aside 
as ``bullshit.'' Any viable alternatives are deemed frivolous 
without so much as a passing thought to their usefulness. And 
so, I will once again run through all of the serious problems 
with commonly proposed gun control measures. It is all detailed 
in my written submission, which I hope you read.
    Semi-automatic rifles are the type of firearm least often 
used to commit acts of gun violence. Pistol grips and barrel 
shrouds don't make them any more or less deadly in the context 
of mass shootings. While these features can and do make a 
difference in the context of lawful self-defense for civilians, 
which is why millions of peaceable Americans own them, standard 
capacity magazines are commonly possessed by law-abiding 
citizens for lawful purposes. The few rigorous studies on their 
prohibition have found that the evidence for their success at 
lowering rates of gun violence is inconclusive at best.
    The context in which mass public shootings occur renders 
magazine limits effectively useless at saving lives. Eighteen-
to 20-year-olds are legal adults, otherwise endowed with all of 
the rights and duties of citizenship, including the right to 
keep and bear arms. Even if it were constitutionally 
appropriate to punish a mass of responsible young adults 
because a handful of them committed atrocities, the vast 
majority of mass public shooters are 21 or older.
    And then I will repeat the same viable alternatives that 
would be far more effective in a far more immediate way, again, 
detailed in the written submission that I hope you read. Take 
violent crime seriously under existing Federal laws and 
encourage your state and local counterparts to do the same. 
Authorized schools to shift the over $100 billion in unused 
COVID relief funds to physical security improvements, the 
hiring of arm trained staff and the hiring of licensed mental 
health professionals; promote responsible gun ownership without 
simultaneously imposing financial burdens on gun owners or 
hindering their ability to immediately respond to violent 
threats; invest in the Nation's mental health infrastructure to 
combat the two-thirds of gun deaths that are suicides, and the 
list goes on.
    Now Congressmen, I am fully aware that when you are burying 
your child, nuanced policy discussions are irrelevant. It 
shouldn't matter to a 4th grader hiding under her desk, 
covering herself in her dead classmate's blood, whether the 
real problem here is a barrel shroud or the several dozen 
missed opportunities to intervene along the way. But it should 
matter to you because you are the ones making public policy 
decisions. Many of you are the ones implying that a lot of 
victims would be alive today but for a mass shooter's pistol 
grip and a background check that he already passed. Many of you 
are the same ones mocking anybody for ``talking about doors,'' 
when a single locked door in Uvalde would likely have saved 21 
lives, and when all of us just walked in here today into this 
building with its limited public access points, its one-way 
locking security doors, and its plethora of armed officers.
    What happened in Uvalde and in Buffalo is horrific? It is 
horrifying. No one should ever have to experience that type of 
unfathomable trauma, and I cannot even begin to imagine what 
those families are going through right now. Everybody with a 
soul has it shattered over acts like this, and we have seen it 
shattered every single time from Columbine to Parkland to 
Uvalde. This didn't get easier for us. We did not grow numb 
somewhere along the way to the reality of this. It is not as 
though our family members don't also teach 4th graders or we 
don't also send our kids to school. It is not as though we 
don't also shop in grocery stores, or go to country music 
festivals, or work in hospitals, as though we don't also feel 
the tremendous, horrible weight of these tragedies somewhere 
deep inside of our souls because we do.
    Now we oppose these policies precisely because the lives of 
these victims matter, because the grief of their loved ones is 
real, because we all want thriving communities with families 
flourishing instead of burying their children. The opposition 
has always been and is still today a genuine concern that these 
policies suffer from serious constitutional and practical 
defects, that they will not have the impact and promise people 
they will. And we have always proposed alternatives that would 
be more effective and less constitutionally suspect. We have 
rarely been met with our open ears, and I hope for the Nation's 
sake that today is different, because I would really love to 
never testify after a mass shooting again.
    Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank all of you for your very 
important testimony. I now recognize myself for questions.
    As a mother, it is hard to find words to express the grief 
and outrage I feel, and others feel in this room, listening to 
the stories from our witnesses today. No child should be cut 
down by a gun. Lexi Rubio should have been able to grow up, 
live her dreams, become a lawyer, major in math, visit 
Australia. Eleven-year-old Miah should not have been forced to 
cower in fear as she watched her teachers and friends 
massacred. And the close-knit, vibrant Jefferson Avenue 
community in Buffalo, many of whom came today to stand with us, 
should not be forced to reckon with the violent death of 
friends and loved ones gunned down by a racist with an assault 
weapon. We are in a crisis, but we are not powerless. Congress 
just needs to find the courage to act, and I hope we find it 
today when we pass on the sensible and vote on these sensible 
gun reform bills.
    Let's start with assault weapons. The shooters in Uvalde 
and Buffalo were too young to buy alcohol, but they both 
purchased assault weapons legally. Ms. Pringle, as an educator, 
your organization represents millions of teachers, some of whom 
have witnessed horrific gun violence, some of whom have been 
murdered and its aftermath. Would banning assault weapons save 
the lives of teachers and students?
    Ms. Pringle. It absolutely would.
    Chairwoman Maloney. There are many other commonsense steps 
that we can take. We can strengthen background checks, raise 
the minimum age to buy a gun, require waiting periods. 
Commissioner Gramaglia, you are on the frontlines against gun 
violence every day in Buffalo. Would these commonsense measures 
save the lives of police officers and others in your community?
    Mr. Gramaglia. It absolutely would.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Mayor Adams, New York City already has 
adopted many gun safety measures, and you have moved quickly to 
take further action. But guns from other states lacks gun laws 
keep flowing into New York. Why is it so important that we pass 
Federal gun safety laws?
    Mr. Adams. As we indicated, we removed 3,000 guns off our 
streets, but in addition to that, we have witnessed an over 240 
percent increase in what is called ghost guns. If we don't have 
a combined effort with the intervention items we are putting in 
place, the prevention, and also stop the flow, many of the guns 
that we are witnessing are purchased or stolen from outside our 
state. One gun in particular, a suspect was found with a gun, 
and it was stolen on July 27, 2020. It was used in six acts of 
violence, individual cases, individuals shooting into a random 
crowd. The gun found its way on the streets of New York. So, it 
is more than what we do locally. We need assistance with the 
partnership with the Federal Government to stop the flow of 
guns in our cities.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Other countries have taken commonsense 
steps to keep guns away from criminals, and they have succeeded 
in saving countless lives. We stand alone in the world with the 
number of mass shootings and deaths from guns. And as you can 
see in this chart, the American people overwhelmingly support 
gun safety reform. So, Mr. Suplina, in your view, why has 
Congress failed to adopt these commonsense measures that most 
Americans and most countries in the world have adopted?
    Mr. Suplina. Well, to put it bluntly, Chairwoman, the gun 
lobby presents a formidable obstacle in this country. 
Oftentimes, and you have heard it already today, the Second 
Amendment is used as a reason to not advance commonsense gun 
reforms, even while the Court has not said that the very 
reforms that you are proposing would violate. Quite the 
opposite, the courts have upheld over and over and over again. 
So, the lobby ceases its job to make every gun law one step 
closer to confiscation, which is a lie; conspiracies abound 
about the government coming to take your guns, and that gets 
into the head of well-meaning lawmakers who are afraid that, 
you know, people will believe that those myths are true. They 
are not true. We can do an awful lot to save American lives by 
passing these laws.
    Chairwoman Maloney. We have lost too many lives to gun 
violence. It is long past time for Congress to act.
    I now recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Clyde.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney and Ranking Member 
Comer, for holding this hearing today so we can highlight the 
need for additional school security to protect our children. I 
joined the Nation in mourning for the 19 children and two 
adults who senselessly lost their lives due to an evil act 
committed about two weeks ago. While every loss of life is a 
tragedy, no one should weaponize or politicize the abhorrent 
act to punish law-abiding citizens.
    For almost 250 years, since the founding of our Nation, 
countless hundreds of thousands of men and women have 
sacrificed their lives to provide the freedoms we enjoy today. 
Indeed, those freedoms were bought at a very high price and 
must be guarded continuously so they can be passed on to future 
generations. If we allow emotion to drive our actions, actions 
that have Constitution-altering consequences, we will destroy 
the very foundation of our country and break faith with those 
who gave everything that we would be free. Evil deeds do not 
transcend constitutional rights. It is the other way around. 
Constitutional rights are the ones that transcend evil deeds.
    What occurred in Uvalde and other communities like Sandy 
Hook and Parkland was nothing short of heartbreaking tragedies 
and evil deeds, heartbreaking and evil for the loss of innocent 
life, but also because, from what I have seen in the news about 
Uvalde, I believe it was mostly preventable. We don't know all 
the facts yet because the investigation is still ongoing. But I 
hope that this hearing is truly looking for legitimate, 
functional, and effective answers and not just a bunch of left-
wing talking points to fill the ``do something, do anything'' 
mentality that I have heard coming from the Biden 
administration.
    The White House Press Secretary, Ms. Jean-Pierre, said on 
Tuesday, May 31, that President Biden is uninterested in 
pursuing tighter security at schools in the aftermath of the 
Uvalde tragedy: ``I know there has been conversation about 
hardening schools. That is not something that he believes in,'' 
said Ms. Jean-Pierre. One of the things I have learned during 
my three overseas tours of military combat was that the harder 
the target you are, the less likely you will be engaged by the 
enemy. That is a proven fact and just commonsense that applies 
across multiple aspects of life. For that to not be a part of 
the administration's focus just shows how seriously out of 
touch the Democrat leadership is with reality.
    You know, I want to echo Ms. Hughes' remarks from the 
previous panel. Schools should be hard targets. Violent 
criminals should never, ever have been able to gain access to 
the inside of the schools. That means schools across the Nation 
should implement sensible security measures, like keeping doors 
locked, a single point of entry, better security technology, 
and a volunteer force of well-trained and armed staff, in 
addition to a school resource officer. And where a school staff 
person has additional responsibility, they should receive 
additional compensation.
    A retired military officer from my district, an Army 
colonel, sent me an email a few days ago, and I want to read a 
short section of it. ``I am absolutely convinced that the 
single most effective method to eliminate school shootings is 
to take away all the signs that declare all schools are gun 
free zones and do away with all laws that require such 
postings.'' Replace those signs with signs using these words or 
similar words. ``We love our children and will do anything to 
protect them. Accordingly, selected teachers and staff are 
armed and trained to protect our children. Proceed at your own 
peril. You will be stalked.'' The rationale for this dramatic 
change in policy is really quite simple. Gun free zone signs 
don't protect anyone. They take away the law-abiding citizens' 
capability to be a force in helping to protect the children, 
and they protect the would-be a shooter because they believe 
they will be unopposed.
    From June 1950 through June 2019, 94 percent of mass 
shootings occurred in gun free zones. If a would-be school 
shooter doesn't know who is armed and who is not, they would 
likely move to a more vulnerable target. Most potential school 
shooters are coward at heart. They do not want to face a 
challenge to what they are trying to do. They want to be in 
control with no opposition. They do not like to be confronted 
by someone who has to face off against them because that 
confrontation would preclude a school shooter wannabe from 
being able to take any unopposed action.
    For those who say that teachers or staff will likely not 
take up arms to protect their students, I say they will. There 
have been too many documented cases where teachers have 
heroically given their lives to protect their students. It is 
time to give them the tools and help them to better protect 
those children so they have a fighting chance to survive an 
encounter with someone who is bent on harming them. And for the 
record, if someone is intent on harming someone else, they will 
use whatever is available to do the job, be it a hammer, a 
knife, or whatever. There is a lot of insight in the words of 
this Army colonel. He also knows the difference between a hard 
target and a soft, easy target, and he knows the advantage of 
that difference.
    Ms. Swearer, you were involved in Heritage Foundation 
School Safety Initiative, which was developed after the 2018 
Parkland shooting, correct?
    Ms. Swearer. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Clyde. In your opinion, what do you believe should be 
done to secure our schools from violent criminals to ensure 
that our students have a safe place to learn?
    Ms. Swearer. Well, I think, as I mentioned in my testimony, 
and then again in my written submission, there are several 
avenues that can be taken, including physical security 
improvements. You know, again, it has become popular to mock 
people for talking about doors and those sorts of things, but 
these are basic security components of the rest of our everyday 
lives. We see them in apartment complexes. We see them in the 
building we walked into today. We see them in most corporate 
buildings that we walk into on any given day.
    You know, in terms of having a quicker armed response, I 
think schools should have the flexibility to decide how that 
happens. If you look in my written submission, any footnote, 
there are, just from the last couple of years, a good number of 
examples. And it is just a smattering of them because I didn't 
want the footnote to be 12 pages of armed responses saving 
lives whether from school resource officers, or from including, 
in one case, from an armed staff member who stopped a 
kidnapping and then prevented an armed individual from entering 
the school where other children were. And I think, again, a key 
component of this is not just looking at physical security, but 
also, you know, I've mentioned having the adequate mental 
health resources. We are not talking about blaming mental 
illness, but we are talking about when you look at one, what it 
means for humans.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Ms. Swearer. I would end by saying looking at licensed 
mental health professionals in schools.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. 
Lynch is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for holding 
this hearing. I want to thank the panel of distinguished 
witnesses. Thank you for coming before this committee to help 
us with our work. I also want to thank the previous panel. The 
families of the victims who had the courage and selflessness, I 
think, to, despite their pain, come here with the sole purpose 
of preventing other families from suffering a similar loss, so 
I thank them.
    Madam Chair, I would like to ask unanimous consent to 
submit for the record a report and analysis conducted by 
Quoctrung Bui, Alicia Parlapiano, and Margot Sanger-Katz over 
at The New York Times. It is an analysis of 106 mass shootings 
since Columbine in this country.
    And I want to read an excerpt that describes best what they 
found.
    To quote this report, ``If the key gun control proposals 
now being considered in Congress had been law since 1999, four 
gunmen younger than 21 would have been blocked from legally 
buying the rifles they used in mass shootings. At least four 
other assailants would have been subject to a required 
background check instead of slipping through a loophole. Ten 
others might have been unable to steal their weapons because of 
the efforts required to encourage safer gun storage, and 20 
individuals might not have been allowed to legally purchase the 
large-capacity magazines that they use to upgrade their guns, 
helping them to kill on average 16 people each.'' Taken 
together, those four measures might have changed the course of 
at least 35 of those 106 mass shootings, a third of such 
episodes in the United States since the massacre at Columbine 
High School in Colorado, that New York Times analysis has 
found, and those 35 shootings killed 446 Americans.
    Mr. Suplina, there has been references made to the fact 
that someone could cause damage with a hammer or a knife. I 
would wonder if you could talk about AR-15 style firearms and 
their ammunition and how different they are and the greater 
vulnerability in creation in society. I know you have written 
on this in the past, and if you could go over that for a bit 
just to educate people who are not familiar with that type of 
weapon.
    Mr. Suplina. So, this type of weapon, which is derived from 
a military-style, a military weapon, presents increased risk, 
as I believe the commissioner said earlier, because of their 
speed of bullet, their handling, their ability to accept high-
capacity magazines, and they are designed and are advertised to 
be able to inflict mass amount of damage in a short period of 
time. They are also unique in the damage that is done to the 
human body when you use one of these. A handgun, even at a 
sometimes larger caliber, won't do the damage to human tissue. 
I am not a physician, but you did hear from one earlier who 
described in great detail what a semiautomatic rifle with 
multiple rounds can do.
    So, these are unique threats. There is a reason why they 
are used in mass shootings because those shooters want to 
inflict maximum damage.
    Mr. Lynch. Thank you. I do want to add a quote from a 
trauma surgeon at the University of Arizona, who agrees with 
your assessment. He said that the damage from an AR-15 on the 
body ``looks like a grenade went off in there.''
    Madam Chair, I am so sorrowful for the loss of Lexi Rubio 
and so many others, and so many we have heard in previous mass 
shootings. You know, I will support the package of restrictions 
that we will consider in the next couple of days here in 
Congress to restrict the use of assault weapons and high-
capacity magazines, and I will vote for the background checks 
that I think are necessary. And I respect my colleagues' rights 
to defend the Second Amendment, but I will note when in 
defending the Second Amendment you have to go to military 
experts and battlefield commanders for advice on how to protect 
our kids while they are in school, we got a problem. We have 
got a problem. Think about that, that you are going to military 
battlefield commanders, combat veterans for advice on how to 
protect our kids while they are sitting in school trying to 
learn.
    I just urge my colleagues to think hard on this and 
consider supporting the package of bills that we have before 
the Congress this week. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Sessions, is now recognized.
    Mr. Sessions. Madam Chairman, thank you very much, and I 
want to thank the gentleman from Kentucky, the ranking member, 
for really what I think is the thoughtful opportunity for us to 
handle what is a difficult circumstance.
    I am a Texan and I was about some 100 miles from Uvalde. I 
know Uvalde very well. I spent a good bit of time in San 
Antonio growing up. As soon as I heard about what happened, I 
immediately went about convening some 10 counties worth of 
superintendents, mayors, county judges, law enforcement people, 
sheriffs, deputy sheriffs, school resource officers. I did not 
sit back and wait to find out what this hearing might develop. 
I did not wait to find out what someone else thinks is a good 
idea. I tend to think that, back home, people have the best 
answers. I say differently. I think Texans have answers for 
Texas problems.
    Madam Chairwoman, I do not want to chastise anybody today. 
I want to thank each of our people who have showed up, not only 
from Buffalo, but from New York City and others who have taken 
time to be here today. I do not wish to challenge anyone. But, 
Madam Chairwoman, I would like to insert into the record an 
article from the Christian Science Monitor Weekly, June 11, and 
also an article which I have provided to you from 
FiveThirtyEight, which is a website that they present 
information. For the panel, the FiveThirtyEight article said, 
``We have known how to protect, prevent a school shooting for 
more than 20 years.''
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Mr. Sessions. Thank you, Madam Chairman. In fact, as I went 
about looking at this, which I had not previously, I did a good 
bit of review myself, and I found out that there is the 
National Center for School Safety. It is at the University of 
Michigan in the School of Public Health. And they state this 
before and still, the information that we do have access to 
these studies, seem to be saying that, yes, by developing a 
positive school climate, by educating students on how to say 
something, and speak up or find a trusted adult is having a 
positive effect, not just on attitudes, but also self-
efficiency, something we need to approach as we talk about 
behavior.
    We learned at my meeting that I had in Waco, Texas, that 
this is not a decision that the shooters, by and large, make. 
That is a snap judgment. They go about this planning effort and 
plan these school shootings out. They happen to be people who 
have become isolated in school, had been picked on, been made 
fun of, had been bullied, and these people go off into, by and 
large, a deep hole where they are not able to effectively 
balance their lives. This is a public issue problem in our 
schools of mental health issues.
    I go to schools probably every two weeks, and my 
observations that I have publicly stated, are that I have seen 
our schools. There are a lot of children, a lot of young 
adults, who are tested in ways where I think they are reaching 
out for help. I think one of the things that we should go to is 
looking at the studies that have been out here, and I would 
hope our schools and our experts that are on these panels 
today, including you, Chief, and including you, Mayor, would 
include these studies and go back to the schools, and let's 
identify in our schools where there is something we can make 
better. This article also says our work on projects is in 
progress, and it talks about how talking to students. Every day 
when I grew up, we would recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the 
flag, taking a few minutes.
    Now, I know we have heard testimony that everything about 
America is racist, but I think that in our classrooms, we need 
to talk about our Nation, our rights and our responsibilities, 
but taking time every day to be nice to each other, leaving 
notes knowing each other and then listening to people who 
emanate and identifying people who have problems. It is my 
hope, Madam Chairwoman and our ranking member, that instead of 
taking to the floor this immediate action, we would really 
listen to you and other experts.
    Madam Chairwoman, I would like to see if we would call 
Justin Heinze, who is director of National Center for School 
Safety, assistant professor at the University of Michigan 
School of Public Health, I believe we need professionals who 
have studied these things. I say this as an opportunity to each 
one of you. I want to thank you. We listen to you and I hope 
you will hear us back. Thank you very much, and may God bless 
the people of Uvalde, Texas who are struggling through this at 
this time in our Nation.
    Madam Chairwoman, I yield back my time.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Krishnamoorthi is 
recognized.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner 
Gramaglia, thank you for your service to the people of Buffalo. 
I was born in India, and I immigrated first to Buffalo, New 
York, and so the fact that you said that it is the city of good 
neighbors is very poignant for me. I am very sorry for the loss 
of all those lives in Buffalo.
    The shooter in Uvalde used a what is called a Daniel 
Defense DDM V7 rifle. It is a style of AR-15 rifle. It markets 
that rifle as ``a perfect rifle for everybody.'' This 
particular picture comes from their Twitter account on May 16, 
2022. Now, Commissioner, guns are the leading cause of death 
among young people aged 24 and under. Guns kill far more kids 
than cigarettes, but we don't let cigarette companies market to 
children. Sir, you don't think it is appropriate for Daniel 
Defense or any manufacturer to market AR-15-style rifles, or 
handguns, or any other weapons to children, correct?
