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Quigley Calls for Increased Federal Resources to Combat Gun Violence

May 8, 2014

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Representative Mike Quigley (IL-05) offered two amendments to the FY2015 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations bill to increase federal public safety resources and help law enforcement combat gun violence in Chicago.

“At a time when entire neighborhoods in Chicago are being torn apart by gun violence, now more than ever we need to increase federal resources to go after gun traffickers and put more cops on the street,” said Rep. Quigley. “Requiring gun dealers to conduct annual inventories will help law enforcement combat the flow of illegal weapons to our city streets. Funding COPS grants will give cities the resources to hire the police officers they need to fight crime. I offered these amendments today because it’s time for Congress to take a stand against violent crime and give law enforcement the tools they need to keep our communities safe.”

Rep. Quigley’s first amendment would remove a controversial gun rider from the bill that prohibits the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from requiring gun dealers to conduct annual inventory inspections and report missing or stolen weapons. Tens of thousands of guns go missing from gun dealer inventories every year, often ending up in the hands of criminals, because this harmful rider prevents the ATF from effectively identifying lost and stolen guns.

 

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QuigleyAmendments

To watch Rep. Quigley’s statement from the Appropriations Committee, please click here. A full transcript is included below.

Rep. Quigley also introduced an amendment to increase funding for Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) hiring grants that provide federal funds to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies to hire additional police officers. These funds are vital to Chicago’s efforts to fight the city’s gun violence epidemic.

Rep. Quigley believes gun violence in Chicago demands federal action. He is the author of the TRACE Act, which cracks down on the illegal gun market by improving gun tracking data, and is an original sponsor of the Buyback our Safety Act to bolster gun buyback initiatives. Rep. Quigley was appointed to the House Committee on Appropriations at the start of the 113th Congress. He is the only Illinois member currently serving on the committee, which is responsible to approving the federal government’s annual spending levels for nearly all federal programs.

TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Chairman, tens of thousands of guns go missing from gun dealer inventories every single year in this country, but an appropriations rider prevents ATF from requiring gun dealers to conduct annual inventory inspections to look for these missing or stolen guns. My amendment, offered with Reps. Lee, Schiff, Moran, and DeLauro, will strike this inventory prohibition rider from the bill.

In 2013 alone, ATF found 19,601 guns were lost or stolen from gun sellers. But these numbers only cover a small sample of missing guns because the ATF is only able to inspect less than 20 percent of the nation’s gun dealers each year because of lack of funding.

When guns go missing from the dealers, they often end up in the hands of criminals. And because there is no record of how these guns disappeared from the store, they become impossible to trace, preventing law enforcement from solving gun crimes.

The main way ATF ensures that gun dealers are complying with the law, and not losing track of guns, is through regular inspections. But because ATF is constantly underfunded, they don’t have to resources to inspect every gun dealer. ATF is prohibited from requiring this commonsense inventory practice because of a rider to annual appropriations legislation, one of the so-called Tiahrt amendments. As a result, corrupt dealers can flood the streets with weapons because this rider prohibits the ATF from effectively identifying lost and stolen guns.

In a larger sense, Mr. Chairman, we are never going to agree on all these guns issues, no matter what has happened, no matter how many tragedies have taken place in this country. But when you read the Supreme Court’s ruling in Chicago’s gun case, the majority wrote that the second amendment exists but is not unlimited. Like all the other amendments it’s not unlimited. Not everybody can have a gun or should have a gun and we can agree on that, I hope. The last people you want to have guns are the people who got them illegally because their intentions are fairly obvious.

So while we can’t agree on all aspects on how the second amendment applies to the use of guns in this country, we ought to be able to agree that bad people can’t have guns. The vast majority of responsible gun owners, NRA members, believe that the most important thing to do is keep guns out of the hands of bad people. This is, in my humble opinion, one small step toward that end because the Supreme Court has ruled the legislation is what the legislation is. To me this is a simple method to attempt to keep our country safe and I live in a city in which, quite frankly, is the battle ground for many of these issues. So I respectfully request its approval.

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