WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.310 For what purpose does the gentleman from Kentucky seek recognition? >> Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass HR 2267 as amended. 00:00:09.320 --> 00:00:18.150 >> report the title of the bill. >> HR 2267, a bill to require the Attorney General to submit to the Congress a report that includes the demographic 00:00:18.160 --> 00:00:27.630 data of persons determined to be ineligible to purchase a firearm based on a background check performed by the National Instant Criminal Background 00:00:27.640 --> 00:00:36.310 Check System. >> Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Massie, and the gentlewoman from North Carolina, Ms. Ross, each will control 20 minutes. The 00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:46.510 chair recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky. >> Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to insert extraneous 00:00:46.520 --> 00:00:55.630 material on HR 2267. >> Without objection. >> I yield myself as much time as I may consume. >> from Kentucky is recognized. 00:00:55.640 --> 00:01:04.910 >> Mr. Speaker, today we are bringing to the floor the NICS Data Reporting Act. It was inspired in the Judiciary Committee with a conversation by a 00:01:04.920 --> 00:01:13.550 conversation that I had with the late Sheila Jackson Lee. I became aware of a a problem with the NICS Background Check System 00:01:13.560 --> 00:01:23.750 um because John Lott, who's an author, an economist, and statistician, author of many books, um worked at the Department of Justice and has been privy 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:33.990 to some of the state and has discovered that the NICS Background Check System doesn't work like we think it does or may actually, in fact, have a racial uh 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:42.510 prejudice built into it. That's a problem because the right to keep and bear arms, like all fundamental rights protected in the Constitution and given 00:01:42.520 --> 00:01:50.630 to us by God, um should not be based on race, sex, or religion. The NICS system, 00:01:50.640 --> 00:01:58.990 that stands for National Instant Criminal Background Check System, is a program that it was instituted many years ago that you have to go through 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:07.630 when you want to purchase a firearm. You fill out fill out a form 4473 at the gun store, and you record some 00:02:07.640 --> 00:02:18.030 affirmations on there that you're not a felon, um that you don't use drugs, and you also put on there your demogra- some demographic data. Well, the DOJ collects 00:02:18.040 --> 00:02:28.790 this data, but they've never let us see it, and I think we could learn some things and improve their system if we could see this data. If Now, as soon as you fill out the 00:02:28.800 --> 00:02:38.030 form, they send it in to the central database, and they check to see if you are a prohibited person. In other words, have you been convicted of a crime for 00:02:38.040 --> 00:02:46.590 which you could serve a year or more? Or have you been mentally adjudicated as defective according to this system? 00:02:46.600 --> 00:02:57.230 What happens when it does this check is the computers will look for phonetically similar names. And if you share a name, 00:02:57.240 --> 00:03:06.270 unfortunately, with somebody who is a criminal, even if you're not a convicted criminal yourself, you could be denied the purchase of a firearm. In fact, 00:03:06.280 --> 00:03:15.430 there have been 2 million denials since this system was put into place in the '80s, and in any given year we've seen 00:03:15.440 --> 00:03:26.030 over 100,000 denials, but we know these are mostly false denials cuz there have only been 12 federal convictions in a year where there were 100,000 denials. 00:03:26.040 --> 00:03:34.150 And um what's pro- the problem is you can appeal this, and if it's your first appeal, you don't get it overridden, you 00:03:34.160 --> 00:03:42.910 have to employ lawyers, and now when you have to spend a lot of money to exercise a constitutional right, you're effectively being deprived of that 00:03:42.920 --> 00:03:52.830 right. Um and here's what we believe, that if you looked at the data, what you will find is that black Americans are three times 00:03:52.840 --> 00:04:01.510 more likely to get a false denial in the NYX background check system and that Hispanic Americans are twice as likely 00:04:01.520 --> 00:04:09.590 to get a false denial from the NYX background check system as a white American