    Mr. Gramaglia. I think that picture behind you is very 
disturbing is what it I, and, no, I don't believe that that 
should be the case.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And why do you find that picture 
disturbing?
    Mr. Gramaglia. Many children in our country, because of a 
lack of safe storage on weapons, have either accidentally taken 
their own lives or somebody else in that household or another 
friend within that house who is there visiting. It is 
disturbing.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Shortly after the Daniel Defense rifle 
was used in the Uvalde shooting, this picture was taken down 
from their Twitter account, and indeed their Twitter account 
was made private. I think they had second thoughts about 
advertising in this manner as well.
    Ms. Swearer, in 2019, while testifying before the House 
Judiciary Committee, you went viral. In a viral video talking 
about the lethality of AR-15s, you said your mother ``struggled 
to hit a stationary target from 6 yards out under ideal 
conditions, and then she picked up an AR-15 and I watched my 
mother put a fist-sized grouping of lead in the center mass of 
the target 20 yards out. When accuracy and stopping power 
matter, they are simply better.'' You said that, correct, Ms. 
Swearer?
    Ms. Swearer. Yes, I did.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. This is a picture of the 19 children 
and two teachers who died in Uvalde, Ms. Swearer. You mentioned 
the AR-15 stopping power, but I got to believe these little 
children were not the ones you were talking about stopping, 
correct?
    Ms. Swearer. No, I was talking about stopping the 
individual who showed up to shoot them, who did show up to 
shoot them----
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And the----
    Ms. Swearer. Who did show up to shoot that individual was a 
bunch of law enforcement officers with an AR-15.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And Ms. Swearer, your mic is not on, 
but----
    Ms. Swearer. The green light is on.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I can hear you, Ms. Swearer. It is 
good. I can hear Ms. Swearer.
    Mr. Connolly. [Presiding.] Perhaps you could switch with 
Mr. Suplina for a minute if his mic is working.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Can you please suspend the time?
    Mr. Connolly. The witness needs to be heard.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Restore the time, please.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you.
    Ms. Swearer. Congressman----
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Can I repeat the question and then you 
can say the answer?
    Mr. Connolly. Yes, and if we could just stop the clock for 
a minute because we lost some time there.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Could we change the placards to----
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Krishnamoorthi, do you want to repeat the 
question?
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Yes. Ms. Swearer, when you talked about 
the stopping power of these AR-15s, it wasn't these children 
that you were talking about stopping, obviously.
    Ms. Swearer. No, I was referring to individuals like the 
one who went into that building and spent 78 minutes shooting 
them. And I hope, as was the case in Uvalde, that the people 
who show up to stop shooters like that have the AR-15 precisely 
for its stopping power, and that is exactly what happened in 
Uvalde. That is why cops are routinely exempt from these 
prohibitions and these threats in a civilian context----
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Ms. Swearer, this man legally purchased 
these AR-15 rifles, correct? In this particular case, the 
shooter had legally purchased these AR-15 rifles and was able 
to stop and obviously end these lives forever.
    Ms. Swearer.
    [Inaudible].
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Now, Commissioner Gramaglia, I want to 
address you again, Commissioner. You know, guns are often 
billed as essential to maintaining the freedoms we enjoy in 
America. They are an iconic part of America to a lot of people, 
but cars have long been central to American life as well. And 
what we have seen interestingly is that, here is a picture of 
traffic deaths versus deaths from firearms, and at one time 
traffic deaths far exceeded firearms in 1950, but over time, 
traffic deaths have gone down, while firearm deaths have 
remained relatively constant. Now, of course, with regard to 
the right to bear arms, that is in the Constitution, but it is 
not an absolute right. That is why we outlaw machine guns and 
we regulate firearms in other ways.
    Sir, with regard to traffic deaths and cars, the imposition 
of rules, and regulations, and laws, along with private 
industry adapting safer ways to drive and devices to make them 
safer, have led to a reduction in traffic deaths, but the same 
cannot be said for firearms. Isn't that right?
    Mr. Gramaglia. I believe you are correct, yes. In looking 
at the traffic deaths going down, regulations, both in vehicle 
safety, airbags, speed enforcement, other things of that 
nature, have led to safer roads.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And what would that lead you to believe 
should happen with regard to firearms?
    Mr. Gramaglia. Some sensible regulations to limit the 
carnage that is happening on our streets.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you, Commissioner.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you. The gentlelady from North 
Carolina, Ms. Foxx, is recognized for her five minutes of 
questioning.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The horrific and 
heartbreaking tragedies that occurred in Uvalde and Buffalo has 
shaken the Nation. We are all made in God's image, and I 
continue to pray for our society and for the families of the 
men, and women, and children who were senselessly murdered. We 
must be thoughtful in how we discuss and address this issue. 
When the Federal Government acts in haste, the room for error 
is exponentially compounded. This problem should be diagnosed 
in its entirety before we endeavor to place proposals on the 
table. The simple truth is that top-down legislative actions 
from Washington do not provide the states the due deference 
they deserve. The latitude of the states to make decisions that 
best suit their constituencies must be respected.
    The Second Amendment was intended both to empower 
individuals and also to shield them from the Federal Government 
exerting undue influence. Unfortunately, over time, the 
underlying principle of the Second Amendment has been distorted 
and misconstrued by Washington bureaucrats who simply want it 
stripped away from law-abiding citizens. This cannot be allowed 
to happen.
    I now yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from 
Georgia, Mr. Clyde, who has a tremendous amount of experience 
with these issues.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you very much, Virginia. I would like to 
ask Mr. Gramaglia. In your sworn testimony, you say of a 
retired Buffalo police officer, Aaron Salter, Jr., his service 
weapon was no match for the military-style weapons and armor 
the perpetrator was equipped with. Yet your Buffalo police 
officers responded to Tops a minute after receiving the 9-1-1 
call and were able to take the shooter into custody within a 
minute of arriving at the scene. That is impressive. That is 
very impressive that your officers were able to do that, and 
this gentleman armed with an AR-15 style rifle. What is the 
Buffalo officer's standard service weapon?
    Mr. Gramaglia. A Glock 40-caliber.
    Mr. Clyde. A Glock 40-caliber pistol.
    Mr. Gramaglia. Yes.
    Mr. Clyde. So, they responded with a Glock 40-caliber 
pistol and were able to subdue this gentleman in one minute.
    Mr. Gramaglia. They were able to do that because as he 
exited the store, he had the AR-15 pointed up underneath his 
chin, and then through what I thought was very calm de-
escalation language, he surrendered his weapon and put it down. 
Had he pointed it at the officers, we think we would have had a 
different scenario here.
    Mr. Clyde. OK. But that 40-caliber weapon is completely 
capable of stopping someone with an AR-15, correct?
    Mr. Gramaglia. Well, he had military-style body armor and a 
tactical helmet on. He was shot at least one time that we had 
uncovered through our evidence and that had no effect on him. I 
also watched the video, both the store surveillance video that 
has not been released and the GoPro video that was downloaded, 
which showed the confrontation between----
    Mr. Clyde. But the 40-caliber pistol that the officers 
carry is plenty enough to stop an armed shooter, correct? It is 
all about shot placement, isn't it?
    Mr. Gramaglia. It is and it isn't.
    Mr. Clyde. All right. Thank you. I appreciate that. Ms. 
Swearer, actually, have mass shootings or school shootings been 
carried out with other weapons other than AR-15s?
    Ms. Swearer. Yes, Congressman, they have.
    Mr. Clyde. OK. What other weapons, and what is the primary 
weapon, if you will?
    Ms. Swearer. So, the primary weapon is actually a 
plurality, are handguns alone. Another, you know, sort of 
larger segment are several variations of firearms, some 
combination of rifles, handguns, shotguns, and then a smaller 
percentage are rifles alone.
    Mr. Clyde. OK. Thank you very much. So, handguns are still 
very, very potent firearms. Madam Chairwoman, I would like to 
introduce this article into the record and I request unanimous 
consent. It is a Fox News article, May the 28, 2022, and it is 
entitled, ``West Virginia Woman With Pistol Shoots, Kills Man 
at Graduation Party: 'Saved Several Lives.'"
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Mr. Clyde. All right. Thank you.
    Mr. Clyde. You know, what happened in Uvalde was an 
incredible tragedy, and it had a very terrible ending. But 
something very similar happened the very next day, that 
Wednesday in Charleston, West Virginia, and a particular woman 
in West Virginia fatally shot a man who had begun firing an AR-
15 rifle into a crowd of dozens. The woman was attending a West 
Virginia party, she drew her pistol, and fired on the convicted 
felon. No one at the party was injured, and the gentleman 
obtained his weapon illegally. Criminals will obtain their 
weapons however they want. They will get them illegally. More 
gun laws are not going to stop that, not in any way, shape or 
form, because criminals simply do not obey the law.
    Chairwoman Maloney. [Presiding.] The gentleman's time has 
expired.
    Mr. Clyde. I yield back.
    Ms. Foxx. Madam Chair, I would like to ask permission to 
insert into the record an article, ``Why 'Do Something' Won't 
Work,'' from The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, June 2, 2022.
    Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. 
Connolly, is now recognized.
    Mr. Connolly. I thank the Chair, and I thank our witnesses 
for being here today.
    I was the chairman of Fairfax County when the Virginia Tech 
massacre occurred. At that point in American history, that was 
the worst gun massacre in our history. I buried six young 
children, students that week--six. I am still in touch with 
many of the families years later, and the emptiness in their 
hearts and souls cannot be filled. It is a tragedy that lives 
with them forever. Those children were killed by a mentally ill 
person who should not have had access to weapons but did. He 
wasn't a criminal. He was mentally ill.
    We hear excuse after excuse that gun laws don't work. The 
Australian experience would suggest otherwise. After a series 
of massacres in their country, Australia adopted some strict 
gun laws. They don't have the massacres weekly we do. It 
changed behavior because it changed access to weapons and 
ammunition. We have heard the answer is arm our teachers, that 
be the solution. Ms. Pringle, you deal with teachers? Would 
that be a good solution from your point of view?
    Ms. Pringle. Absolutely not. We know that the majority of 
not only our teachers, but our parents, do not believe that 
arming teachers would in any way prevent the carnage that we 
have seen for over 23 years. I just want you to imagine, I was 
a middle school teacher. My responsibility was to ensure that 
every student was nurtured and that they could learn, come to 
school ready to learn every day. And now the suggestion that I, 
as a teacher, would be responsible for carrying a weapon and 
making a split decision, split-moment decision about whether I 
was going to shoot someone or not, whether that responsibility 
would be mine to bear, that is a distraction from what we know 
we need to do in this country, which is to pass comprehensive 
gun control laws, something we have never done. In the short 
time that we did ban assault rifles, assault weapons, we saw 
that carnage go down, didn't we? Yes, we did. But we have never 
passed comprehensive gun legislation in this country, and we 
need to do it now.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you. Mayor Adams, welcome.
    Mr. Adams. Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. Mayor Adams, you are the mayor of, I think, 
the largest city in the United States?
    Mr. Adams. Yes.
    Mr. Connolly. Would it be a good idea, from your point of 
view, as the mayor of that city and your commitment to reducing 
crime in that city, to arm our teachers in all of your schools 
in New York City? Would that be a solution from your point of 
view?
    Mr. Adams. No, and I think the facts show that. Between 
1996 to 2010, one study found that police officers were three 
times more likely to die from gun violence with a heavy flow of 
guns in their city. So, it is harmful to the law enforcement 
community, it is harmful to our civilians, and it is harmful to 
our children.
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Gramaglia, police commissioner, would 
arming teachers help your force? Would it have made a 
difference in your community in Buffalo?
    Mr. Gramaglia. I think what we have to be careful on is to 
not militarize our schools and make students feel like they are 
in a system where they are surrounded by weapons in an 
institution where they are supposed to be learning. I certainly 
agree with hardening our targets, making sure our schools are 
safe buildings, having a strong school resource program where 
school resource officers are engaging with their students, are 
building trust within their students. But I think we have to 
caution against over-weaponizing our schools. It causes fear in 
our students, and I think we need to engage our students in 
these conversations.
    Mr. Connolly. And just real quickly, and Ms. Pringle's 
point, the use of weapons and the decision to use them for law 
enforcement could be a split-second judgment, and that requires 
careful training, does it not?
    Mr. Gramaglia. It is a considerable amount of training for 
absolute split-second decisions that are second-guessed for 
years on.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Hice, is recognized for 
five minutes. Mr. Hice?
    Mr. Hice. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just for the record, from 
what I can research and understand, there are some 300,000 or 
so crimes committed every year of violent crimes in which guns 
are a part of the situation. There are between 500,000 and 3 
million incidences a year where guns prevent violent crimes 
from taking place.
    So, let us clarify here, the issue is not gun violence. 
Guns are not the issue. We have a people violence problem who 
misuse guns and other means whenever they intend to harm 
individuals. And the answer to this situation when you have 
violent people, the answer is not defunding the police. The 
answer is not pitting one group of Americans against another, 
which we see far too often these days. The answer is not 
ignoring the rule of law. The answer is not releasing criminals 
into our streets or allowing them into our country. The answer 
is not a lack of consequences for those who commit crimes and 
being soft on crime, for those who commit violent crimes. We 
have got to look at the problem, which is violent people. And 
at some point in this country we have got to recognize that 
there is great value in upholding the rule of law. We have got 
to recognize and teach that there is a such thing as moral 
absolutes, not the least of which is respecting one another, 
respecting life. We have got to, in the midst of this 
conversation, I believe, embrace religious beliefs.
    Look, there are risks that come with a free society. We all 
understand that. But we have a moral and a spiritual crisis in 
this country right now, and that is reflected in violent people 
that we see more and more. But it is impossible for us to have 
a system of government which we have in this country where we 
have limited government and maximum freedom if we do not have a 
citizenry that is capable of self-governing their own lives 
with an authentic understanding of right and wrong. And so for 
us to take out of the equation any mention of moral absolutes 
or the role that our founders mentioned and described as 
indispensable supports to our system of government, which is 
religion and morality, then I believe we are making a mistake 
in all of this discussion. These things cannot be ignored.
    Mayor Adams, let me real quickly begin with you, and if we 
can go quickly, New York City is certainly one of the leading 
examples of gun restrictions and gun restrictive measures in 
the United States. ``Yes'' or ``no?''
    Mr. Adam. Yes.
    Mr. Hice. Your mic was off.
    Mr. Adam. Yes. I am sorry. Yes.
    Mr. Hice. And yet, we all know New York has continued in 
recent years to see a rise in crime. ``Yes'' or ``no?''
    Mr. Adams. Yes.
    Mr. Hice. OK. In January of this year you released in a 
press statement regarding your blueprint to end gun violence in 
New York City, you had in that a quote that says this, ``It is 
illegal to carry a gun in our city, yet police officers take 
them off the streets every day in record numbers.'' You made 
that statement, correct?
    Mr. Adams. Yes, it mainly comes from Georgia.
    Mr. Hice. Right. And so here we still have in a city that 
has a greatest among the greatest gun restriction laws in the 
country, a rise in crime and guns being carried off the streets 
in record numbers every day. It doesn't appear that the 
attempts that are produced by the gun restrictions are having 
any effect of keeping bad people from getting guns, and taking 
the constitutional rights away from American citizens only 
helps criminals is I guess what I am getting to.
    And Ms. Swearer, let me come to you. If we continue down 
this path of restricting gun rights from American citizens, 
making it easier for criminals to have targets, knowing that 
there will not be guns by legal citizens there to defend 
themselves, what kind of impact will that have in the long run?
    Ms. Swearer. First, I want to make sure. Is my mic still 
not on?
    Mr. Hice. Can we put a pause?
    Chairwoman Maloney. Use your neighbor's mic. Use your 
neighbor's mic. Maybe that will work better.
    Ms. Swearer. My apologies. I was told the issue had been 
taken care of.
    Congressman, to answer your question. Criminals are 
rational actors. You know, you look at the studies on this and 
the way in which criminals operate. Obviously, they don't want 
to confront someone with a firearm any more than we would want 
to if we were criminals. They are rational actors. You know, 
you mentioned the statistics on defensive gun uses. I think 
that is important to point out. I would also note how much 
lower that is, you know, considering there are a number of 
states that essentially do not allow ordinary law-abiding 
citizens to protect themselves with firearms in public and/or 
who make it far more difficult for individuals to keep and bear 
arms even inside their own homes. And so that could be 
considerably higher under different circumstances. You know, 
that said, again, I appreciate you pointing that out, but, 
again, criminals are rational actors. To pretend otherwise is 
borderline silly. So, of course----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Hice. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. 
Raskin, is now recognized.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Madam Chair. Buffalo, Uvalde, Sandy 
Hook, Tree of Life, Mother Emanuel Church, El Paso, Walmart, 
Pulse nightclub, Las Vegas, Columbine, the bloodbath continues. 
In the history of our species, a number of civilizations have 
practiced or allowed human sacrifice, including the sacrifice 
of children: the Carthaginians, the Mesopotamians, the Incas, 
the Aztecs. Will we be recorded as such a society that accepts 
the sacrifice of innocents?
    Gun violence is the No. 1 cause of death of children in the 
United States of America today, which makes us globally unique. 
We have rates of gun violence and gun death 20 times higher 
than other industrialized nations like France, the United 
Kingdom, Israel, Norway, Sweden, Japan. No other Nation comes 
close to what we see here even though we have comparable levels 
of mental health problems and mental illness. Will we continue 
to accept the slaughter of innocents, including innocent 
children, as acceptable collateral damage for loyalty to a 
completely bogus and distorted misreading of the Second 
Amendment and what the Supreme Court has said about it?
    Justice Scalia in the Heller decision was emphatic that 
reasonable gun safety regulation is perfectly consistent with 
the Second Amendment rights. Justice Scalia said he 
specifically rejected the view advanced by a number of our 
colleagues today, saying that the right of gun ownership is not 
unlimited. No, Justice Scalia stated, the Second Amendment 
right is ``not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever 
in any manner whatsoever, and for whatever purpose.'' He 
enumerated a partial list of reasonable regulations, including 
a ban on carrying concealed weapons, the possession of firearms 
by felons, the mentally ill, and other dangerous people, laws 
forbidding the carrying of firearms into schools and government 
buildings and other public places, laws imposing the conditions 
and qualifications on the sale of firearms, such as background 
checks. All of these things, he said, are perfectly consistent 
with the Second Amendment right.
    It is not different from other rights we have, like the 
First Amendment where you have an absolute right to speak but 
you don't have a right to set up a demonstration with 
loudspeaker system in front of the White House at 2 o'clock in 
the morning and keep the President's family up. We accept 
reasonable time, place, manner regulations with respect to all 
rights. Now, our colleagues invite us to believe the Second 
Amendment is some kind of policy straitjacket, but they won't 
read or quote the decision by Justice Scalia himself, who wrote 
the most elaborate defense and explication of the majority's 
view of the Second Amendment in D.C. v. Heller in 2008.
    Mr. Suplina, in 2005, Congress gave the gun industry 
unprecedented and unique immunity from civil lawsuits for 
crimes committed with their products. No other industry has got 
anything like that. Could you explain what that immunity 
protection means for the gun industry and how it has blocked 
commonsense laws to end gun violence in our country?
    Mr. Suplina. Yes, Congressman, thank you. The law, PLCAA, 
which you cite, has given near-blanket-immunity to the gun 
industry. And the result has really had a profound impact on 
what we know about the gun industry's role in gun violence, as 
well as any accountability for the industry. So, acts that 
would have led to either litigation that would have exposed 
truths, like happened with the tobacco industry with 
accountability, like happened in the automobile industry, 
safety practices that would have improved at these 
manufacturers because there was a risk of doing nothing, just 
simply does not exist with the gun industry----
    Mr. Raskin. Well, what reckless marketing and sales 
practices has the gun industry engaged in because of this 
blanket of immunity that has been bestowed upon them?
    Mr. Suplina. Well, you know, there are several, and the 
marketing is getting increasingly reckless, increasingly 
desperate as the field gets more crowded. But also in terms of 
distribution practices, I have heard several times today about 
how easy it is for criminals to get guns as if that is some act 
of magic, but these guns are all starting with gun 
manufacturers and gun sellers. We know that certain gun 
manufacturers are fueling gun shops that are selling 
disproportionately into illegal markets. And the gun industry 
is protected by PLCAA because they say, oh, we are following 
the law. Well, the numbers speak for themselves.
