Official Congressional Record
Mr. President, 4 years ago, Congress passed our legislative response to one of the deadliest school shootings in American history. It happened in Uvalde, TX, at Robb Elementary School. Nineteen innocent children and two adults--teachers--lost their lives that day. It was a devastating--a devastating--occurrence. Unfortunately, it was not an isolated event. Americans around the country, though, joined in the suffering of these families' experience as they mourned the loss of their loved ones. Flags at Federal buildings and military installations were lowered to halfstaff. We all knew we wanted to do whatever we could do to prevent something like this from happening again if there was anything that we could actually do legislatively. The much harder question was, What would that look like? In the days that followed, we heard from many Americans--Texans, North Carolinians, and folks all around the country--saying that no parent should ever have to send their child to school wondering will that child be safe, and no child should have to go to school wondering if they were going to be a victim of a mass shooting. We knew that whatever we did, it would not bring back those teachers and innocent children from the act of pure evil that unfolded on May 24, 2022. But we knew that--Senator Tillis, Senator Sinema, Senator Murphy, and I took on the task of trying to come up with a bill that would actually make a difference, that would save lives. But we knew we had to do it consistent with the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but we felt like we could make some progress and save lives. As negotiations continued, there was pressure mounting from some corners of this Chamber to do things that maybe sounded pretty good, but they wouldn't actually change the results or maybe they would be unconstitutional in depriving law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights. During the meetings that we had together, I think we concluded that if we actually wanted to be successful in doing something that would make a difference and save lives, that we couldn't just try to do something that perhaps was a good press release or might make the evening news; we actually had to do something that would be meaningful and that would result in saving lives. I have long been a champion of Second Amendment rights. That is probably no surprise. Texans believe in the Second Amendment. But some of these proposals, obviously, were unacceptable to me, personally, but they, as I said, failed to address the problems that we have seen in these school shootings in a way that would be meaningful. The best solution, in my view, was that we needed to find some way to come to grips with the mental health crisis in our country and particularly that affecting young people and, in this case, in the wake of COVID and the isolation many of these young people had. But we also knew that we needed to be narrow and specifically tailor policy changes that would save those lives. So we worked together and passed a bill called the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed the Senate on June 23 and was signed into law June 25 of 2022, 32 days after the shooting. Now, the Senate does not ordinarily operate at that sort of speed, I can assure you, as we all know, but we wrote this law carefully and deliberately to ensure no law-abiding citizen's Second Amendment rights would be impaired. To be plain, if you didn't suffer from a mental illness or you weren't a criminal, you would not be affected by this law. That was true then, and it is true today. What this bill did do is made a historic investment in mental health and school safety and commonsense measures to prevent dangerous individuals from being a harm to themselves and others. Texas, like all the States, has received significant amounts of money; in the case of Texas, hundreds of millions of dollars from this law--more than $312 million, to date, to strengthen our mental health care and school hardening--to make it more difficult for violent individuals to attack soft targets like schools typically have been but no more. Universities use these resources to partner with local school districts to provide training for mental health professionals to support students, and school districts have used these resources to upgrade their security systems, to implement threat alert systems, and improve emergency response plans. I saw some of these firsthand when I visited R.L. Paschal High School in Fort Worth, which received more than $350,000 for specialized emergency radios and safety upgrades. The BSCA, as it is called, also expanded certified community behavioral health clinics around the country, which has allowed mental health clinics to expand their coverage to include not only mental health but substance abuse disorders. We have all come to be aware of the fact that we simply have not treated or provided the resources for people suffering from mental health challenges that are necessary to help them not only get better but prevent them from descending into self-harm or harm to others. There are now more than 500 community-based mental health centers operating in 46 States, and additional States have added to the CCBHC Demonstration Program recently announced by the Health and Human Services Secretary, Secretary Kennedy, that was directly linked to this law that we passed 4 years ago. Now, of course, there has been a lot of misunderstanding living in the world we live in with social media and officeholders and would-be officeholders running in political campaigns. There is a lot of misunderstanding about what this law did and what it did not do. For example, some have described this bill as a gun control law, which it is not. So, today, together with my colleague--our colleague-- Senator Tillis of North Carolina, who is a great partner in this legislation, we want to address some of the widespread misconceptions about the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and just set the record