might be. Why is this? Because 00:04:09.600 --> 00:04:17.670 they share similar names, surnames, and first names within racial and ethnic groups. And so if you're in one of these 00:04:17.680 --> 00:04:27.950 groups and share one of these names with somebody who's been convicted, you can be deprived of the ability to purchase the gun. So this is a problem. We we want to see 00:04:27.960 --> 00:04:36.710 the data and that's the purpose of this bill. And with that, I reserve the balance of my time. >> The gentleman from Kentucky is recognized. >> Mr. Speaker, I want to be clear about 00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:47.270 the purpose of the bill. It's not to collect more information on prospective gun buyers. It's to know what the information we have, what's been collected. Do we 00:04:47.280 --> 00:04:56.270 what can we infer from those things? So for instance, on the form, we already collect race and ethnicity. The purpose of this bill is not to tell us 00:04:56.280 --> 00:05:06.110 individual details about the people who purchase the guns. We want to know this these numbers in the aggregate so that nobody's particular 00:05:06.120 --> 00:05:14.670 um traits or names will be disclosed as gun owners. We just need to know what it looks to like statistically. There's been a question from some of my 00:05:14.680 --> 00:05:23.550 conservative colleagues as to why the bill asks for both gender and sex. Um the reason for that is before 2016, 00:05:23.560 --> 00:05:33.510 the form 4473 used to ask what your gender was. And after 2016, it asks what your sex is. So the language of the law 00:05:33.520 --> 00:05:43.070 doesn't suggest that those two things are different things. It just acknowledges that the data that's been collected over the years has been collected under two different terms and 00:05:43.080 --> 00:05:52.270 we want to know all of the data. Um you know, imagine if a bank, which also does background checks on its 00:05:52.280 --> 00:06:01.150 prospective tellers and employees of the banks, imagine if a bank had an error in their system, which caused black tellers 00:06:01.160 --> 00:06:11.150 or Hispanic tellers to fail the background check more than white tellers um or bank other bank employees. The bank would be sued out of existence. 00:06:11.160 --> 00:06:21.670 Yet, we have a government system, which we believe probably does this. And so, that's why we need to know the data. And then, my goal with this is that we 00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:31.710 improve the system. That if we make it not sloppy, because what will the improvement yield? It will take out the racial bias in the system that exists 00:06:31.720 --> 00:06:39.790 right now, but it will also mean that all races, whether you're white, black, Hispanic, Asian and whether you're male 00:06:39.800 --> 00:06:49.750 or female, there will be no bias, because we will check for your actual name and your actual birthday and clean this system up. And with that, I would 00:06:49.760 --> 00:06:59.310 like to reserve my time. >> The gentleman from Kentucky is recognized. >> I thank you and um I want to also thank uh Mr. Hank Johnson from Georgia, who's 00:06:59.320 --> 00:07:10.190 also a member of the Judiciary Committee, who in fact improved this bill before it came to the floor. We marked it up in Judiciary. He had a suggestion and in order not to delay the 00:07:10.200 --> 00:07:20.270 bill or the passage of it through committee, I assured him that I would work with him before it came to the floor. A lot of times that's a euphemism and it never happens, but we did in fact 00:07:20.280 --> 00:07:28.830 insert the uh language from Hank Johnson's office directly into this bill and not because I wanted to cut a deal, but because it actually made the bill 00:07:28.840 --> 00:07:39.350 better. We will find out not just the demographics of the denials, but also the demographics of the of the uh people who overturned their denials. And this 00:07:39.360 --> 00:07:47.510 is important, too, for improving the system. So, with that, I urge passage of this bill and I yield back the balance of my time. 00:07:47.520 --> 00:07:55.590 >> The gentleman yields. The question is will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill HR 2267 as amended. Those in favor say I. 00:07:55.600 --> 00:08:04.790 Those opposed, no. In the opinion of the chair, two-thirds being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the bill is passed without objection. The motion to reconsider is 00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:07.520 laid on the table.