    Mr. Raskin. OK. And then finally, Chief, you were 
interrupted before. Well, what do you make of this claim that 
we shouldn't have laws governing, for example, a universal 
criminal background check because criminals don't follow the 
law? Is that an argument against having any law against murder, 
rape, assault, because criminals by definition don't follow the 
law?
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired, but 
the gentleman may answer.
    Mr. Gramaglia. So, the universal background checks is a 
simple process that is going to have those that want to legally 
obtain their guns with their constitutional rights to obtain 
those guns. Criminals absolutely are not going to follow that. 
The more guns that we keep flooding in without background 
checks, without proper adherence to get those guns through 
straw purchases and other manners, that is how we are flooding 
the market so that criminals can obtain those guns.
    Mr. Raskin. And Justice Scalia emphasized that there could 
be regulations for commercial sale----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Fallon, 
is now recognized.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you, Madam Chair. We hold hearings on all 
sorts of topics for all sorts of reasons, sometimes for 
political reasons, or even worse, sometimes for political 
theater aimed at attaining political currency, currency which 
will then be spent on winning an upcoming election. Other times 
hearings are held to actually solve a problem.
    We are here today because of the tragedies in Buffalo and 
the horrific loss of life in my home state of Texas, in Uvalde, 
a beautiful American community ripped apart by a troubled and 
evil coward. And when lives are lost and innocence is stolen, 
particularly when children are the victims, it is natural to 
want to assess and focus blame, who did this and how did this 
happen. And I am no different than any American. I am 
heartbroken and I am furious. Those innocent children are gone, 
and the indescribable suffering in the families is beyond 
words. We have a President that says continually that he must 
do something, we must do something. Many Democrats are arguing 
that: we must do something. Now we need to do something 
effective that will keep our children safer.
    As I mentioned, when a senseless tragedy like this happens, 
blame is thrown around. Some people want to blame guns, some 
people want to blame gun manufacturers, some people want to 
blame, believe it or not, the Constitution. Some people want to 
blame an entire political party, and all this couldn't be more 
misplaced. The shooter is the only one to blame. So, when the 
President and many Democrats are claiming that guns are the 
problem and their readily available supply is the culprit, 
well, the more guns in America, the argument goes, the more 
dangerous America becomes, but the actual facts belie this 
thinking. In 1969, so about 50 years ago, there were 180 
million firearms in this country. Today it is about double. 
Twenty-nineteen it was about 365 million. Yet the murder rate 
back then was 9.6 per 100,000, the murder rate in 2019 anyway 
was 5 per 100,000, so twice the number of guns, and yet the 
murder rate was cut in half. The truth is that guns have always 
been readily available in this country, but mass shootings and, 
particularly, mass shootings of schools, were non-existent or 
at least extremely rare until they became a grisly recent 
phenomenon.
    So, what has changed in the last 50 years? There has been a 
noticeable breakdown of the family, there has been an erosion 
of faith, and there has been a seismic drop in social 
interactions in large measure due to the overuse of these dang 
smartphones and the proliferation of social media, which is 
probably better described as antisocial media. Senseless mass 
shootings are not committed by well-adjusted, successful, 
socially polished people. They are committed by disturbed, 
unstable loners with mental disease.
    [Inaudible background noise.]
    Mr. Fallon. Madam Chair, can I get my time back?
    Chairwoman Maloney. Yes.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you.
    [Inaudible background noise.]
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you. Senseless mass shootings are 
committed by unstable, disturbed loners with mental disease. 
Refusing to address better mental health services, especially 
for young people, is to do a disservice at best, and it is a 
dereliction of duty at worst. The focus, sadly, by the 
Democrats is to restrict guns or prohibit their legal 
possession entirely. A Democratic Member of Congress in a 
committee hearing just recently said, ``We will not rest until 
we have taken weapons of war out of circulation in our 
communities.''
    So, do restrictive gun laws or prohibitions work? The most 
dangerous nations on the planet, according to the World Bank 
and the United Nations, are El Salvador, Jamaica, Venezuela, 
and Honduras. And what else do they have in common? It is also 
nearly impossible for an average citizen to own a firearm, and 
yet they are terribly perilous places to be. Believe it or not, 
some Democratic-controlled cities in our country with 
restrictive gun laws are even more dangerous than the 
aforementioned countries. St. Louis has a higher murder rate 
than El Salvador. Baltimore does as well, and Detroit is a more 
lethal and dangerous place to go and visit or live than 
Venezuela.
    So, passing prohibitions, I mean it just simply didn't 
work. Doing something doesn't work. Doing something effective 
is a path that we should and must take. History has shown us 
when you disarm law-abiding citizens, you create not more 
safety but more peril. The inconvenient truth for some on this 
committee and in this chamber is that more firearms in the 
hands of law-abiding citizens make us all safer. So, let us 
talk some real solutions.
    We must harden our schools with controlled access and 
single point of entry with tiered entry procedures. The main 
office should be located directly by the front door, which is 
single-access entry. Classroom doors should automatically shut 
and locked like hotel room doors do. Let's support and foster a 
robust school marshal program where qualified and volunteer 
teachers and staff go through proper training to be armed on 
campus. Let's increase the number of SROs in our schools. Let's 
leverage technology by putting cameras in schools much like 
Frisco, Texas did 15 years ago when I was on a city council, 
and they had a command center and a mobile command center, and 
any threat could be immediately detected, tracked, and 
eliminated forthwith. We need a rapid response plan and a rapid 
response force to be trained to world-class standards. And also 
law enforcement doctrine must change so when there is a threat, 
the schools aren't besieged, but, rather, our heroes in blue 
advance using honed techniques, and teamwork, and technology, 
and eliminate the threat as soon as possible.
    Our goal should be to protect our children. No parent, 
educator, citizen, legislature, or Nation has a higher calling. 
Let us look at real and effective solutions and shelve the 
divisive rhetoric because American children deserve nothing 
less. Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired. Thank 
you.
    The gentleman from California, Mr. Ro Khanna, is now 
recognized.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Madam Chair. Like so many on this 
committee and around the country, I was deeply moved, not as a 
politician, as a father, by the testimony this morning of the 
families of victims. Kimberly Rubio, who lost her precious 
daughter, Lexi, cut through all the talking points, all the 
debate, and asked the central question before our Congress and 
our country. As she put it, what do we value more, children or 
our guns? It is really that simple.
    I want to talk about the commonsense reforms on guns, but 
as the representative of Silicon Valley, I feel I also have a 
duty to talk about some of the role of social media in this 
massacre. With the Uvalde shooter on Instagram having a group 
chat where there is conversation of school shootings, where 
there is conversation of threats of violence, where he is 
bragging about getting assault weapons, why is there no action? 
And let us be very clear. These are minors. He was a minor when 
he did this. It is not the same free speech rights. Mr. 
Suplina, do you think companies like Instagram should have some 
responsibility in group chats when minors are involved and you 
have explicit discussion of school shootings, to do something?
    Mr. Suplina. I think the role of social media companies is 
an important one, and you are right to point it out 
Congressman. Instagram, Facebook, these are often where we see 
the earliest warning signs of a potential mass shooter, as well 
as other social media platforms where these incidences are 
discussed. There are often multiple people in the chat. And I 
do want to also mention, with respect to the Buffalo shooter, 
for instance, he cited YouTube for the videos that allowed him 
to modify the firearm that he had to accept detachable 
magazines which he used to deadly effect. So, social media 
companies do have a role to play here.
    Mr. Khanna. And just like my colleague, Mr. Raskin, said, 
that the right of the Second Amendment is not absolute, it is 
important to recognize that the right of the First Amendment is 
not absolute. Under Brandenburg, you can't have things that 
incite violence, and there are greater protections for minors. 
I mean, it is crazy to me that you can have people under 18 
talking about shootings and mass shootings, and these companies 
are taking no action. So, we need to have regulation that gets 
to the heart of this.
    Mrs. Swearer, I am trying to understand your position, and 
I just want to ask you some simple ``yes'' or ``no'' questions 
to understand where you are coming from. Is it your view that 
someone who has committed a violent felony should be able to 
purchase a gun? ``Yes'' or ``no.''
    Ms. Swearer. No.
    Mr. Khanna. Is it your view that someone who is a serial 
rapist should be able to purchase a gun? ``Yes'' or ``no.''
    Ms. Swearer. Very clearly, no.
    Mr. Khanna. Is it your view that someone who is a drug 
trafficker should be able to purchase a gun? ``Yes'' or ``no.''
    Ms. Swearer. No, and these are becoming insulting.
    Mr. Khanna. Well, I mean, so would you support any laws 
that would make sure that violent felons, serial rapists, or 
people who are drug traffickers will not get access to guns?
    Ms. Swearer. If they are written and narrowly tailored to 
approach that issue without burdening the rights of law-abiding 
citizens or criminalizing low-risk transfers between 
responsible citizens, yes, I am more than willing to look at 
that law.
    Mr. Khanna. That is exactly what the background checks do, 
I mean, because right now what you have, a case is that the 
background checks do not cover a lot of the sales to violent 
felons, to serial rapists. And I just want to be clear. When 
the Republican Party, their position, by opposing H.R. 8, is 
they are for violent felons, serial rapists still being able to 
purchase these guns.
    Ms. Swearer. No, they are not.
    Mr. Khanna. Yes, they are. This is----
    Ms. Swearer. No, they are not. They are against low-risk 
transfers being criminalized----
    Mr. Khanna. Please, it is my, ma'am. It is my time. I am 
reclaiming my time. This is----
    Mr. Comer. Point of order, Madam Chair. The position of 
Republicans is that valid criminals be in jail.
    Mr. Khanna. Well, no, the position is----
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Madam Chair, the gentleman has not 
stated a valid point of order.
    Mr. Khanna. The position, H.R. 8, all H.R. 8, at its core, 
said is that violent felons are still getting these guns, 
serial rapists are still getting these guns. And the law and 
order party that has demagogued the issue of law enforcement 
and policing, that party is saying we are OK with violent 
felons still getting these guns, we are OK with serial rapists 
still getting these guns, and all the Congress or the 
Democratic side is trying to do is to close those loopholes. To 
say that violent----
    Ms. Swearer. I respectfully refer you to my testimony on 
this very bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year 
where I explained how that is a grotesque characterization of 
our opposition to that bill.
    Mr. Khanna. Ma'am, I am saying that we in this Congress----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The time has expired.
    Mr. Khanna. I am saying that there is not----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Khanna. Well, she kept interrupting me.
    Chairwoman Maloney. OK. All right, but then.
    The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Keller, is now 
recognized.
    Mr. Keller. I would first like to take a moment to thank 
all our panelists, this panel and the previous panel, for your 
testimony.
    We have seen some horrific acts in the Commonwealth of 
Pennsylvania. We saw a devastating shooting in Philadelphia on 
Saturday, and I continue, and we all should, offer prayer for 
the families across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and across 
our Nation that have been affected by these acts committed by 
violent criminals, skyrocketing crime in our cities. That is 
what we need to focus on. New York City saw a 16.2 percent 
increase in violent criminals shooting others in March 2022. 
That is up from a year before. San Francisco saw a 31 percent 
rise in homicides. In Chicago, violent criminals were 
responsible for shooting 47 people on Memorial Day weekend 
alone.
    There is a trend here. Crime is rising in cities that have 
the most restrictive laws on firearms and have the least severe 
criminal enforcement penalties on the books. And in fact, 
cities that don't enforce the laws that are on the books. The 
District Attorney in San Francisco has dismissed over 40 
percent of felony convictions since 2020, and in Philadelphia, 
homicides have increased 58 percent, during District Attorney 
Larry Krasner's tenure. However, only 21 percent of crimes when 
violent criminals shot another person since 2015 have led to 
criminal charges, and less than one-tenth of those incidents 
resulted in convictions. Philadelphia Police are making record 
amounts of arrests for crimes committed by violent people with 
guns, yet Krasner's office has dismissed or withdrawn more 
violent cases every year he has been in office. The bottom line 
is, when you fail to enforce the law and hold criminals 
accountable, you get criminal behavior.
    So, Ms. Swearer, how does failure to prosecute past or 
current crime affect crime rates in the future?
    Ms. Swearer. Well, it certainly emboldens criminals and 
reasonably allows them to believe that there is a very little 
chance that they will be punished or in any way held 
accountable for their crimes.
    Mr. Keller. Many of the proposals we are discussing today 
are widely implemented across the municipalities where crime 
spikes are happening. Would limiting law-abiding citizens' 
right to own a firearm curb these disturbing trends?
    Ms. Swearer. No, it would not. And I would also point out 
the reality of most gun violence is not that it is being 
perpetrated by people who lawfully purchase and possess their 
firearms. It is largely perpetrated by individuals with long 
histories of violence, who obtain their firearms already 
through illegal and illegitimate channels that are not 
addressed by universal background checks because they are 
already circumventing the law regarding those background 
checks. It is a very low-reward endeavor, even if it is like 
100 percent enforceable.
    Mr. Keller. OK. What measures should be taken to ensure 
victims and their families are not legally ignored in favor of 
defendants?
    Ms. Swearer. I would again refer to some of my previous 
testimony because I know our time is short. Previous testimony 
that I have given before the Senate Judiciary Committee on gun 
violence in Chicago, I think a lot of that is still applicable 
to your question. You know, from a Federal perspective, as I 
said, we continue to enforce Federal laws and hold criminals 
accountable at a Federal level when possible and encourage 
state and local counterparts, some of whom have done a horrific 
job of this to do the same.
    Mr. Keller. So, I just have a question. There is what's 
called the NICS system, and when you purchase a firearm, I 
don't know how many people in this room have ever gone through 
a background check, but it does ask questions. I know it was 
brought up earlier about criminals being able to purchase guns. 
Is it not already illegal for rapists, and murderers, and 
people who have done domestic violence and convicted of these 
things, isn't it already illegal for them to purchase firearms?
    Ms. Swearer. To purchase and to possess, assuming they are 
felons and have not had their rights restored to them under 
existing state or Federal processes. So, there is no process 
under Federal law, so it would just be under the state.
    Mr. Keller. OK. But the point is, we are not saying that 
criminals should have laws. We are saying criminals should be 
put in jail, and law-abiding citizens should be allowed to 
lawfully possess firearms.
    Ms. Swearer. That is certainly what I am saying, and that 
is my understanding of what every member who was opposed H.R. 8 
is saying as well.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Mfume, is recognized for 
five minutes.
    Mr. Mfume. Thank you very much. Madam Chair, there is an 
old saying that your pain is where your passion is, and so let 
me just go back to where we started almost three hours ago at 
the beginning of this hearing and talk for a second about the 
pain that I felt, as I hope many of you did, listening 
firsthand to the accounts of witnesses and victims from Uvalde 
and from Buffalo.
    Listening to them, I am still stunned and heartbroken. The 
gun carnage that continues in schools, and supermarkets, and 
movie theaters, in churches, on the streets of my Baltimore, in 
the streets of cities all over this country is a cross, ladies 
and gentlemen, that we all bear whether we want to or not. The 
gun laws that we hope will be passed today, I hope are seen as 
a beginning, not the end, only as a beginning. Otherwise, I 
really believe that we are doomed in our fight against 
murderers and their guns and the evil and the pain that they 
spread.
    I want to acknowledge and thank the gentleman from 
Louisiana, Mr. Higgins, the commissioner from Buffalo, and the 
mayor of New York, all of whom served in law enforcement and 
saw firsthand how difficult it is to deal with the violence 
perpetrated by guns, and particularly assault weapons. And I 
want to associate my remarks with those of Mayor Adams when he 
said let the ATF do its job in rounding up so many illegal guns 
that are on our streets and to finally confirm a nominee.
    Madam Chair, you will remember 1994. We were members of 
this body. We worked for a whole year--a whole year--to put 
together and pass an assault weapons ban. And the only reason 
it wasn't permanent was because we weren't able to get enough 
people, members on the other side of the aisle, unfortunately, 
to go along with that. And so the compromise was a 10-year ban 
on assault weapons, which expired in 2004. I am just shocked 
that 18 years has gone by and this body does not move to 
reestablish that.
    In 1999, as a president of the NAACP, I filed suit against 
the gun industry. It took us three years to get to court 
because the NRA did everything they could to keep it from not 
happening, and finally, in 2003, we went to court. I testified 
in Brooklyn, New York, for over a week, but we didn't have the 
weight we needed, and the NRA was a bigger force than we could 
deal with, and so we lost that. But the Judge to his credit 
said this does not prohibit the fact that there certainly will 
be other lawsuits like this. The NRA heard those words and took 
them to heart and spent the next 18 months putting in place an 
absolute immunity on the gun industry and, unfortunately, was 
able to get this Congress to pass it and signed into law. It is 
just unbelievable that we will give absolute immunity to any 
industry in this country, particularly when there is harm and 
personal injury.
    So, I think more than anything else, I was stunned a little 
while ago in hearing the gentleman, my colleague on the other 
side of the aisle, saying that he had sought out advice from a 
military commander about how to protect schools and that the 
advice was harden the target. And, Ms. Swearer, when you were 
asked to comment on that, you said absolutely harden the 
target. Well, that is fine except how do you harden a 
supermarket? How do you harden a church? How do you find a way 
to go out and harden movie theaters? If the only answer is 
hardening the target, we have already capitulated.
    And I am telling you, I am so glad that so many people are 
focused on this hearing around the country so they can see 
firsthand what is going on here. We have a problem that is not 
going to go away. Every year it gets worse. And so until we are 
prepared to do what we were sworn constitutionally to do, to 
protect this country from enemies, foreign and domestic, we 
would have failed.
    Madam Chair, I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Higgins, is now 
recognized. Mr. Higgins.
    Mr. Higgins of Louisiana. Thank you, Madam Chair. 
Commissioner Gramaglia, I am looking at your presented 
statement, sir, say you support confiscating guns from 
individuals determined to be a threat to themselves or others, 
determined to be. So, by this legislation my colleagues are 
putting forth, my understanding of the letter of that law, 
which I 1,000 percent oppose, as would our founding fathers, 
the letter that our law says an anonymous tip from a citizen, 
so this was law. Commissioner, would you go to your neighbor's 
home and confiscate his legally owned weapons? A man that was 
not under criminal investigation, nor under arrest, would you 
do it?
    Mr. Gramaglia. The red flag laws would----
    Mr. Higgins of Louisiana. That is a ``yes'' or ``no,'' 
brother. I got five minutes to make. I don't have a statement 
here.
    Mr. Gramaglia. It is more than a ``yes'' or ``no'' answer. 
It would be----
    Mr. Higgins of Louisiana. We will move on then. If you 
cannot say, yes, you would confiscate weapons from an American 
citizen that was subject to this law that my colleagues intend 
to push through this Congress, and you said in your statement, 
that you would confiscate those weapons if an American was 
determined to be, your quote, a threat to themselves or others, 
quoted in that law, determined to be, is defined by an 
anonymous tip that an American citizen, a threat to themselves 
or others. You are a police commissioner, a Thin Blue Line 
brother, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and you are saying 
you would seize those weapons. I see that as a problem.
    I am going to bring us back in time to World War II: 
America's population, 140 million. Fifteen million men came 
home from World War II with deep scars and significant skills. 
They bore the invisible wounds of war. There was weapons 
everywhere. I talk about mental challenge. My father was one of 
those men who was a Navy pilot in World War II. He came back 
from the war and built his family. I am the 7th of his 8 
children. I was born in 1961. We had guns everywhere. There was 
virtually no regulation. Any child in the 1950's could buy a 
weapon from any seller if daddy sent him with the money. We 
didn't have mass shootings. It wasn't until 1968 in America 
that serial numbers were even required on weapons sold in this 
country. You ordered weapons through the Sears catalog by the 
mail. In the 1970's I attended a high school, large rural 
school. Virtually every vehicle in the parking lot was a pickup 
truck, and almost everyone had a rifle or shotgun on the back 
glass and a pistol under the seat, and we didn't have school 
shootings.
    1979, I began college. One of the jobs I had to work my way 
through college was as a carpenter. We restored historical 
buildings. We had to determine in the process of that work what 
was the original cuts to these homes, residential homes built 
75, 85, 100 years ago. You could tell by the saw cut if it was 
a mechanical cut, an electric cut, or a hand cut. By such 
observations, we knew exactly how that house was originally 
built. And to my amazement, as a young man beginning college in 
Louisiana, working, to my amazement, you know what I 
discovered, Madam Chair? You know what these houses did not 
have that were built 100 years ago in cities in America? You 
know what they did not have, Commissioner? Locks. Locks.
    Now I ask you all, what happened to that country, man, the 
country where homes were built in cities with no locks, a 
country where guns were everywhere and virtually not regulated 
at all, where millions of Americans, 14 million Americans came 
back? It is 11 percent of the population at the time after 
World War II with incredible skills of war and weapons of war, 
as you call them, everywhere, but we didn't have mass 
shootings. And here we sit today where an entire once proud 
Democratic Party is presenting unbelievably unconstitutional 
laws to press upon our Nation. And we have a police 
commissioner that says he would go home to home and confiscate 
legally owned weapons if he got a tip.
    Madam Chair, I yield my speech, but I will not yield my 
opposition to these unconstitutional laws.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The gentlelady from New York, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, is 
recognized.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank 
you to all of our witnesses. I apologize if I go quickly. We 
have just got five minutes and a lot of work to do.
    Let's talk facts here. There was a lot of discussion about 
New York City. There is no discussion about gun violence in New 
York City. Without discussing the iron pipeline that is 
Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, 
Pennsylvania, and honorary mention to Ohio where 70 percent of 
likely illegal trafficked guns found in New York City come 
from. There is no discussion about gun violence in Chicago 
without talking about Indiana because the violence and the 
mothers that we have to comfort are losing children due to the 
guns, and the carnage, and the lawlessness unleashed by those 
states. I will move on.
    Every week in recent memory, we have had at least one mass 
shooting. Ms. Pringle, you are the president of the National 
Education Association. You represent teachers. Between 2009 and 
2018, how many school shootings did the United States have?
    Ms. Pringle. Two hundred eighty-eight.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Two hundred eighty-eight. Now let's look 
globally. Our G7 partners--Canada, France, Germany, Italy, 
Japan, and the United Kingdom--combined, how many school 
shootings did those countries have?
    Ms. Pringle. Five, 50 times more.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Five in almost 10 years. Two hundred 
eighty-eight versus five. This is not normal. Not only is it 
not normal, it is internationally embarrassing and 
delegitimizing to the United States because for all the 
billions and trillions that this body authorizes in the name of 
national security, we can't even keep our kids safe from their 
schools being turned into a war zone.
    Now let's talk about why. Let's talk about one thing, more 
important to lobbyists and the gun industry than children, than 
houses of faith, than human beings. Let's talk about profit. 
Mr. Suplina in 2020, 22.8 million guns were sold, reflecting a 
64 percent increase from 2019, correct?
    Mr. Suplina. Correct.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. In one year. And across the board, gun 
manufacturers and ammunition companies began to see record 
profits. Is that right?
    Mr. Suplina. That is correct.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Now, let's put that into context. In 
2020 again, more than 45,000 Americans died by gunfire, 
reflecting an almost threefold increase from 2015. Are those 
statistics correct?
    Mr. Suplina. That is accurate.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So, in your view, are you seeing a 
correlation between gun profits and gun deaths in the United 
States?
    Mr. Suplina. Yes.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. This is about blood money. Between 2019 
and 2021, two years, leading gun manufacturer Sturm and Ruger 
saw gross profits double to almost $280 million. In fact, 
during an earnings call, their CEO called the sales boom 
``historic, ferocious,'' and that ``the future was bright.'' A 
month after that, an AR-556 pistol murdered 10 people at a 
supermarket in Boulder, Colorado. Those profit margin, $280 
million, go to lobbying. Is that correct? Much of that goes to 
lobbying, correct?
    Mr. Suplina. Significant amounts go to lobbying, correct.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And can you remind us what the gun 
industry is lobbying against when it deploys these lobbying 
resources?
    Mr. Suplina. They are lobbying against every law that would 
regulate firearms.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And can you briefly tell us how gun 
companies have poured extra profits directly into lobbying 
against gun reform? And as an advocate in this space, what have 
you seen? Just name rattle off some of the measures that they 
have, just a few that they have lobbied against.
    Mr. Suplina. Lobbied against, they have lobbied against 
background checks on all gun sales, which would, in fact, as 
was mentioned earlier, it would be criminal to obtain a firearm 
from a law-abiding citizen without a background check. The 
criminal would be breaking the law, but we could stop that. 
They have lobbied against red flag laws, which would 
temporarily deprive, after due process, a firearm from somebody 
who poses a threat to their selves or others. That is a court 
adjudication, everything.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you. Thank you very much. For 
context, the NRA spent about $250 million in 2020 alone. That 
is more than twice the entire salary of Congress combined in 
one year, lobbying against gun safety laws. There is also this 
discussion about do anything, but again, but that these are 
about violent people, but yet we aren't doing anything about 
addressing the actual root causes of misogyny where two-thirds 
of mass shootings are connected to domestic violence or the 
emergence of white supremacy radicalization, mass 
incarceration, and poverty, and the connections between that 
and mass shootings in our communities.
    I yield my time. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    The gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman, is recognized 
for five minutes.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you very much. The last couple of 
weeks, I had a chance to go down to Mexico, and they brought up 
an issue that I wasn't really expecting to hear, but a couple 
of Border Patrol guys pointed out to me that the firearms were 
very, very regulated in Mexico. And you do a little Google 
search, and you find out in the recent article in The Wall 
Street Journal, the first six or first nine months in 2019, 
Mexico, with some wildly difficult laws, had a murder rate of 
six times that in the United States. Not six percent more. 
That's 60 percent more. But assuming you got it right, maybe he 
was cherry picking the year, I don't know, six times as many 
murders as in the United States. I assume the Mexican officials 
who put these laws into effect, thought they were going to save 
lives at the time, that they made it so difficult for law-
abiding Mexicans to get a hold of a firearm, but obviously the 
results of their laws was not to make Mexico safer. There are 
thousands, probably tens of thousands of people who have died 
now in Mexico under the current rules connected to ownership of 
guns.
    We have also in this country had a dramatic increase in the 
number of deaths from guns the last two years since kind of the 
beginning or at least expansion of the I Hate Police Movement, 
which I blame for all the young people and not so young people 
who have died in the last two years in this massive increase of 
murders that we have seen almost unprecedented.
    First of all, I would like Ms. Swearer to comment a little 
bit on the Mexican statistic and comment on the dramatic 
increase in the number of homicides in this country in the last 
two years, not because it is easier to own guns, but kind of 
because a lot of the rhetoric coming out of this building of 
this anti-police rhetoric.
    Ms. Swearer. Congressman, I will respectfully refrain from 
commenting on the statistics you pointed out from Mexico. I am 
not overly familiar with any of the underlying causes. I will, 
you know, to the greater point, say Mexico is, to my awareness, 
one of the only other countries in the world with a right to 
``keep and bear arms,'' which is sort of a misnomer in that 
country, as you point out. So, it is a fundamentally different 
understanding of what that means than clearly in our country. I 
am sorry. Please remind me of the second aspect.
    Mr. Grothman. Well, the massive increase in murders in this 
country in the last few years.
    Ms. Swearer. I think it is hard to pin that down to any, 
like, one simplistic notion of what is causing that. Certainly, 
I think problems with policing and calls to defund the police, 
loss of trust between communities and police members, that all 
plays a role, as I pointed out in my written submission.
    Mr. Grothman. OK.
    Ms. Swearer. I think it is a number of things.
    Mr. Grothman. Yes. I will give you another question then. 
This week, I will be reintroducing something called the Student 
and Teacher Safety Act, which will allow schools to use 
existing grants they have, meant, in part, for improving school 
conditions and learning to improve or boost school safety 
following the evolving shooting. The White House press 
secretary said that President Biden does not believe in 
hardening schools to provide more security resources or law 
enforcement officers. If these measures can be effective in 
preventing another mass shooting, why do you think the 
President is not open to hardening schools this way?
    Ms. Swearer. I cannot read the President's mind, but my 
guess is he would rather focus on other ways of addressing it. 
I would also very quickly like to point out to reference 
something Congressman Mfume said, to seem to infer that we only 
care about or have only mentioned one aspect of a greater 
issue, which is focusing on physical security. Congressman, I 
respectfully don't know if you were not here for my opening 
statement or have not read my written submission, but I 
respectfully have pointed out roughly a dozen other issues as 
well. This is comprehensive in nature. It is not one thing or 
the other. It is both----
    Mr. Mfume. I have been here for three hours since before 
the hearing started. I heard your testimony. My reference was 
to schools, and my reminder was the----
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair, I think----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman is not recognized.
    Mr. Mfume. Well, the witness addressed me, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Maloney. OK.
    Mr. Grothman. Could you give me another few seconds back? 
Someone jumped in there. Well, if President Biden is going to 
stand between us and trying to improve the physical security in 
school districts, can you give us other ideas that we can use 
to prevent these tragedies?
    Ms. Swearer. Sure. As I mentioned in both my written and 
oral testimony, I think we can focus very clearly on building 
up the Nation's mental health infrastructure, both specifically 
in schools and generally across the board. We are talking about 
two-thirds of gun deaths every year that are suicides, which 
clearly plays into an aspect of mental health, which is 
problematic. We are talking about with mass shootings, 
individuals who clearly show signs of being a danger to 
themselves or others, but who are otherwise, you know, not 
felons yet and oftentimes cannot be involuntarily civilly 
committed. So, looking at, you know, targeted interventions 
with adequate means of due process and also just behavioral 
risk assessment.
    We talked about Instagram and threats on Instagram. What is 
concerning to me is that so many people saw so many signs, 
especially in Uvalde, and it appears that nobody reported them, 
or knew to report them, or knew how to report them, or didn't 
think anything would be done about it. And that----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    OK. The gentlelady from California, Ms. Porter, is now 
recognized.
    Ms. Porter. Ms. Swearer, in 2019, you testified on 
Representative Cicilline's bill, the assault weapons ban, 
before Congress. At the 2019 hearing, Representative Jim Jordan 
asked you if law-abiding people will be less safe to protect 
themselves if that bill was passed. Do you remember your 
response?
    Ms. Swearer. I have a general idea of what I would have 
said under that circumstance, but, no, I don't remember my 
specific words.
    Ms. Porter. You said, ``I think worse than that, sir, you 
will see millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens become 
felons overnight''----
    Ms. Swearer. Yes.
    Ms. Porter [continuing]. ``for nothing more than having 
scary looking features on firearms.''
    Ms. Swearer. It is true.
    Ms. Porter. I was quite surprised by your answer. You read 
the bill before you came to Congress to testify against it, 
yes?
    Ms. Swearer. If we are referring to the ban on assault 
weapons, correct, yes.
    Ms. Porter. So, you knew that the bill would allow any gun 
owner to maintain possession of any semiautomatic assault 
weapon that was lawfully possessed before the bill became law?
    Ms. Swearer. No. So, that is the case under that bill. The 
problem is anytime that is transferred to anybody else----
    Ms. Porter. Madam Chair, would you please instruct the 
witness that the time belongs to me?
    Ms. Swearer. If you don't want to hear an answer to my 
question, I am not sure what is being asked.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady has reclaimed her time.
    Ms. Porter. You said ``yes'' in response to my question 
that you knew the bill would allow the gun owner to maintain 
possession of any semiautomatic assault weapon that was 
lawfully possessed before the bill becomes law. Ms. Swearer, I 
respect that we have different opinions on Representative 
Cicilline's assault weapons law, but we cannot have different 
facts. We have a duty to debate the merits of proposal. You 
falsely testified under oath for that bill----
    Ms. Swearer. Would you like to hear the explanation of why 
I said that?
    Ms. Porter. No, I have not yielded, Ms. Swearer.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Suspend.
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair, if she is going to ask questions, 
shouldn't she let the witness have----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman is not recognized.
    Ms. Porter. You falsely testified under oath----
    Mr. Biggs. Point of order. Point of order.
    Chairwoman Maloney. What is the gentleman's point of order?
    Ms. Swearer. I have been accused of falsely testifying 
under oath, and I would like address it.
    Mr. Biggs. The gentlewoman has accused her of perjury. Is 
she going to hold to that, or are you going to allow the 
witness to respond to that accusation of criminal conduct?
    Chairwoman Maloney. You have not come forward with a 
significant point of order. Ms. Porter will continue.
    Ms. Porter. I asked you if that bill was correct, if the 
bill would allow any gun owner to maintain possession, and you 
said ``yes,'' yet you testified that the bill would allow 
people to become felons overnight. Earlier today you testified 
that you hoped that this was the last time you testify before 
Congress for the sake of our Nation and the integrity of this 
Congress----
    Ms. Swearer. I said Congress, after a mass shooting, trying 
to figure out how to solve a problem, that we are all heavily 
invested in solving----
    Ms. Porter. Ms. Swearer, I have not asked the question.
    Ms. Swearer. How dare you.
    Ms. Porter. Reclaiming my time. How dare you misstate the 
law----
    Ms. Swearer. How dare you ask a question----
    Ms. Porter [continuing]. as legislation----
    Ms. Swearer [continuing]. that you do not even want an 
answer to.
    Ms. Porter. Ms. Swearer, I am moving on. I am a lifelong 
consumer protection advocate. From 2015 to 2020, there were at 
least 2,070 unintentional shootings by children. Seven hundred 
sixty-five of those children died. A consumer product that 
causes this much harm to the public, would normally be subject 
to a recall. But Federal law prohibits the Consumer Product 
Safety Commission, the agency responsible for protecting the 
public from dangerous products, from regulating guns. This is 
absurd. After one child died using a Peloton treadmill last 
year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission intervened and 
recalled the product, but when hundreds of children die using 
guns, there is no Federal response. There is no Federal safety 
standard for guns even though 40,000 Americans hurt or kill 
themselves or other people in hundreds of accidents every year. 
Instead of regulating guns like any other consumer product, 
Federal law protects gun manufacturers.
    A teenager can watch a video online and learn how to modify 
a rifle to make it more deadly. And the gun industry avoids any 
liability if that teenager uses that modified rifle to fire 
repeatedly and rapidly at innocent people, even though their 
products could be designed to prevent unsafe modifications. I 
want to give an example. In 2001, a 13-year-old boy named Billy 
accidentally shot his father's handgun and killed his friend, 
Josh. Billy mistakenly thought that gun was unloaded because he 
had removed the gun's magazine. Josh's family sued the gun 
manufacturer for failing to warn Billy and other consumers that 
their product could be fired without a magazine. It is a simple 
case. It should have been decided by a jury as is provided 
under the Constitution. Instead, because of the gun industry's 
immunity, the gun manufacturer was able to dismiss the case 
without a trial.
    If a pharmaceutical company failed to warn customers about 
the known risks of one of their drugs, they could face 
thousands of lawsuits. But we allow the gun industry to sell 
weapons without taking any precautions to protect children and 
families from fatal accidents. Mr. Suplina, do you think the 
gun industry would do more to protect children if Congress 
ended their immunity?
    Mr. Suplina. Absolutely.
    Ms. Porter. Would ending the gun industry's immunity put 
gun manufacturers out of business?
    Mr. Suplina. No, it would not.
    Ms. Porter. In the 1990's, lawsuits forced big tobacco to 
pay for the harm they caused by marketing cigarettes. Just last 
year, Big Pharma agreed to pay $26 billion for communities 
devastated by opioids.
    Mr. Higgins of Louisiana. Madam Chair, her time has 
expired.
    Ms. Porter. Victims of gun violence also deserve their day 
in court. They deserve justice. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair----
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Madam Chair, I have a parliamentary 
inquiry.
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I have point of order. 
Madam Chair, point of order. Again, Ms. Porter accused our 
witness of perjury. That is a very serious accusation, accused 
her of lying.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Madam Chair, the gentleman has not 
stated a proper point of order.
    Mr. Comer. No, I am stating it.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. That is not a proper point of order.
    Mr. Comer. My point of order is we just had a woman from 
Congress accuse a witness of perjury and didn't give the 
witness time to response.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Madam Chair, the gentleman is not 
stating a proper point of order.
    Chairwoman Maloney. So, the gentlelady will suspend.
    Mr. Comer.[Inaudible].
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Cloud, is 
recognized. Mr. Cloud, you are now recognized.
    Mr. Cloud. I thank you all for being here. Thank you, Madam 
Chair, and obviously this is a tragedy that is heartbreaking 
for all of us. And naturally, coming out of this as we look for 
solutions, emotions are naturally high because we are all 
grieved by the fact that we see this in our Nation. There are 
going to be 1,000 reasons why we are asking and the 
investigations are ongoing, obviously. Even the conclusions we 
could come up with well, of course, never answer the cry of a 
parent who has lost a child. And I think any of us who have 
children can understand that our hearts just break for what we 
have seen.
    As we move forward, we have to continue to figure out how 
we propose solutions that actually create solutions. Very often 
in this Congress, we do things out of a best of intent and have 
the worst of results. There is a lot of data that points to the 
fact that gun control leads not to more safer communities, but 
to more dangerous communities. For example, one of the 
proposals out there right now is to raise the age of being able 
to own a rifle, and in our Federal society, we have many 
states, and so we are able to kind of test these things out. 
And as far as I know, the only peer-reviewed article study that 
has been done on that, it was in the Journal of Law and 
Economics. He talked about it and looked at it and said, if 
anything, there was a six percent increase from states who 
began to implement age requirements or raised age requirements. 
So, we have to tread passionately, but very carefully as we 
continue to address this from a policy perspective.
    I would like to bring up a topic that I think needs to be 
added to this conversation, and Representative Hice and Higgins 
touched on this quite a bit, because a lot of times here in 
Congress, well-measured politicians like to get away with 
measuring our personal compassion. Usually, it is on a spending 
bill. So, we will measure our personal compassion by how much 
money of other people's money we spend, and generally, it is 
the more money we spend, the more compassion we have, in a 
sense. I have always found that absurd.
    In the same way as we do this, it would be wrong for us, 
just out of the sake of doing something, to measure our 
personal compassion by how much of other people's 
constitutional rights we take from them and give to the Federal 
Government. And it is important to point out in history that 
any time a Federal Government takes authority, it is always for 
altruistic reasons. The danger comes when the next person in 
charge is or what happens after that, and many times that power 
is taken under good intentions and then used nefariously much, 
much later, so we have to be very careful about that. We have 
to keep history and context in mind in all of this.
    And the other thing I would say is that we should not think 
that any of this is monocausal. There is not one thing that 
caused this. There are a lot of things. But one thing I would 
like to throw into the mix of this, because if there is a 
common denominator as we look across these, it is not age so 
much. It is not the firearm used at the time or even how it was 
required. As much as it is, we see when we look at crime in our 
communities, when we look at the societal decline, we are in 
decline as a Nation when it comes to the moral and societal 
decline in our Nation. There is no doubt about it.
    And one of the biggest factors that is a common denominator 
across much of this is simply broken homes, fatherlessness. A 
DOJ study from the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 
report said the most reliable indicator of violent crime in the 
community is the proportion of fatherless homes. A 2019 meta 
study in the Journal of Psychology, Crime and Law found that 
growing up in single-parent families is associated with 
elevated risk of involvement in crime by adolescents. A 2019 
study from the Pew Research Center finds that the U.S. has the 
world's highest rate of children living in single parent 
households. The National Fatherhood Initiative has compiled 
some data, and adolescents from fatherless homes are more 
likely to commit crimes. They are more likely to end up in 
prisons. They are more likely to end up in poverty, and so we 
have to figure that out.
    For a long time, our Government has subsidized even and 
promoted policies that continue to break down the home, and we 
have to do what we can to make sure we come back to this. And I 
would just like to give whatever time remains to Ms. Swearer to 
address the perjury charges that have been made against you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Cloud. Oh, my apologies.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady from Florida, Ms. 
Wasserman Schultz, is now recognized.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Madam Chair. Gun 
manufacturers didn't always market weapons to civilians, and, 
until recently, trade shows didn't make military-style guns 
available to the general public. Now gun makers aggressively 
market AR-15-style weapons to civilians and actively tie them 
to military and law enforcement weapons. Smith & Wesson, 
America's largest gun manufacturer, even developed a name for 
this marketing ploy, calling it the ``halo effect.'' Now I want 
to draw your attention to the screen.
    [Slide]
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Suplina, I want to ask you about 
one advertisement that I find troubling. This one. This is an 
ad for a Daniel Defense MK18, a high-speed military-style AR 
similar to the Daniel Defense AR used at the Robb Elementary 
School shooting in Uvalde. The ad states, ``use what they use'' 
and that the gun features ``military adopted technology.'' Mr. 
Suplina, do you believe the associations made in this 
advertisement are appropriate for a civilian?
    Mr. Suplina. No, but they are very effective at selling 
military-style weapons to the civilian population.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Reports on this gun indicate that it 
is favored by special forces. I would like to ask Daniel 
Defense why the same-style guns being used in war zones should 
be marketed to everyday people. It is clear who gunmakers are 
marketing to. Fred Guttenberg lost his 14-year-old daughter 
Jamie in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in 
my own community. Fred filed an FTC complaint alleging that 
Smith & Wesson mimicked first-person shooter video games in its 
advertising materials to attract adolescents and young adults. 
A Smith & Wesson M&P 15 223-caliber rifle was used in the 
Parkland massacre.
    Mr. Suplina, what level of culpability should gun 
manufacturers have when they market human killing machines to a 
civilian customer base?
    Mr. Suplina. Again, this is now unfortunately, increasingly 
the norm among gun manufacturers to market using, you know, 
video game style ads. Daniel Defense itself referenced popular 
video games in its advertising and in its advertisements, and 
they should be held accountable for this.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. Commissioner Gramaglia, I 
would like to turn to you next. I want to put another 
advertisement on the screen.
    [Slide]
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. This is an advertisement for a 
Bushmaster XM-15. Is that the same gun that was used in the 
mass shooting at the Tops supermarket on May 14?
    Mr. Gramaglia. Yes, it was.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. This advertisement shows a soldier 
with a Bushmaster, and it states, ``versatility on the range 
during patrol.'' Your officers were actually on patrol that 
day, and many of them responded to the active shooter scene 
with far less advanced weaponry. How do you prepare officers to 
protect themselves in the public from military-grade killing 
machines every day? I know it was referenced that, you know, no 
problem that they had, you know, adequate weapons to be able to 
defend themselves, but is that the case?
    Mr. Gramaglia. Against this weapon? No. We have active 
shooter vests that we have in our patrol cars. You can't wear 
them on a regular basis. They are far too heavy. It is 
something that you would have to grab and put on if you have 
the time to do it.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. President Pringle, I want 
to turn to you. You have worked closely with teachers and 
students for years on combating gun violence. Without 
meaningful gun reform, students are forced to practice mass 
shooting drills. Just this week, and I know we stood together 
yesterday and you heard me talk about the high school students 
from my children's high school alma mater, to mark the success 
of their fundraising drive, to put Stop the Bleed kits in every 
classroom in that high school campus. I mean, those are kits 
that are meant to triage a bleeding wound. Students now prep 
for the time that they have in school in the event that they 
are facing an active shooter, and that they may bleed to death 
from gunshot wounds. What kind of traumatic effect does 
normalizing gun violence through these reactive measures have 
on students?
    Ms. Pringle. We have seen over the years an increase in 
anxiety and increase in the number of students who are seeking 
additional assistance from our mental health professionals. We 
are seeing an increase in the amount of students who are coming 
to our schools with all kinds of social and emotional learning 
gaps because they have been subjective to overly aggressive 
drills, and looking at social media and TV, and seeing other 
students suffer and die at the hands of gun violence.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Marketing mass killing machines to a 
civilian customer base by using imagery and words that suggests 
that is the purpose of their product is gross and immoral, but 
it is just what gun companies do now in order to profit from a 
market beyond their older male customer base. The Second 
Amendment does not absolve gun manufacturers the responsibility 
to market their products responsibly. And children should not 
be doing fundraisers for Stop the Bleed kits instead of making 
sure that they can have a fun prom, doing car washes, baking, 
having bake sales, to make sure that their life on campus as 
students is improved, as opposed to their life on campus 
doesn't end and they have to use a Stop the Bleed kit that they 
have raised money for.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Yes. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. As previously was stated at the 
beginning of the hearing, Mayor Adams has a hard stop at 1:30. 
Mayor Adams, thank you so much for joining us here today, and 
for your testimony, and for your service. You are excused. 
Thank you so much.
    Mr. Adams. Thank you very much.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Mr. Biggs is now recognized. Mr. Biggs?
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, last week I 
thought I had heard it all when one of the Democrats threatened 
to end the filibuster, wanted to pack the Supreme Court, and 
said that they would confiscate guns. In order to do that, they 
would basically emasculate the Senate as an institution and 
also emasculate the Supreme Court as well. I thought that was 
interesting. It was pretty bad, but then we have here someone 
actually accusing a witness, and actually taking out of 
context, a witness who testified previously and accusing her of 
perjury, following that, though. But I got to tell you, the 
most egregious thing that the Democrats did today is they took 
a person, a young person, little Miah, she was traumatized two 
weeks ago, still suffering under obvious PTSD as she testified 
in that video, and bringing that poor little girl to relive 
this.
    And we are going to hear about how traumatic, and I don't 
say they are not traumatic, these raising money for Stop the 
Bleed kits is, then it is particularly pernicious and 
outrageous to take an 11-year-old child, who graphically 
described how she spread a classmates' blood upon her and feign 
her own death, to make her relive that. If we are talking about 
PTSD, you just prolonged the agony of that little child. For 
what? For your own political gain, your own political purpose. 
That is despicable.
    And over the course of more than nine hours last week, my 
colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, my Democrat colleagues 
made it clear that they don't believe any American should have 
access to the means to protect themselves and their families. 
Democrats opposed the Republican amendment that would allow 
victims of domestic violence to purchase firearms. They opposed 
the Republican amendment that would allow the spouses of active 
duty and deployed military to purchase firearms. And again, 
they promoted ending the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, 
and confiscating guns from law-abiding citizens.
    And they gave their entire game away by making clear that 
neither Congress nor the Supreme Court will stand in the way of 
their radical mission. Their proposed solutions to the problem 
of violent crime in this country is to make felons out of law-
abiding citizens under the age of 21, to make felons of law-
abiding citizens who own firearms in homes with children, and 
to make felons of law-abiding citizens who own or purchase 
magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The most 
common fire in this country sells 15 round magazines. Their 
proposed solutions are to force law enforcement officers to 
ignore due process and restrict law-abiding citizens to have 
the means to protect themselves and their families from 
threats. And make no mistake: my Democratic colleagues intend 
on total infringement on America's Second Amendment rights.
    Ms. Swearer, before you answer the most pertinent question 
I think that we are going to hear from you in just a second, I 
want you to tell me, can you define ``defensive use?''
    Ms. Swearer. Defensive use? And I am assuming you mean 
lawful defensive.
    Mr. Biggs. Yes.
    Ms. Swearer. It would be a use of a firearm that is to 
defend oneself lawfully against criminal actions by another.
    Mr. Biggs. How often is lawful defensive use of firearms in 
this country?
    Ms. Swearer. According to a 2013 report by the CDC, almost 
all, with very few exceptions, but the most rigorous studies 
and almost all of them show that it is somewhere between 
500,000 and 3 million times a year. I think it is roughly 
probably around an average of a million, myself.
    Mr. Biggs. Do you believe that is firearm use for self-
defense, defense of others, or for the protection of property 
saves lives?
    Ms. Swearer. Yes, it objectively saves lives.
    Mr. Biggs. Now, you were accused by someone who took out of 
context something you testified in 2019 of effectively 
committing a crime and committing perjury before Congress. 
Would you please like to respond to that?
    Ms. Swearer. Congressman, respectfully, and I appreciate 
the opportunity, but we have wasted enough time on political 
games today. And I would like to get back to the merits of 
actually talking about solutions.
    Mr. Biggs. Very good. Now, I am going to go forward now, 
and, Madam Chair, I am going to submit, please, the following 
items for the record: the testimony of Stephen Willeford before 
the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 25, 2021.
    Mr. Willeford is a good guy with a gun, who heroically 
confronted and stopped a mass shooter in Sutherland Springs, 
Texas. I also submit a 2019 study by John Lott of the Crime 
Research Prevention Center. His study examines data on the rate 
of shootings and accidents in schools that allowed teachers to 
carry firearms, which founds zero cases of someone being 
wounded or killed from a public mass shooting at a school that 
allows teachers to carry firearms. And third, an article by the 
Washington Examiner that the Buffalo shooter was an eco-
socialist racist who hated Fox News and Ben Shapiro.
    Mr. Biggs. With that, I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection, the gentleman yields 
back.
    The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Johnson, is now recognized. 
And we have been called for votes, so after him, we will 
recess.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Madam Chair, for holding this 
hearing, and I would like to thank the witnesses, particularly 
those on the first panel, for their testimony. I was very moved 
by what each of them had to say.
    Americans have grown weary, frustrated, and frightened by 
the ever-intensifying cascade of gun violence afflicting our 
country, and they are sick and tired of their elected leaders 
continuing to do nothing to address the carnage. The fact of 
the matter is that the gun lobby, led by the NRA and the gun 
manufacturers that fund it, exert great influence on 
politicians to support its policy, which is that the only way 
to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. You 
know, I mean, if that holds true then, you know, it just 
doesn't make sense in a civilized society. And I would submit 
to you that every person with a gun makes us unsafe as opposed 
to more secure.
    This stopping a bad guy with a good guy with a gun just has 
not worked to allow the floodgates to remain open for gun 
dealers to flood our streets with weapons that are more 
powerful than what was available last week. That policy, Madam 
Chair, has been a deadly failure, and if we continue the 
unbridled flow of firearms flooding our Nation's streets, we 
will continue to see rising rates of gun violence in America. 
No other country has a problem like the gun violence problem 
plaguing our country. And policymakers who stand in the way of 
doing something to address the problem should be ashamed of 
themselves, and they need to be voted out of office and 
replaced with leaders who are willing to stand up to the NRA 
and pass commonsense gun reform laws.
    It is common sense to impose a ban on the manufacture and 
sale to the public of military-assault weapons meant for use on 
the battlefield. It is common sense to mandate universal 
background checks by closing the gun show loophole, and it is 
commonsense to raise the age the purchase of firearms from 18 
to 21. But for some reason, my colleagues insist on doing 
nothing to reverse what is a tide of a failed policy. It allows 
greedy firearms manufacturers to maintain their ever-growing 
profits by flooding our streets with weapons of war, and they 
continue to ignore the impact of their inaction, hiding behind 
the Second Amendment as if it were the Bible. They proclaim any 
attempt to pass gun safety legislation infringes on their right 
to carry. Well, what about the right to live of the 19 children 
and two teachers killed in Uvalde? The 10 shoppers killed in 
Buffalo, New York, what about their right to live? What about 
the right to live with almost countless others who have died 
from street gun violence? How much more blood should be shed 
before we and Congress take action?
    Madam Chair, the House has acted to pass laws on universal 
background checks, but our legislation has stalled in the 
Senate because of the filibuster, and Congress today will pass 
commonsense gun legislation. I should say Democrats in Congress 
will pass commonsense gun law today and pass it on to the 
Senate where it will be met with the filibuster. The 
overwhelming majority of Americans support the types of 
commonsense gun safety reforms under consideration this week, 
and failure to act is unconscionable. Failure is an insult to 
the countless dead children and shattered families and 
communities. Failure is an insult to the people we are here to 
represent, and I join my colleagues in their fervent thoughts 
and prayers, and beg my colleagues to match their thoughts and 
prayers with equally fervent action.
    Mr. Gramaglia, a paper released by the International 
Association of Chiefs of Police noted that when the Biden 
assault weapons ban was in place between 1994 and 2004, the 
number of assault weapons traced to crimes fell by a dramatic 
66 percent. Since the assault weapons are often used against 
police officers and the IACP is supportive of the assault 
weapons ban or the assault rifle ban, what message does it send 
when Republicans who loudly proclaim their support for law 
enforcement refuse to even discuss banning of assault weapons?
    Mr. Gramaglia. You know, my issue here is that we need to 
reduce the amount of bloodshed on our streets, and the damage 
that these weapons cause will lead to more bloodshed on the 
streets. It is more victims that are being struck, and it is 
something that needs to be banned.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Donalds, is recognized for 
five minutes.
    Mr. Donalds. Thank you, Madam Chair, and, Madam Chair, 
also, thank you for the indulgence before we have to go vote. I 
heard a lot today. I don't want to do too much speechifying 
because we do that too often here.
    Ms. Swearer, it has been referenced a lot today actually, 
about the need for universal background checks and closing the 
``gun show loophole.'' Can you actually explain in detail what 
that policy actually means?
    Ms. Swearer. Sure. So, universal background checks start 
with this general conception of what could be, you know, at its 
core, legitimate. Right now, most gun sales, whether it is 
brick and mortar gun stores, whether it is a bought over the 
internet, anything that occurs interstate, those require a 
background check under existing law. The only exception is for 
intrastate sales between private sellers, and that is largely 
because they do not have access to the next system. They 
cannot, like fossil fuels, call up the FBI and say, hey, can 
you run a background check.
    Mr. Donalds. Now, could that theoretically be a way, that 
interstate sale for individuals who are otherwise prohibited, 
to obtain firearms?
    Ms. Swearer. Sure. As I point out, the problems with HRA 
and all of those other bills is that this is a low-reward 
endeavor. This is already not how most criminals are obtaining 
their firearms. They are already obtaining them through the 
black market, through informal channels that are not in any way 
shape or form addressed by interstate private sales. And on top 
of that, things like HRA would criminalize a whole host of 
responsible, temporary, low-risk transfers between law-abiding 
citizens. Like, if your buddy wants to borrow your hunting 
rifle, or, you know, you are going on a month-long trip to 
Europe and you want your guns to be secured in your friend's 
safe next door, you would have to go through a background 
check, legally transfer title of your guns to that individual, 
and then legally transfer title back to yourself when you are 
done. So, that is the problem.
    Mr. Donalds. So, Ms. Swearer, real quick. So, the policy of 
universal background checks, would that have stopped the 
shooter in Uvalde from acquiring his weapon?
    Ms. Swearer. It would not have stopped the shooter in 
Uvalde.
    Mr. Donalds. Well, would it have stopped the shooter in 
Parkland from acquiring his weapon?
    Ms. Swearer. It would not have stopped, with perhaps one 
lone exception, a single mass public shooter in the last 20 
years because they all either passed or were capable of passing 
background checks, and that is the problem.
    Mr. Donalds. The shooter in Sandy Hook, the Newtown 
shooting, did that shooter kill his mother and take the guns?
    Ms. Swearer. Yes, he did, and I forget his age, but he 
otherwise did not have a disqualifying history.
    Mr. Donalds. The shooter in Uvalde, did he actually shoot 
his grandmother in the face before he went to perpetrate the 
crimes in Uvalde?
    Ms. Swearer. To my knowledge, yes.
    Mr. Donalds. Folks, here is the deal. One of the things 
that we have seen through all these mass shootings, I was a 
member of the State Legislature during the Parkland shooting, 
so I was in the legislature during that time period. The one 
thing that is crystal clear is these mass shooters that target 
our schools are all psychopaths. They are psychotic. In 
Parkland, the red flags were there for everybody to see. The 
school district did not act. That came out in the Parkland 
report. The site itself was not secured. That came out in the 
Parkland report. In Uvalde, the back door was open. It was 
open, wide open. The perpetrator shot his grandmother in the 
face. That is insane.
    I know this bill, the proposed bill, today or tomorrow they 
are talking about raising the age to buy rifles from 18 to 21. 
Are we now going to say that a 19-year-old who is a legal adult 
in the United States does not have the mental capacity to own a 
shotgun or an AR-15, but they have the mental capacity to 
enlist in the military? They have the mental capacity to 
actually sign legal contracts, they have the mental capacity to 
be treated as an adult by law enforcement, and they also have 
the mental capacity to vote in the United States, but they 
don't have the mental capacity to own a shotgun or to own a 
rifle and not inflict harm on their fellow man?
    Look man, I got three sons. Two of them are school age now. 
When these shootings occur, man, they hurt me because I could 
only imagine what it is as a parent. I am a parent, but I also 
understand that I have a responsibility as a legislator to 
actually defend the Constitution of the United States. The 
Constitution of the Second Amendment is there. It is our 
responsibility to defend it.
    And if we look at the data from the mass shootings that 
have occurred in the United States over the last 20 years, the 
one constant, especially when it comes to schools, is that 
these shooters are young. They are mentally disturbed, and the 
vast majority of people who are in their age group would not 
even think or go down the pathway of committing these 
atrocities. We don't pass laws because of the ``one or two 
psychopaths.'' We only pass laws in order to maintain the 
actual legal momentum of freedom in the United States. The 
Second Amendment is not there to stop psychopaths, to be 
perfectly honest with it. It is not. That is not its purpose. 
The purpose of the Second Amendment is clear. It is to protect 
the constitutional rights of American citizens.
    These shootings are awful. They are awful, but the data is 
clear about how to find the people that actually do this, and 
the measures put in front of us would not have actually stopped 
these shootings. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Votes have been called to allow members to vote. The 
committee will stand in recess until the end of the first vote 
series.
    The committee stands in recess.
    [Recess.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. The committee will reconvene.
    The gentlelady from Michigan, Ms. Tlaib, is recognized for 
five minutes.
    Ms. Tlaib. Thank you so much, Chairwoman, and thank you so 
much for all of you for being here.
    Sometimes Congress often feels like it is in its own little 
world separated from the rest of the country, but I hope this 
morning, hearing the witnesses' strength and courage, inspires 
meaningful action here. The biggest fear I have as a Member of 
Congress, but also just really a mother in America, is that 
when Buffalo and Uvalde stops being in the headlines, everyone 
here will go on and do nothing. Other violent shootings never 
reached those national headlines, like the four shootings in 
the span of a week in the city of Ecorse in my district.
    With that in mind, I want to really talk about AR-15s. A 
few weeks ago in Buffalo, one person armed with an assault 
rifle carried out a racist act of terrorism in a historically 
Black community. And you may have heard my colleague from 
California, Congresswoman Porter, talk about how the shooter 
there having to re-round or reload the gun actually helped save 
lives because they have a ban on AR-15s in the state of 
California.
    So, Mr. Suplina, the gunmen in each of these kind of mass 
shootings use assault weapons to carry out their attacks, 
correct?
    Mr. Suplina. Correct.
    Ms. Tlaib. In a span of one minute, how many people could a 
person kill with an AR-15?
    Mr. Suplina. I don't know the answer to that question, but 
the answer is with the right high-capacity magazine, these are 
designed to inflict the maximum amount of damage in that time.
    Ms. Tlaib. And Buffalo was about two-and-a-half minutes, 
something of that sort?
    Mr. Suplina. Correct.
    Ms. Tlaib. How many people? Ten?
    Mr. Suplina. Correct.
    Ms. Tlaib. Ten that killed. How many were injured?
    Mr. Suplina. Three more.
    Ms. Tlaib. And Ms. Everhart testified about the damage to 
those even that survive?
    Mr. Suplina. That is correct.
    Ms. Tlaib. Talk about that, because I am just thinking of 
the little 4th graders and 5th graders that survived the 
shooting and what is happening, of not only the trauma, but 
their livelihood of having that kind of trauma to your body.
    Mr. Suplina. Gun violence in America is deaths, it is 
injuries, and it is the community trauma that starts at the 
scene of these crimes and ripples out. And we too often don't 
talk about those that survive their wounds but have to live 
with them forever, and the family members who need to take care 
of them. We don't talk about the costs on society, that, you 
know, loss of work, loss of mental well-being, costs to our 
society, not to mention those that aren't hit by a bullet but 
whose lives are forever changed.
    Ms. Tlaib. So, many of my friends who are in the military 
service and been trained to use AR-15s tell me that there is 
this big opposition to call them weapon of war, but they are, 
correct?
    Mr. Suplina. They are not only weapons of war, but they are 
literally designed and based on weapons in current use in the 
military, correct.
    Ms. Tlaib. One of the things, and if I may, Chairwoman, to 
enter from The New York Times, article, ``The Mass Shootings 
Where Stricter Gun Laws Might Have Made a Difference.''
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Ms. Tlaib. You know, I have not thought about that. I was 
more focused on banning assault weapons, but as they went 
through, they said four gunmen were the under the age of 21 
that purchased their weapons legally, and they went on to say, 
you know, the number of people that were killed. And it even 
goes on to talk about the use of, like, so-called assault 
weapons or weapon of war, as some of my veterans in my 
community call them, that the easy access to them is even mind 
boggling for those that serve our country, but even in some of 
these committees had no idea that is how accessible they are, 
that lot of the parents don't even realize that this person was 
able to just go to the corner department store and get it. The 
American people don't realize how accessible these weapons of 
wars are.
    Mr. Suplina. The reason that the country currently requires 
you to be 21 to own a handgun is because the country came to 
understand the lethality of handguns and use in crime. The 
reason the country did not raise the age on long guns is 
because what comes to mind is the hunting rifle that you use, 
you know, in a rural area that 18-year-olds are more than 
capable of learning to shoot on. These are AR-15s. These are 
designed for people with military training, and, yes, in most 
places, you can walk in as an 18-year-old into a department 
store and buy one.
    Ms. Tlaib. Thank you. Ms. Pringle, really quickly. I told 
you, in tears, breaking down of friends I have known for a long 
time as teachers buying literally ladders to bust the window 
down to be able to climb out of their classroom in situations 
like what we saw in Texas. What are you hearing from teachers 
other than that, because I hear them talking about getting 
bullet proof vests for not----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired. Ms. 
Pringle may answer, briefly.
    Ms. Pringle. I am hearing from teachers all over this 
country that what is being asked of them, to stand in the gaps 
to protect students is unacceptable, that they should not be 
the ones responsible for trying to protect them against assault 
weapons that are killing students in two minutes, four minutes, 
all of the students and the adults were killed in Columbine. We 
should not bear that burden. That is not our responsibility. 
Our responsibility is to teach our students.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentleman from South 
Carolina, Mr. Norman, is recognized. Mr. Norman?
    Mr. Norman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Ms. Pringle, are you 
familiar with the NEA's section, an end to policing in schools?
    Ms. Pringle. What are you referring to?
    Mr. Norman. The provision that basically, it is a call to 
action for police-free schools.
    Ms. Pringle. The NEA has not taken a position on police-
free schools. What we have done is we have taken a position on 
ensuring that every student, everyone has access to a quality 
education, and that they attend a safe, and supportive, and 
nurturing environment in which every one of them can learn.
    Mr. Norman. But as far as it relates to having police 
officers armed, does that make students safer at the schools in 
your opinion, as being head of the NEA?
    Ms. Pringle. Having police officers armed?
    Mr. Norman. Uh-huh.
    Ms. Pringle. I don't understand your question. You mean 
generally having police officers armed?
    Mr. Norman. In schools, are children more safe if the 
resource officers and/or armed police are armed?
    Ms. Pringle. We have school resource officers in our 
schools where we work and engage in making sure that they have 
the training and the support that they need----
    Mr. Norman. You are not answering my question.
    Ms. Pringle [continuing]. so that they can engage with our 
student's social, and emotional, and academic life.
    Mr. Norman. OK. So, you do not agree that armed resource 
officers or police make children safer?
    Ms. Pringle. We believe that when you are in a school 
environment----
    Mr. Norman. OK. You are not going to answer the question.
    Ms. Pringle. I did answer the question.
    Mr. Norman. No, you didn't. You----
    Ms. Pringle. Yes, I did.
    Mr. Norman. Well, let me put it to you again, Ms. Pringle. 
Do you think trained school personnel, who are trained and are 
permitted to carry concealed weapons, are more of a threat to 
students or would they keep our students safer? This will be 
the last question I ask----
    Ms. Pringle. Our teachers throughout this country 
overwhelmingly reject the idea of arming teachers in our 
schools. More guns in schools mean more killings.
    Mr. Norman. OK. So, no teacher with a concealed weapon, and 
I assume since you didn't answer, no resource officers ought to 
have a gun. The only one that should have guns are the people 
that come in there to do harm is basically what you are saying.
    Ms. Pringle. I did not say that. I didn't say that.
    Mr. Norman. Yes, you did not answer the question. Ms. 
Swearer, the International Journal of Policing Strategies and 
Management concluded that the presence of a school resource 
officer reduces the fear of crime among students, and it 
increases the safety among the students. Is that a true 
statement?
    Ms. Swearer. I believe, based on the evidence, that it is.
    Mr. Norman. There is no question about that, is there?
    Ms. Swearer. No. Again, I believe the evidence is pretty 
unequivocal.
    Mr. Norman. And if armed teachers or really the police had 
gone in earlier, the carnage would not have been as grave, 
correct?
    Ms. Swearer. I think especially when you look at the 
preventable blood loss and the ability to get first aid to 
students who spent 78 minutes not receiving that first aid, 
yes, that is incredibly important.
    Mr. Norman. And you would think that arming teachers and 
administrators would have quicker responses to stopping school 
shooters, right?
    Ms. Swearer. Obviously we should look at ways of ensuring 
that we don't get to that point. But yes, when that point has 
been reached, the armed response and the quickness of that 
response is, at that point, the primary thing that matters in 
terms of saving lives.
    Mr. Norman. Just like it has gotten to the point in this 
country under liberal administrations and the Democrats who 
want to disarm the police, we have got to have police officers 
in churches, of all places, who are armed, which is a sad day 
in this country.
    I want to yield the balance of my time to Mr. Clyde.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you to my colleague from South Carolina.
    Ms. Swearer, Democrats have advocated for a gun buyback 
program like the one in Australia. Do you think this would work 
in the United States?
    Ms. Swearer. No. I think the research on the Australia ban 
has one of several things that has been greatly 
mischaracterized today. Yes, rates of gun violence generally 
dropped, but it did so in every developed country around the 
world during that time, including in the United States, even 
though our number of guns per capita almost doubled during that 
time. Additionally, when you look at mass shootings before that 
ban and after that ban, before the ban they were very rare in 
Australia comparatively, especially compared to the United 
States. Those types of shootings were overwhelmingly not 
carried out by the types of weapons that were banned. And so 
there doesn't even seem to be some sort of logical connection 
even if you are looking at again these statistically low 
incidences. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Sarbanes, is now 
recognized.
    Mr. Sarbanes. Thanks very much, Madam Chair. I want to 
thank the witnesses for being here today. I want to 
acknowledge, as others have done, the powerful testimony that 
we heard from the first panel today. As we know, we heard this 
statistic now many times today, each year more than 45,000 
Americans are killed by guns, and nearly 10 percent of those 
killed are children for whom gun violence is now the leading 
cause of death in the United States. Yet for nearly 25 years, 
until 2019, the strength of the gun lobby up here on Capitol 
Hill prohibited the CDC from conducting research on gun 
violence, effectively preventing us, the Federal Government, 
and Congress, and others, from treating gun violence as the 
public health crisis that it is. In addition to the human toll, 
gun violence is draining our public health system. According to 
GAO, gun violence costs the U.S. $1 billion per year in initial 
hospital costs alone. Medicaid and other public programs 
shoulders 60 percent of those costs, so we are paying for this 
violence.
    To meaningfully address the gun violence epidemic in our 
country, as we have been saying again, and again, we must pass 
commonsense reforms while also investing in evidence-based 
prevention strategies and working with communities to address 
the complex and systemic issues that drive gun violence. And 
when I say commonsense, what I have in mind is many of the 
measures that we are going to have on the floor today as part 
of this legislative packet and tomorrow. ``Commonsense'' to me 
means when you ask the average person out there in the country, 
including by the way, the average law-abiding gun owner, does 
it make sense to do this, they say, absolutely, it makes sense. 
They do not fear these measures because they know that, 
overall, it will create a more rational world and country for 
us to live in.
    And we have heard much about the Second Amendment. No one 
is here to try to amend or take away the Second Amendment 
right. The First Amendment is also very important to us, and we 
know that there are some limitations that are placed there. We 
don't allow people to yell fire in a crowded theater. So, as 
sacrosanct as these amendments are, we can put rational 
commonsense measures in place to achieve the right balance.
    Mr. Jackson, you are a gun violence survivor, as you so 
compellingly testified earlier, and you are an advocate for 
reform. Most recently, as I understand, you had been on the 
ground in Buffalo, working to help the community recover from a 
horrific mass shooting that we saw there a few weeks ago. Can 
you describe what you have been seeing there in the weeks since 
the tragedy, and what you know, based on your experience, is 
coming for that community in the weeks and months and years 
ahead in terms of dealing with this? And speak, if you could, 
to this sense of powerlessness that so many people feel when 
they look at Washington, this idea that please do something 
real that can make a difference, just something.
    Everyone knows this problem is too complicated to flip a 
switch on. You can't solve it overnight, but it is this sense 
of being powerless in the face of gun violence because I think 
it is so demoralizing to individuals, certainly to many Members 
of Congress, and I am sure to communities like Buffalo and 
others that are experiencing this pain. So, if you could speak 
to that, I would very much appreciate it.
    Mr. Jackson. Yes, thank you. You know, when I arrived at 
Buffalo, for folks who don't know a lot about the community, 80 
percent of the African-American community is concentrated in 
one part of Buffalo, and when we got there, we saw instantly 
how far-reaching this trauma had impacted people throughout the 
community. The first vigil I went to, there was over 600 people 
there, torn apart. Every person you met was either a family 
member, a neighbor, a church member, went to school with 
someone, was coached by someone. Ms. Pearl Young was the first 
lady of our church, so you think about the generations that she 
touched. I met one young man who was the nephew of Heyward 
Patterson, who had eight children and couldn't even bring them 
to the funeral because he didn't want them to be re-traumatized 
by what had happened.
    And we talk about violence and its impact. Yes, 10 people 
were impacted and killed, yes, we know those families, but what 
we don't see is the trauma that ripples through the entire 
community. We had people literally on their knees crying. We 
had folks, senior citizens in walkers coming to memorials in 
tears, individuals screaming at the sky in anger. And while 
there were hundreds of cameras, there were very little people 
there to help them. There were very little victim services, 
support services. There were very little people to provide 
trauma care for those who have been impacted. And what we are 
most concerned about now is what does that ripple of trauma 
look like. We know violence is a disease, but now in Buffalo, 
we have an entire community, and I would argue the entire Black 
community across the country, who have been exposed to this 
disease. And I think it reinforces the extent of this public 
health crisis and why it is so urgent that we take a 
comprehensive public health approach to support those who have 
been directly impacted, as well as those who are impacted 
indirectly by this trauma.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you for your----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Kansas, Mr. 
LaTurner, is now recognized.
    Mr. LaTurner. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. We have four 
children, a preschooler, a 2d grader, a 4th grader, and a 5th 
grader. I was heartbroken by what happened in Uvalde and in 
Buffalo, and I join all Americans in praying for these victims' 
families, but not just praying for the victims' families, but 
willing to come to the table to try to find meaningful 
solutions that can prevent this from happening again. After 
events like this occur, many lawmakers seek simple solutions to 
complicated issues. However, Congress must focus on the root 
cause of violence by prioritizing mental health and school 
safety resources, and by disincentivizing rising crime in 
cities. Now is the time to come together, to use and improve on 
the tools at our disposal, and find new ways to ensure that 
this never happens again rather than spend time on proposals 
that will not fix this problem and seeks to rob law-abiding 
citizens of their rights guaranteed by our Constitution.
    Ms. Swearer, Federal school safety grants and programs have 
become more plentiful and accessible over the past several 
years. SchoolSafety.gov, for example, is a central location 
where HHS, DOJ, DHS, and the Department of Education collect 
actionable safety recommendations for schools. The site also 
has a grants finder tool to help administrators navigate a 
growing collection of Federal grant programs related to school 
safety. Speaking from your research and experience, are 
resources like this helpful for state and local educational 
agencies. And are they being utilized?
    Ms. Swearer. They are absolutely helpful. You know, again, 
we have talked about the benefits of all of these things at 
various times today. In terms of their underutilization, I do 
not have the data in front of me. I suspect the answer is it is 
being underutilized. I suspect that based on the continued 
problems that we do see, but I also know that plenty of schools 
are availing themselves of that, and I think that is of great 
benefit to the safety of their students and teachers and staff 
members.
    Mr. LaTurner. Would you care to comment on ways in which we 
can encourage more participation, more utilization of these 
resources?
    Ms. Swearer. Well, first, I think the publicity of, you 
know, enabling schools to know that they are out there, but 
also of helping schools and school districts understand the 
importance of looking in these directions. Like, even if you 
think you can magically snap your fingers and tens of millions 
of assault weapons will disappear tomorrow and that that will 
make a meaningful difference, the reality is you are still 
going to have threats in the meantime because, realistically, 
it is going to take decades for that to come out of 
circulation. You are still going to have the underlying 
problems. You are still going to have other weapons. In the 
meantime, this is still a viable option for those immediate 
threats. Even if you disagree with me on it, everything else 
related to gun control, this is still a viable option for the 
here and the now in the immediate context of protecting life.
    Mr. LaTurner. What types of warning signs could be 
recognized in students who may consider carrying out acts of 
violence in schools? And how do Federal grants help teachers, 
resource officers, administrators, and counselors identify 
students' mental health crises and prevent acts of violence?
    Ms. Swearer. So, a lot of these students, especially in a 
school shooting context, but just generally across the board 
for people who commit acts of mass public violence, they have 
long histories at that point of showing themselves to be a 
danger to themselves or others, either inflicting self-harm, 
harming animals, having suicidal tendencies, you know, showing 
other concerning signs of violent behavior. I think you have 
seen the quintessential examples of this in Uvalde and in 
Parkland. When you look at the data on thwarted school 
shootings, and thwarted mass public shootings, it is sort of 
like this chain link of prevention, right, where you had people 
who were able to recognize those signs, say, hey, this is a 
concern, be able to take it to someone with the authority, to 
do something to intervene, it was taken seriously. And then 
there was a mechanism in place to intervene. And so, you know, 
any sort of process that helps that, all of those links along 
that chain come together is important because that is how you 
save lives. That is how you successfully intervene because 
those options for intervention are so often and so clearly 
there.
    Mr. LaTurner. Undoubtedly, you are right, that there are 
ways to intervene, and we ought to encourage that and 
incentivize and provide resources for it at the Federal level. 
I just have a little bit of time left. What are some ways that 
technology can play a role in improving school safety?
    Ms. Swearer. Yes, I am not quite sure what you mean by 
``technology,'' whether you mean social media or----
    Mr. LaTurner. I mean social media, and I mean physical 
security on campus.
    Ms. Swearer. Sure. So, some of it is just the physical 
security of being able to buzz people in and out and making 
sure that there is secure access and security cameras, and 
using best practices for physical safety, some of which 
involves the best practices for technology. But again, I mean, 
we have referenced social media. You know, I am not a big tech 
expert, but certainly whatever it takes, that when these----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired. OK.
    Ms. Swearer. It is the same, finding the signs of dangers 
wherever they come from, whether it is----
    Mr. LaTurner. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady from California, Ms. 
Speier, is now recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your 
leadership. I must say that this has been a very tough hearing 
to listen to. First of all, let me thank all the witnesses who 
are here, and the first panel in particular. I am haunted by 
what Dr. Guerrero said, that he went into the emergency room 
and one of the dead children was decapitated. Think about that, 
decapitated.
    Commissioner, when you went into the Tops grocery store, I 
think we spend too much time sanitizing what assault weapons 
does to the body. Can you give us some descriptions of what you 
saw on the ground when you got to Tops?
    Mr. Gramaglia. I won't just get into that description, but 
I have been at----
    Ms. Speier. No, I want you to. I want us to hear it.
    Mr. Gramaglia. Yes, I want to expand on that. I have been 
to numerous shootings throughout my career that were the result 
of high-powered rifles, assault rifles and the cavernous holes 
that they leave in bodies. Decapitation is a pretty good 
explanation for it. Some people couldn't be buried with an open 
casket. Yes, the damage was absolutely devastating, and not 
just in that one, but, as I said, in other homicide scenes that 
I have been to, it is a devastation. It is incredible.
    Ms. Speier. I am a victim of gun violence. I know what it 
does to a body, and I cannot believe that my colleagues don't 
recognize that prohibiting the sale of an assault weapon until 
the age of 21 isn't going to save lives. It is the impulsive 
actions by 18-year-old, probably men, that have cost 30 
people's lives just in the last month. And we are not supposed 
to be hardening schools. They are not supposed to be prisons.
    Ms. Pringle, let me ask you, in your conversations with the 
teachers in the 199 incidents of gun violence on school grounds 
just last year, and the more than 311,000 students since 
Columbine that have been victims of gun violence experience, 
what does that inform you? What do the teachers tell you?
    Ms. Pringle. I met with survivors from, teachers from Sandy 
Hook and from Parkland, and students from Parkland and when I 
was in Houston, in Texas. And what they said to me reflected 
what teachers all over this country are saying, and that is 
that the impact to the school community is forever.
    Ms. Speier. Is forever.
    Ms. Pringle. It doesn't end. It is forever. And the idea of 
turning our schools into prisons, into places where they are 
not conducive to teaching and learning, that is not the 
solution to this problem. We all know what the solution to this 
problem is. It is comprehensive gun reform in this country. We 
know what it is. We are not supposed to be holding our students 
and our teachers responsible. We all heard Mr. Reyes crying 
from his bed in the hospital, saying, ``I didn't protect my 
students. I didn't protect my students.'' He should not be 
burdened with that. We are asking for Congress to do its job 
right now.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you, Ms. Pringle. Mr. Jackson, you, too, 
are a victim of gun violence. Does that trauma ever leave you?
    Mr. Jackson. Not one day. Anytime you hear a loud sound, 
anytime you see an argument or a fight or even a movement of a 
crowd, I am triggered over and over again, and I don't even 
need that. Every day we turn on the news and we see how 
prevalent violence is in our communities. You know, we say over 
100,000 people have been shot or injured by gun violence, but I 
really think that is a low estimate because in my community 
alone, I know at least eight people who have been directly 
impacted. And every morning I wake up, I have to apply ointment 
to my wound. I have to watch news as a reminder of this crisis, 
and then I also have to listen to politicians in chambers like 
this make excuses about why they can't take action. All of that 
is triggering.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you, Mr. Jackson. I would like to submit 
for the record this article that references that the young man 
in Uvalde, who massacred 19 children and two teachers, had 
$5,000 worth of guns and ammunitions, and he was working at an 
In-n-Out Burger restaurant.
    And the question, Madam Chair, that we need to ask is, 
where did he get the money for that? I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    The gentlewoman from Illinois, Ms. Kelly, is now 
recognized.
    Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Madam Chair. The first thing, I would 
like to take a moment to respond to my Republican colleague's 
comment that Democrats are using children as political props. 
These are the same tired arguments used by the gun lobby to 
prevent meaningful change after Sandy Hook, after Parkland. 
When victims and survivors speak up and demand change, the gun 
industry and its supporters in Congress question their motives. 
It is frankly shameful. Despite suffering unimaginable pain, 
our witnesses wanted to share their story, even the young lady. 
They had dared to hope that their trauma and heartbreak could 
be turned into something good. They are pleading with us to do 
our jobs. All I am asking my colleagues to do is open your 
hearts and listen, and I hope we still have enough humanity in 
this body to do this.
    We have been talking a lot about mass shootings, and I want 
to thank all the witnesses. I have long talked about the 
everyday gun violence that exists in our communities. The city 
of Chicago faces this every weekend, really every day. Over 
Memorial weekend, 42 people were shot, and 33 people were shot 
this past weekend. Tackling this issue will take community-
based approaches.
    Mr. Jackson, thank you for sharing your story and the work 
we have done together. Your organization uses community-based 
approaches to fight everyday gun violence through community 
intervention programs. Can you talk about the structural 
factors that drive gun violence in a community?
    Mr. Jackson. Yes, thank you. You know, we are big 
proponents for community-based violence intervention strategies 
because we know that can reduce the risk factors and address 
the root causes of violence. Over the course of the pandemic we 
saw a 39 percent increase in homicides in the Black community. 
And that is not because there were less policing. That is not 
because sentencing wasn't harsh. That was because the other 
root causes of violence were intensified. When we look at the 
lack of access to safe spaces, economic inequality, housing 
instability, the reinforcement of poverty, all of those fueled 
violence. And then on top of that, we poured in this flood of 
guns into our communities. We talked about New York earlier. 
Eighty-four percent of the guns in New York come from outside 
of the state, and that is what our communities are going 
through every single day. We are being flooded with firearms 
into the communities that are most vulnerable.
    And these community-based violence intervention strategies 
focus on victim services for those who have been impacted, 
supporting their families, providing therapeutic care for those 
traumatized, providing intervention tactics that work with 
folks in the hospitals to prevent them from retaliating. We 
know that 40 percent of the people who have been shot, within 
five years will be shot again or killed without any form of 
intervention, and hospital-based violence intervention does 
this, as well as cognitive behavioral therapeutic programs that 
work with those who are most at risk, who maybe have had a 
violent history and help them shift their lifestyle through 
therapeutic and behavioral changes. In certain communities we 
have seen violence reduced by 60 percent, and I have a whole 
list of examples which I can submit to the record, but we know 
these programs work.
    What we also know is that the Federal Government has not 
been investing in these efforts and has not been funding these 
efforts that we know bring peace to our community, and that is 
why we have been working together to push such legislation.
    Ms. Kelly. And hopefully we can change that and get Steven 
Horsford and Senator Booker's legislation passed. Commissioner, 
you helped your community heal after the horrible mass shooting 
last month, that you are helping them to heal, but you also see 
the destruction reoccurring on violence in Buffalo. Can you 
talk about how your police department works with organizations 
to implement community violence intervention strategies?
    Mr. Gramaglia. I am a strong believer in the Violence 
Interrupters' strategy. We work very closely with them. They 
get out in the community. They can say and do things that we 
can't because they are credible messengers. We use them a lot 
in place of where police officers might go to handle a 
situation. They are also very helpful in getting guns turned in 
at times. But the problem we have is, as my colleague, Mr. 
Jackson, said, the flood of guns that are coming into our 
communities, the ghost guns that are coming into our 
communities.
    And one of the scariest things I just heard the other day 
at a gun meeting in my department is that about a half a dozen 
ghost guns recently were firing fully automatic, not because 
they had a switch on them, because they were being modified and 
not modified properly, I guess if that is a term to use for a 
ghost gun. But it is the flood of guns that are coming in, 
where are they coming from. And we don't want to take guns away 
from law-abiding citizens. We want to stop the flow of guns 
coming in.
    Ms. Kelly. Well, I have a trafficking or purchasing bill I 
am going to run and talk about in a little bit because, 
representing Chicago, we have the same problem. And really 
quickly to Ms. Swearer, how do you explain the number of gun 
owners who support what we are trying to do, or the number of 
Americans that support, Democrat or Republican, doesn't matter, 
Independents? But I was at a press conference yesterday, and a 
swarm, they had shirts on of ``Gun Owners Support Gun Safety.'' 
That is what we are talking about.
    Ms. Swearer. It is because it is not until you actually 
explain to them what existing laws are and how these laws fail 
to actually accomplish those goals. When you actually do that, 
those numbers drop repeatedly. And actually, I believe I saw, 
it might have been The New York Times, had an article precisely 
on this today. It is just because people don't understand what 
is being talked about when you reference an assault weapon or 
universal background check. And so when that is explained to 
them, that number actually drops off considerably.
    Ms. Kelly. Well, the----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
    Ms. Kelly. The head of the Gun Violence Prevention Task 
Force is a gun owner. Val Demings is a gun owner. Many people 
on the task force, and they certainly know the legislation, and 
they are still pushing it. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Comer, is recognized.
    Mr. Comer. Thank you, Madam Chair, and, again, I want to 
thank our witnesses for being here today. This has been a very 
robust discussion, very difficult issue, brings out a lot of 
emotion. I appreciate everything that you all are discussing 
and fighting for. I had the opportunity to go first in 
questions, and I like to go toward the end because I like to 
listen to the debate, try to learn, listen to what other people 
say and pick up some points that people make. And one of the 
points that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez made was that some of the guns, 
when we referenced the amount of gun violence in New York City, 
that a lot of those guns were coming from outside New York 
City, and I would say that is probably right.
    We have in Kentucky a fentanyl problem, and I think just 
about every congressional district has a fentanyl problem. Our 
law enforcement tells us that fentanyl is coming across the 
border, and, you know, it is frustrating for us because we have 
had 100,000 deaths with fentanyl, and we believe that could be 
reduced by securing the border. But as I was thinking about 
that, I wonder if we ban certain types of weapons, Ms. Swearer, 
just wondering, I wonder if the Mexican drug cartel, who is 
profiting from all the illegals crossing into the United 
States, they are profiting from all the fentanyl and much of 
the crystal meth that is in the United States, I wonder if it 
is possible that they would get into the gun business?
    Ms. Swearer. Well, I think that might be the least of the 
worries at that point. I mean, you would still have 400-million 
plus privately owned firearms in this country. There would need 
to be some sort of coherent enforcement plan. Americans 
routinely do not turn in these weapons. I mean, you look at, I 
think it was New Jersey, when they banned magazines capable of 
10 or 15 rounds, nobody turned those in. Out of a million of 
them, nobody turns those in. You know, the people who do turn 
them in, let's say we are even twice as successful as 
Australia, you still have 200 million guns in this country, 
most of them now in the hands of the lesser law-abiding segment 
of society who didn't bother to turn them in, who didn't turn 
in their assault weapons.
    So, I mean, and we would be holding hearings, too, about, 
you know, who is this being enforced against. If I may be 
blunt, these laws are less likely to be enforced against white 
suburbia. We are now going to be having hearings about how they 
are being enforced against poor people of color, and that helps 
no one. So, I mean, I am not going to get into speculations 
about drug cartels, but I will say we will have several other 
problems that would be primary.
    Mr. Comer. What do you think, Mr. Swearer, that we should 
do instead of passing gun control laws to make our community 
safer?
    Ms. Swearer. I think, again, as I have outlined, one of the 
first things you can do is focus on the mental health and the 
well-being of communities, I mean, things that help communities 
flourish, whether it is focusing on mental health, two-thirds 
of gun deaths are suicides. As Mr. Jackson noted, you know, 
there are a lot of issues that are interrelated. It is very 
seriously interrelated with violence and violent crime. 
Focusing on stemming those issues, whether it is access to safe 
spaces, whether it is mental health, whether it is educational 
and job opportunities, the things that make families and 
communities flourish are the things that reduce violent crime. 
And, again, it does more than reduce violent crime, because now 
we are talking about human flourishing on top of that.
    Mr. Comer. My friend, Ro Khanna, also mentioned about 
violent criminals having guns, and, you know, our position is 
violent criminals should be in jail. I think that is the 
position of everyone on this side of the aisle. How can we 
empower law enforcement professionals and our criminal justice 
system to bring violent criminals to justice and keep them off 
our streets?
    Ms. Swearer. Well, I think, you know, I am hesitant to 
actually blame law enforcement for a lot of those issues.
    Mr. Comer. I am not blaming law----
    Ms. Swearer. Right, no, no. I mean, at the end of the day, 
you know, what happens to them afterwards, that is out of the 
hands of law enforcement. That is local prosecution.
    Mr. Comer. Exactly.
    Ms. Swearer. That is, you know, dealing with laws, about 
the parameters of what those prosecutors can and can't do, you 
know.
    Mr. Comer. Right.
    Ms. Swearer. So, I think it is more complex than that, you 
know, and it is going to come down to what state or locality we 
are talking about where that problem might exist, but that is 
that is a major focus, yes.
    Mr. Comer. That is very good. I agree. There is a trend in 
a lot of the cities where there is the most violence with guns. 
These cities have strict gun control laws already in the books 
that the criminals aren't abiding, but they also have many 
prosecutors, including the one in San Francisco who was 
recalled last night, who had been very lax on criminals. I 
think the criminal justice system was created to try to help 
people that had been unfairly incarcerated for minor things 
like marijuana possession. I think there should be bipartisan 
support for people who are in prison for little things like 
marijuana possession to be let go. I support that, but I think 
it has gone too far. And we have criminals now that are that 
are on the street, and that is not good. In the name of COVID, 
a lot of prisoners in this town, Washington, DC, were let out, 
and we have seen, you know, a spike in crime.
    So, I think that there are many points we need to consider 
moving forward, and, Madam Chair, I am wrapping up. Obviously 
we need to invest in school security. We need to invest in 
resource officers. We need to have better-trained school 
resource officers, and we need to share data on mental health 
issues and any potential threats with kids from social media 
and things like that. Thank you----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The gentlelady from Michigan, Mrs. Lawrence, you are now 
recognized.
    Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you so much. History teaches us a lot 
of things. We have heard our educators, and our community 
organizers, our law enforcement talk about the stagnant action 
of nothing. So, we will have someone like Ms. Swearer come in 
and say that it is not the guns, the guns are not the problem, 
keep them coming, everybody has that right, and we move 
forward. Then there is another shooting, but it is not the 
guns. You can't kill someone in multiple rounds without a 
weapon.
    We own cars in America. In order to own a car in America, 
you first have to buy it and get a registration for it. In 
order for you to operate a car, you have to take a test, and 
you have to follow laws. If you fail to do that, that car is 
taken from you. It is a car. It is not a gun. And we are still 
talking about background checks. Yes, we need to talk about 
mental illness, but what happens after we do all our prayers 
and best wishes, which I can say my colleagues on the other 
side are beautiful at prayers and best wishes, but never bring 
forth a bill that would address this crisis in America.
    It is unacceptable. We cry when we think about these 
babies. We heard the descriptions of these bodies where a 
person, who was clearly unfit to own a gun, walked in and 
legally purchased a gun at 18, and used that gun within hours 
to not only kill his family, shoot or injure his family, but 
others. It comes a point of time when this deflect, deflect, 
don't do it because if they pass one law, it is a slippery 
slope, I have heard it, don't let them take away your guns, 
that is our right. When in America, when we have more guns than 
people, does the sickness of operating and owning a gun kicks 
in that we in America have a problem?
    I know for a fact if you drive a car you bought, and you 
have to put on a seatbelt. We don't care if it is 
uncomfortable. We don't care if you don't like it. You have to 
put that seatbelt on, and if you don't put that seatbelt on, if 
you repeatedly do it, we will take away your license to drive 
that car. First of all, we studied the deaths and we found out 
how many people die in car crashes, and you know what? We said 
we want to stop the deaths in car crashes, and look at all the 
innovation: airbags seatbelts. We stepped up as America.
    And we keep talking about our faith in God and how we love 
people and equality. How can we say we love God when we take a 
gun and shoot and kill people, and if someone does it, you sit 
back and drop your hands, say prayers and best wishes? It is 
time. It is time for us as America and this body to stand up 
and confront the fact that it is sick. It is sick to think that 
if I have a gun, nothing is going to happen to me, and I become 
a gigantic figure. I had a member tell me that his five-year-
old wanted a pink gun for her birthday--five-year-old--and he 
said, when you get old enough for your fingers to operate the 
gun, I will buy you a gun. And he did, and he thought that was 
a good thing. And I am sitting here saying, you know, I would 
stand up in court and say you needed to go to jail, a five-
year-old with a gun, and the only purpose of a gun is to kill 
something.
    So, you are giving a five-year-old, who is not mentally 
capable of making decisions, a gun. That is sick. It is no way 
you can rationalize that. And you have homes throughout 
America, they have their gun in the back of the car, they are 
wearing open carry. It is like the Wild, Wild West. We have 
evolved as a country. We have all these technology and 
advancements, but we are literally going back to the Wild, Wild 
West where we stand up and we have a shoot down in the middle 
of the street, people die, and we just walk away and blow the 
smoke off the gun. It is unacceptable.
    And I know I am supposed to be asking questions, but if I 
can just impact one person. And like my colleague said there is 
large number of Americans who say can you just do something 
other than prayers and best wishes. If someone shot and killed 
your child, you would not be sitting here wanting to hear about 
my constitutional right to own a gun. Well, I will give my 
prayers and best wishes for you because when you lose a child 
over gun violence, it is unacceptable. I yield back my time----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    And the gentlelady from Massachusetts, Ms. Pressley, is now 
recognized.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you to all 
of our witnesses here today, especially our survivors, those 
who shared their pain, their grief, and their trauma. I really 
do look forward to a day where our families and our children, 
children like little Miah, will no longer have to relive their 
trauma simply to compel action because only in America do we 
normalize mass shootings and the trauma left behind.
    Now, when a partner loses a spouse, we ascribe the word 
``widow'' or ``widower.'' When a child loses their parent, we 
use the word ``orphan.'' There is no word to describe a parent 
who has suffered the devastating sorrow of losing a child. The 
unimaginable pain, grief, and trauma of burying your own baby, 
it just goes against the natural order of things. And with gun 
violence now the leading cause of death for children's society, 
now we are searching for a word, for what do we call a 
surviving parent who has been robbed of their child due to a 
massacre? Only in America.
    So, whether it is our babies learning in Uvalde, our 
elder's grocery shopping in Buffalo, or neighbors in my 
district, the Massachusetts 7th, whose experience don't always 
make national headlines but do deserve just as much attention, 
it is long past time to treat gun violence as the public health 
crisis that it is. We must do something about these damn guns. 
And yet predictively some are resorting to deflection and 
distractions, touting failed policies that do more harm than 
good, like arming teachers and militarizing police in our 
schools.
    Ms. Pringle, very eloquently, earlier today you said we 
need resources, not revolvers, in our schools, but yet we spent 
$1 billion over the last two decades to grow our school police. 
Mr. Pringle, in your experience does adding more police to 
schools end mass shootings, yes or no?
    Ms. Pringle. No.
    Ms. Pressley. I completely agree with you, and so do the 
majority of experts that have studied the impacts of police in 
schools.
    Chairwoman, I ask for unanimous consent to enter the 
following documents into the record: a 2015 study titled, 
``Preventing School Violence, Assessing Armed Guardians, School 
Policy and Context,'' a 2019 report titled, ``Cops and No 
Counselors,'' and a series of letters from the Federal School 
Discipline and Climate Group and more than 500 community-based 
organizations on the need to end the mass policing of our 
students, and instead invest in trauma-informed services that 
make our schools and children safe.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Ms. Pressley. Since Columbine, our country has approached 
the problem of school shootings by funding school police, $1 
billion, thousands of school police officers, when 90 percent 
of our students can't access a school nurse, a social worker, 
or a guidance counselor, and more than two decades later, we 
find ourselves in the same spot as before. Only in America. So, 
instead of contributing to the safety, the data shows that 
police in schools can have the opposite effect and actually 
result in making many students feel less secure.
    Ms. Pringle, what have you heard from educators and 
students about policing schools, especially from students who 
are Black, brown, LGBTQ, or disabled?
    Ms. Pringle. Our teachers, and, in fact, all of our 
educators are focused on making sure that they create a safe, 
welcoming environment for every single student. We know that 
our Black, and brown, and indigenous students are 
disproportionately impacted by the inequities in every single 
social system in this country.
    Ms. Pressley. Ms. Pringle, I am sorry, I am going to 
reclaim my time because I am losing it here. I apologize.
    Ms. Pringle. Go ahead.
    Ms. Pressley. Just ``yes'' or ``no.'' Outside of more 
police, some have recommended arming teachers, hardening our 
schools, and even constructing schools so that they only have 
one door. Is this a good idea?
    Ms. Pringle. It is turning our schools into prisons. That 
is never a good idea.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you. This is not an issue of the 
architecture of our schools. It is about the foundation of our 
country and whether we care about our people, our children more 
than guns. Every single life wrought by gun violence matters. 
The 87-year-old doing Bible study, the 27-year-old walking down 
the street, the seven-year-old learning to read, all had lives 
to live and dreams to achieve. Only in America do we consider 
arming teachers while failing to pay them a livable wage. Only 
in America do survivors have to go and start GoFundMe pages to 
afford mental health and trauma supports. Only in America do we 
expect survivors who have barely buried their loved ones to 
make the case for policymakers to save lives. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    The gentlelady from Ohio, Ms. Brown, is now recognized via 
Zoom.
    Ms. Brown. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney, for holding this 
hearing. I would also like to thank the witnesses for coming, 
and, in particular, the witnesses on the first panel whose 
stories were simply gut-wrenching.
    In 2020, guns were the leading cause of death in children. 
Out of the 45,000 firearm-related deaths in 2020, more than 
4,300 of these were children. Many more have been injured or 
traumatized by gun violence. Sitting here, it is hard not to 
feel angry that we allow so many children to be killed by guns. 
Now, let me be abundantly clear. My job is not to take away 
guns. I, myself, am a licensed gun owner. My job is to keep our 
communities safe. Our national obsession with guns is killing 
thousands of kids each year. Every one of those kids deserve to 
grow up and live a full life. We cannot sit idly by and do 
nothing as guns are used to kill our children and fellow 
Americans.
    So, my first question is for Mr. Gramaglia. How does a red 
flag law work before you begin?
    Mr. Gramaglia. A red flag law is designed that if there is 
some sort of a threat that is alleged, a threat to harm 
yourself or others, that is brought forward so law enforcement 
or another professional can bring that to a court. That is the 
due process of a judicial process where a judge will examine 
the evidence that was brought forward, will look to see what 
the circumstances are, and a judge will make a determination 
whether or not a weapon or weapons are to be seized. And that 
is for a determinant amount of time, to be reviewed after a set 
amount of time where then that individual who had their weapons 
taken can come back in again and make a claim to get their 
weapons back.
    Ms. Brown. Thank you so much. Mr. Suplina, why are we 
seeing an increase in child deaths due to guns?
    Mr. Suplina. Well, the short answer is that we are not 
doing anything. We are seeing an increase in child deaths 
because we don't have the laws in place that we have been 
discussing this morning and this afternoon. We have not enacted 
child access prevention laws at the Federal level that could 
protect children both from unintentional access or rather 
unauthorized access and child suicide. The reasons go on and 
on. And children are dying in homicides in this country, they 
are dying by suicide, they are dying by unintentional deaths, 
and we have not addressed that. In the states that have, we see 
better outcomes, and I want to emphasize that because we gloss 
over it so much. In the states that are enacting these laws, 
even though their efficacy is lessened by the influx of 
firearms from other states, we are seeing lower mortality rates 
among children and the general population.
    Ms. Brown. Thank you. Mr. Jackson for you. We have heard 
your testimony today about kids who have been traumatized by 
the horrors carried out in Uvalde, in communities that look 
like yours and mine. Can you share with us the impacts of gun 
violence on child survivors as well as their friends and family 
members?
    Mr. Jackson. Yes. I mean, what we have to realize is that 
they have a lifetime of trauma that they have to live with. And 
we know that one of the biggest indicators of whether someone 
will become a future victim or even an offender of violence is 
had they been exposed to that trauma. And what is most 
terrifying for me is in both of these communities and 
communities all over the country, we are forgetting about 
victims and their trauma. We are not providing the services and 
support for them or their families, and there are people in 
Buffalo right now that have been abandoned by our government 
and just asked to deal with that trauma. So, a huge thing that 
we can do now is fight for resources, for community-led 
violence intervention and prevention strategies that include 
therapeutic and trauma care for those who have been directly 
impacted.
    Ms. Brown. Thank you so much. I think we have all heard far 
too many stories of gun violence. Again, I personally have been 
impacted by losing the lives of three young men who were part 
of my youth ministry that did not live to see the age of 21. 
This has to stop. Enough is enough. We have the tools to make a 
difference for families across this country if we can just come 
together and find the political will, the compassion, and the 
courage, and the capacity to just do it. With that, I yield 
back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    The gentlewoman from Missouri, Ms. Bush, is now recognized.
    Ms. Bush. St. Louis and I thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for 
convening this hearing.
    In St. Louis, we know the devastation and the trauma of 
daily gun violence in our community. It is the drumbeat of 
violence where 6 people were killed and 14 shot within one 
weekend and in one part of our community where the population 
is only a little over 300,000, and it is not considered an 
anomaly. It is the daily occurrence of trauma and heartbreak in 
a community reeling from a Nation who is unwilling to act but 
can. So, many people in our community have been directly harmed 
by gun violence, and everybody in our community has been 
traumatized in some way.
    Since the massacre of 19 students and two teachers at Robb 
Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, we have heard a lot of stories, a 
lot of theories about how best to protect students and how best 
to protect teachers. At best, these suggestions are absurd 
distractions, and at worst, they will further harm the very 
communities in need of our help the most, communities like 
mine, communities like Buffalo and Uvalde, Black communities, 
Latino communities, AAPI communities, our schools, our 
churches, the list goes on. And we need to address the 
incidence of gun violence in this country, not with carceral 
interventionist solutions, but with a public health approach 
that is rooted in prevention.
    Mr. Jackson, briefly, what specific strategies has your 
organization employed to address the gun violence crisis in 
communities of color, just briefly?
    Mr. Jackson. Really briefly, victim services and support 
for families, hospital-based violence intervention and 
prevention strategies, cognitive behavioral therapy programs 
like READI Chicago, Advance Peace, that work with those who are 
most at risk, creating safe passes for youth as they are coming 
home. And that is actually a short list of some of the 
evidence-based models that we know can save lives, and we are 
fighting for that. You know, cities all over the country are 
investing their resources. We know that community leaders all 
over the country, thousands of these organizations are fighting 
to save lives but yet we are stuck with scraps when it comes to 
Federal resources.
    Ms. Bush. Evidence-based models that save lives. We need to 
pass out the pamphlet on what you are doing. I am a survivor of 
gun violence. I have sat with parents who lost their children 
to gun violence. I have heard from students who sat next to me 
and talked to me about how they lost friends, and they lost 
classmates, and they don't cry, they don't even feel anything 
anymore, all due to gun violence. Our children want action, but 
the strategies that I get to hear too often from my fellow 
colleagues, and some on this committee, will call for the 
hardening of schools and for placing armed staff and police 
officers in academic environments.
    And it tears me down because I think about as a child when 
we had fire drills and tornado drills, and they taught us, you 
know, crouch down and cover your head. And I remember we would 
have these routine drills, and I really believed that a tornado 
was going to come because they made us do this. I believed that 
a fire drill was coming. It can happen because our school is 
making us do this, and now they have these shooter these active 
shooter drills. What are we doing? I think about my nephew. I 
think about my son's safety at school. It is always on my mind, 
is this unrelenting concern about not only their physical 
safety, but also the emotional toll that they endure through 
this run, hide, fight reality every single day.
    So, President Pringle, how has the daily reality of 
militarized schools and active shooter drills affected our 
students in these times of extreme gun violence?
    Ms. Pringle. We have seen evidence of increased trauma-
related illnesses, physical illnesses, as well as our students 
reporting to us that they are afraid to come to school, that 
they don't want to go to a grocery store because the violence 
is in the communities, too. We have heard from our teachers 
that they are leaving our profession because they don't believe 
that they can protect our students, but they are not stopping. 
We see our students rising up, don't we? They are demanding 
that this country protect them and pass gun laws that are 
common sense where most Americans agree we should be passing. 
That is what our students are demanding, that is what our 
teachers are demanding, and that is what we will continue to 
fight for.
    Ms. Bush. Thank you. You know, 81 percent of those 
convicted on gun possession charges in my community in the 
Eastern District of Missouri are Black, and it tears me up when 
we talk about saving lives. How do we talk about saving lives 
but we arm people to be able to take lives, and we arm them 
easily, and we arm them from the standpoint of it is my right. 
What about life?
    Mr. Jackson, in our efforts to save lives and prevent 
further harm, why is it important for lawmakers to consider the 
impact of gun control laws and how they affect Black and brown 
communities?
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady has time has expired. 
You may answer the question briefly, Mr. Jackson.
    Mr. Jackson. Because this is life or death for us. You 
know, this is now the No. 1 cause of death for Black men and 
the No. 2 cause of death for Black women and Latino men. And 
while this may be a political topic for Congress, this is life 
or death for our communities. You know, I have been nearly shot 
five times, despite going to church, like the member said it 
before, despite saying the Pledge of Allegiance every day in 
school.
    Gun violence surrounds us every single day, and we are 
dropping like flies, and we don't need more carceral 
strategies. What we need are real investments in our 
communities, real investments and prevention strategies that we 
know work, and we need someone to stand up against the flood of 
firearms that are pouring into our communities. Guns don't grow 
on trees. We are not creating these guns. They are being 
flooded into our communities and the gun industry is profiting 
off of our death every single day.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Davis, is now recognized.
    Mr. Davis. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman, 
and I also want to thank all of our witnesses who have been 
here with us for much of the day.
    I think it is clear. There is no doubt that we have a gun 
violence crisis in our country. Matter of fact, there have been 
more mass shootings this year than there have been days in the 
year, because there is one almost every day and every time you 
pick up the paper or watch television. In addition, there is a 
steady drumbeat of gun violence daily. It was an average of 124 
people losing their lives to gun violence every day. In 2020, 
more than 45,000 people were killed by gun violence, the 
highest number in our history. The lives lost by homicide, 
suicide, and other gun-related injuries occur hourly, and the 
crushing impact of these losses expands exponentially to their 
loved ones and their communities.
    Given that gun violence is a public health problem, I am 
preparing to reintroduce my bill to create a dedicated funding 
stream for gun violence prevention. You know, an ounce of 
prevention, I was told, is worth much more than a pound of 
cure. No comparable developed nation near the number of gun 
deaths as we do. To reduce gun violence, we need stable revenue 
to research it and combat it.
    When we talk of all the aspects of gun violence, I live in 
inner-city America with one of the largest populations of low 
income people that you find in a city in America. That is the 
city of Chicago. We call it the Windy City, and, of course, it 
is a city where local elected officials have been making every 
effort that they could to reduce gun violence. You cannot 
purchase legally a handgun in the city of Chicago, yet handguns 
are flowing into our city like water flows into a river, and 
that is because we know that no matter how hard we try, we 
can't do the job that we need to do unless there is Federal 
action--Federal. You can walk across the street into another 
area and purchase all the weapons that you want and manage to 
sneak them back into Chicago.
    When we talk about the trauma of gun violence, mine does 
not come from reading the papers or watching it. My grandson 
when he was 15 years old, was killed in a little scrap with a 
group of kids, and they didn't even really dislike each other. 
They had a little group who would swap clothes. ``Let me wear 
your gym shoes tomorrow and you wear my jacket.'' ``Let me wear 
your hair piece.'' But they got into a little scrap and one of 
the young people had a gun, and, of course, another one told 
him, ``shoot,'' and he shot. It was the most chilling telephone 
call I have ever gotten from a police commander who called in 
and said, I think I got some bad news. The trauma of that 
experience has wrecked his family. As a matter of fact, shortly 
after that, my son, his father, just kind of gave up, passed 
away. My granddaughter has been traumatized, and their whole 
family is disrupted.
    And so if we are going to be real in terms of what we need, 
we need Federal gun legislation that limits the number of guns 
that exist in our country. There is no reason we can't do that. 
We can, we should, and we must. And I thank you, Madam 
Chairman, and yield back the balance of my time.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you.
    The gentleman from California, Mr. DeSaulnier, is 
recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. DeSaulnier. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you so 
much for this hearing. Thank you, the panelists, and, in 
particular, thank you to the first panelists. For all of those 
who have lost family members to gun violence, how this can 
continue to happen in this country is extraordinary. It is just 
so depressing, and we hear the same arguments every time this 
happens, unfortunately.
    So now, we have some history. Coming from a state that 
coordinates efforts, we are going to have a difference, many of 
us are. A state California vote for years, we have worked at 
this on evidence-based research on policy that can save lives 
and stop these things from happening. So, let's just look at 
the numbers. ``If you are in California, we can't stop these 
things from happening.'' Again, it is not that we have some 
kind of unique wisdom to this, but we have relied on 
investments and evidence-based research. And what that shows is 
kids are almost 60 percent, statistically, less likely to be 
victims of gun violence in California. Adults, all people in 
California, are 35 percent less likely, statistically, not less 
likely 35 percent, less likely to be victims of gun violence, 
25 percent less likely to be involved in a mass murder.
    ``We couldn't do this.'' The problem in California is that 
accepting the fact that these things are going to happen, but 
we are trying to do is prevent them as best we can, rather than 
just accepting that it is a fait accompli, that somehow this is 
going to happen, for whatever their reasons are. And of course, 
we have our own suspicions about what motivates people to let 
this continue to happen. But one of our problems is 25 percent 
of the guns that are used in crime in California come from 
outside of California, so we need national standards. We will 
continue to do what we can do in jurisdictions that support 
evidence-based research that treats this as a public health 
epidemic that it is.
    So, Mr. Suplina, to this point in the work that you do in 
my area, in the Bay Area, we have a long history and we are 
doing this again, and we call it is not here. We are just 
examining the evidence-based research that you and others at 
Gifford CDC does so well at national comparisons and as a 
state, but we are trying to bring it to the local level. And if 
we have things that were preempted about, we will go to our 
elected officials at the Federal, and state, level and the 
Court if we have to. And by the way, all these laws have been 
in place and they are more stringent than the ones we are 
considering, and they are constitutional. The Courts have 
decided they are constitutional.
    So, in that context, Mr. Suplina, tell us a little bit 
about your experience in evidence--based research and the 
causality and the outcomes. There are thousands of lives that 
have been saved by these policies. What does your work inform 
you to that point?
    Mr. Suplina. Well, Congressman, precisely that when you 
look at all 50 states based on their strength of gun laws and 
look at their rate of gun deaths, there is a direct correlation 
between strength of gun laws and lower rates of gun deaths. It 
is just, you know, statistically correlated, and it is a fact. 
And California, which does have some of the best gun laws in 
the country, also has some of the lowest rates of gun violence. 
Not enough. There is always more to do, but I actually really 
appreciate the way you have framed it because we are talking 
about a Nation that does have hundreds of millions of firearms 
in it. We are going to continue to have incidents of firearm 
violence in a Nation that has that many guns, but we can also 
do sensible things, as California has been a leader on, to 
reduce firearms deaths, and it just bears out in the data. You 
can look at it. You cited some of it, and there is more than we 
can be doing. I believe the programs that Mr. Jackson has been 
referencing throughout the afternoon are a place where, you 
know, California has also led, but more can be done.
    And I believe that the next level of our intervention here 
really has to be with the industry because in California, what 
has happened, the industry has innovated around your laws. They 
have created ghost guns, which are turning up in crime scenes 
at record rates in California more than any other place in the 
country. And they are, you know, designing around other laws. 
So, it is time to take a look at the industry. I think 
California may be ready to do that and doing so will save 
lives.
    Mr. DeSaulnier. That is why we have to keep stay on it, but 
evidence-based research can save lives.
    Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you.
    The gentlelady from the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton, 
is now recognized.
    Ms. Norton. Thank you, Madam Chair, for this valuable 
hearing. If you look at the statistics, gun violence turns out 
to be a woman's issue, and what do these statistics show? 
Nearly 1 million women who are alive today have been shot or 
shot at by an intimate partner, and an average of 70 women are 
shot and killed each month by an intimate partner. Mr. Jackson, 
in your experience, is domestic violence a major factor in gun 
violence?
    Mr. Jackson. Yes, it is a huge factor, and it is also a 
huge reason why we are fighting for people-centered strategies 
to research the root causes of such violence and incidents. 
Right now there is the Protect Black Women and Girls Act that 
were strong proponents to address the 100,000 Black women and 
girls who go missing or murdered every single year.
    Ms. Norton. Mr. Jackson, I know that you have advocated for 
both community violence intervention and supply side efforts to 
reduce the number of guns in circulation. How would reducing 
the supply of guns reduce domestic violence deaths in 
particular?
    Mr. Jackson. There have been multiple studies done which I 
can supply to the record that have shown the presence of a gun 
greatly increases the risk of violence against someone in the 
home. And when we think about gun violence and how it is 
terrorizing our community and it being the No. 2 cause of death 
for Black women, we need to do all we can to address this 
violence beyond simple policing strategy.
    Ms. Norton. Thank you. Commissioner Gramaglia, in your 
experience, do firearms in the home heighten the risk of injury 
or death in a domestic dispute?
    Mr. Gramaglia. Well, I will say that we don't typically, on 
an annual basis, have very many domestic homicides in our 
community. But when you have an illegal gun in the home, it 
certainly does increase the risk of harm to everybody in the 
house.
    Ms. Norton. Mr. Suplina, what effort did the coronavirus 
pandemic have on gun related domestic violence?
    Mr. Suplina. Well, to step back for a second, the presence 
of a gun in the home increases the risk of homicide by two 
times, risk of suicide by three times, and the risk that a 
domestic violence incident will become fatal by five times, 
just to lay that out for you. During the COVID-19 and the 
response in the lockdowns, we have, you know, real reason to be 
concerned that domestic violence increased even while being 
underreported. I don't have statistics in front of me on how 
domestic gun violence increased during that time period, but we 
know that it is a, you know, tragic form of gun violence that 
we often really do not hear about. In fact, many mass 
shootings, both ones you have heard about and ones you haven't 
heard about, start with an act of domestic violence either 
earlier in time or directly in relation to the incident as we 
have recently seen.
    Ms. Norton. And, Mr. Suplina, currently Federal law 
prohibits spouses with a history of domestic abuse from 
possessing a gun, but the so-called boyfriend loophole allows 
abusive dating partners, like abusive boyfriends and 
girlfriends, to have access. Could you explain how this 
boyfriend loophole works and what we could do about it?
    Mr. Suplina. Well, what we have to do about it is close it. 
There is really no reason why in 2022 we shouldn't give 
protection where there are incidents of domestic violence, that 
we shouldn't also remove firearms, where, you know, a couple is 
not in a married relationship. So, there are efforts, as you 
know, in the House to close that loophole, and doing so would 
be very effective at reducing domestic violence deaths.
    Ms. Norton. Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    I ask unanimous consent that Representative Sheila Jackson 
Lee be allowed to participate.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    The gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, is now 
recognized.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Madam Chair, I thank you, and the 
chairman, and all members for their generosity in yielding to 
me at this time. I wanted to be very sure to be in this 
committee meeting today. I have just come off the floor of the 
House. We are now debating the Protect Our Kids Act. I want to 
acknowledge Zeneta Everhart, Dr. Guerrero, Miah, Felix and 
Kimberly Rubio, and the previous witness, Ms. Hughes. To the 
witnesses that are here, I want to acknowledge you and as well, 
to acknowledge Mayor Adams for his presence here.
    My time is short. And so, I will be asking very pointed 
questions. To Mr. Suplina, I hope I pronounced it correctly, 
you said 2021 was the deadliest year. We are now close to that 
in 2022. ``Yes'' or ``no?''
    Mr. Suplina. We are on pace, correct.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. The bill that I have introduced, the 
Kimberly Vaughan Safe Storage Act, among others that are in the 
Protect Our Kids Act, which I will comment on specifically, 
deals with the requirement of point of sale for storage 
devices. In the instance of Kimberly Vaughan, the son stole a 
gun from an unlocked, unsafe area, which I think goes to 
suicides and other uses of homicide. Is a safe storage issue an 
important issue as it relates to bringing down gun violence?
    Mr. Suplina. It is such an important issue, Congresswoman. 
It is important for safety in the home. It is important to 
keep, you know, young kids away from firearms. It is important 
to reduce youth suicide. It is important to reduce school 
shootings because guns often start in the home and are accessed 
when they are not safely secured. There is just no overstating 
the importance of child access protection laws and other secure 
storage laws, as well as all programs that really encourage 
responsible gun store.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you. Mr. Jackson, let me express my 
concern, but also your heroic recovery should be touted and 
recognized. You had very important statistics. The No. 1 killer 
of African-American men, premature death, is by guns, second 
for Latinos, and second for Black women. You also have already 
mentioned the cycle of violence. How much of a disparity and 
impact in our minority communities is this gun usage, and gun 
victimization, and gun death? I have two other persons I want 
to raise a question with, so bear with me as you make a very 
brief answer to that, and I thank you and salute your recovery.
    Mr. Jackson. No, thank you, and I will be very brief. But 
we have seen the largest increase in homicides since the start 
of the pandemic in the Black community, a 39-percent increase, 
as well as it already being 80 percent of homicides coming from 
Black and brown communities. And we are in a world now where a 
Black man is at a greater risk of being shot and killed than a 
police officer, and that shouldn't be a reality for anyone.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. So, protecting our kids, dealing with the 
prohibitive magazines, raising the age limit, getting rid of 
ghost guns, because I have seen some of the folk on the street 
with the ghost guns, stopping trafficking, which, you know, 
they want to tout a city like Chicago, gun violence, but all 
the states around them have no laws. Would all that be part of 
helping to bring down the carnage?
    Mr. Jackson. That will be a huge help, and we need that 
comprehensive strategy to be applied everywhere. You know, we 
saw with every other health crisis that we didn't just say, oh, 
let's work on this one community. How do we make our entire 
country safer? And that is what we expect to see here.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you. Commissioner, I believe in the 
Constitution, and in the Constitution is a Bill of Rights, and 
the Second Amendment is there. I, as a member of the Judiciary 
Committee, have no reason, no intent to take away the Second 
Amendment rights. You have guns. You hunt. You are a 
responsible gun owner. Speak to me, and I have got one other 
person, so I guess I am going to be in trouble, about the fact 
on the assault weapons ban. There are more weapons in that 
potential bill that are allowed, automatic weapons, than those 
who are not. So, can you speak to the fairness of an assault 
weapons ban and a potential seven-day waiting period?
    Mr. Gramaglia. An assault weapon ban, to me, is a no 
brainer. Those weapons are made for one thing, and that is to 
kill people, and it is to kill a lot of people at one time. It 
is, you know, seeing the damage caused by them and I just can't 
see any other purpose from it.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Would a seven-day waiting period help as 
well on automatic weapons?
    Mr. Gramaglia. It is a start. If that weapon has not 
banned, it prevents someone from getting something right away.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. May I, to Ms. Pringle, indicate in the 
state of Texas, we have been waving that the solution has been 
``arm teachers.'' Can you give me a sense of arming the 
teachers, those precious teachers that was shot and died, and 
then, the ones that was shot and lived, can you----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired, but 
Ms. Pringle can answer briefly.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. I appreciate it. Thank you so very much.
    Ms. Pringle. Putting the responsibility on teachers to 
carry guns to protect our students is not only irrational. It 
is unfair, and we know what we need in this country, and you 
just described it. It is that comprehensive, commonsense gun 
laws, all of them working in collaboration, not arming 
teachers, and putting that responsibility on them and causing 
more harm and damage to the people who have dedicated their 
lives to educating American students. That is not OK. We know 
what we need to do. We need to do it now.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. I thank the chairwoman and the ranking 
member. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. I thank the witnesses.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Before we close, I want to thank all of 
our panelists for incredible and meaningful testimony. It is 
tremendously important for Congress's work. I want to thank 
each and every one of you for your time, your knowledge, your 
commitment. Before we close, I want to offer the ranking member 
an opportunity to offer any closing remarks he may have. 
Ranking member Comer, you are now recognized.
    Mr. Comer. Thank you, Madam Chair, and, again, I thank the 
witnesses for being here. This was a meaningful conversation, 
discussion. That is what this committee is supposed to do, and 
I appreciate the opportunity, Madam Chair, and again, thank you 
for your time.
    When we look at this issue, like any issue in Congress, we 
need to focus on where we can have compromise because obviously 
the two parties have very differing ideologies, not just on the 
Second Amendment, but just about every major issue in America. 
But there is consensus to protect our school children. We all 
want that. I have three kids in the public schools. My mom was 
a public school teacher. I think when you look at the areas 
where there is consensus to act now, do something now, they are 
to harden our schools, to invest in better infrastructure.
    We had a school shooting in Marshall County, Kentucky a few 
years ago, and there was overwhelming support, bipartisan 
support to harden those schools. You have to go through two 
doors now in just about every schools in the state--elementary, 
middle, and high school--to be buzzed in through those doors to 
go in. We need to invest in more school resource officers, and 
we need to better train those school resource officers. I think 
we saw that in Uvalde. The officer there obviously wasn't 
trained very well in that situation.
    Another idea that I think is common sense where there is 
compromise is something my friend, Ro Khanna, mentioned with 
respect to social media companies. We need to have some type of 
alert with the social media companies. Anytime a user posts 
anything about school violence, somehow that needs to get to 
the hands of the authority. Somehow we need to have some type 
of communication between the school resource officers, law 
enforcement, whomever, and the social media companies. That is 
a responsibility of the social media companies, in my opinion, 
that they could do better on.
    We need to stop the Defund the Police movement, and that 
has been an effort by some of our friends on the left. That has 
been an utter failure. Crime is on the increase in every year, 
all types of crime. We need to stop that. And last, we need to 
ensure that we have prosecutors who are tough on crime because 
that has been a problem in the name of COVID and everything 
else with so many criminals that have been let out early 
release. It is just not working. We are seeing that in the 
data, especially in the inner city. So, I think there are areas 
where we can come together and compromise, and I hope that we 
can work together in a bipartisan way to better protect our 
public school children.
    Madam Chair, thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Today, we heard firsthand 
accounts of the devastation that gun violence epidemic inflicts 
on American communities and families. To our witnesses who 
shared their personal stories of pain and loss, thank you for 
your bravery. We also heard from a local government leader from 
a gun safety advocate, a community activist, from an educator, 
and from a law enforcement officer. They spoke with one voice 
calling on Congress to end this epidemic of gun violence.
    Let me emphasize that our Nation's police, the men and 
women sworn to protect our communities, are pleading with 
Congress to pass meaningful gun safety laws. And I am proud to 
say that today the House of Representatives heard their call 
and is approving commonsense gun safety legislation supported 
by a strong majority of Americans. This is an important first 
step toward protecting our children, and I hope that the Senate 
will pass this legislation without delay. But the fight does 
not end here. The gun lobby still has a powerful hold over many 
of my Republican colleagues, and they are opposing simple steps 
to save lives, like banning assault weapons, simply because it 
might hurt the industry's bottom line. It is time to hold this 
industry accountable for the suffering and death that it has 
caused, including the death of Lexi Rubio, her teachers, and 
classmates.
    Two weeks ago, I wrote to the Nation's largest gun makers, 
including those who sold the assault rifles used in the 
massacres in Buffalo and Texas. We wanted to get to the bottom 
of how much these companies are profiting from selling weapons 
of war and how they are marketing these weapons to civilians. 
Over the last few days, the committee has received information 
from these companies that is troubling. It is clear they are 
reaping enormous profits from assault weapons that are used in 
mass shootings of innocent people. This hearing is not the end 
of our investigation. In the coming days, we will continue to 
gather information and issue findings. I also intend to hold a 
second hearing to hear directly from the gun industry so they 
can explain to the American people why they continue to sell 
the weapons of choice for mass murderers.
    The fight to protect our children from gun violence is far 
from over, but based on the bravery and determination our 
witnesses displayed today, I am confident it is a fight we can 
and will win.
    Again, I thank you all for your commitment, for your time, 
for your testimony today. I yield back.
    Oops. Before I close, I want to thank, again, everyone and 
I commend all my colleagues.
    And with that, without objection, all members will have 
five legislative days within which to submit extraneous 
materials and to submit additional written questions for the 
witnesses to the chair, which will be forwarded to the 
witnesses for their response. I ask our witnesses to please 
respond as promptly as you are able.
    Chairwoman Maloney. And with that, this meeting is 
adjourned, and we are going to the floor to vote for gun 
safety.
    [Whereupon, at 4:10 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]