straight. One of the things I heard most in the recent campaign I ran in was that we had passed a red flag law which would make it possible for an aggrieved partner or spouse or family member or maybe even a neighbor to basically turn in somebody and have their firearms confiscated without due process of law. We decided upfront that although some States did have red flag laws, that No. 1, it was important that there be appropriate due process requirements before they can access any of the resources in this law and, secondly, that there not be a national red flag law--leave this up to the States. The truth is, the BSCA actually makes it harder to implement red flag laws because you can't do so and access this money unless you enhance the due process protections that are necessary to protect what is a constitutional right. Our legislation created this due process framework that I know you will hear more about from Senator Tillis, but I knew that my State, Texas, would never pass a State red flag law, and the last thing I was going to do was to support or embrace a red flag law, national law, that would preempt Texas law. So we wanted to make sure that the funding that was available was available for crisis intervention programs, veterans courts, mental health courts--just to use a couple of examples--that did not have those red flag laws while making sure those States that did could not gain access to this money unless they provided an enhanced due process procedure. So it is false to argue that the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act created an incentive for more States to pass new red flag laws, and the statistics bear it out. Only 4 percent of the total money appropriated was obligated to red flag-related activities--4 percent--in States with existing red flag laws, and those States now had to comply with the law so a stricter due process standard applied. The vast majority of BSCA funds have gone, instead, to State mental health programs, veterans courts, as I mentioned, crisis intervention, school safety measures. The only States to implement a new red flag law were two States that already had begun the process to pass one before the BSCA passed. So the BSCA--Bipartisan Safer Communities Act--did not cause or leave any State to pass new red flag laws. What we did is made it harder for those laws to be abused in those States that had them by providing for this enhanced level of due process protection of this Second Amendment constitutional right. Another misconception I heard on the campaign trail or saw on social media was that we somehow created a mandatory waiting period before somebody could access a firearm if they were going into a store to purchase it for those under 21. Once again, this is false. Many individuals who create acts of violence like school shootings have a history of violence, are known to local law enforcement, and are essentially ticking timebombs. That is what happened in Uvalde, TX, 4 years ago. The Uvalde shooter was a deeply troubled young man known by everybody in the neighborhood to be trouble, and there were warning signs that, I think, demonstrated the fact that he was not only a potential danger to himself but also others. He was isolated, a bully. He self-harmed. He had a history of fighting, threatening fellow students, and abusing animals. He bought weapons and ammunition within days of turning 18 because the juvenile records in Texas were not uploaded into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System like they are for adults. So there was virtually no possibility of any record of this potentially derogatory or disqualifying information that would have been available at the time of his purchase. If a person's record includes disqualifying criminal convictions or mental health adjudication, it shouldn't matter whether it occurred a day before their 18th birthday. And what the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act allowed law enforcement officials to do was go back and look at those juvenile records. That information must now be available on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The BSCA incentivizes States to upload these juvenile records, but it places a strict time limit on how long the review process can take place. If a determination is not made in that window, the purchase proceeds. Interestingly, far less than 1 percent of firearms background checks are affected by the checks for under 21-year-old buyers that this bill deals with, but yet we know that it has made a real difference. There was the 18-year-old attempting to purchase a long gun in Nebraska who as a minor made terroristic threats and was placed in a mental institution, or the 20-year-old drug dealer with a juvenile felony adjudication who attempted to purchase a long gun in Arizona. These individuals would have never been discovered before the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. States agree with its efficacy, including Texas, which passed the law soon after the BSCA passed to ensure that juvenile mental health records would be available to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. This leads me to another important provision in the BSCA, which gives the Department of Justice tools to prosecute individuals for straw purchases. So, for example, if a drug dealer knows that his or her criminal conviction would disqualify them from purchasing a firearm legally, they can't get their boyfriend or girlfriend to buy it for them without violating the law. Straw purchases are the primary way that criminals and illegal aliens arm themselves, and the Trump administration has used these new criminal provisions enacted in the BSCA to target cartel members. Ryan Routh, who made an attempt against President Trump's life at Trump International golf course in September of 2024 acquired the gun via a straw purchase because his prior criminal record would have prevented him from buying it legally. Before BSCA, the only penalty a criminal faced for a straw purchase was lying on their firearms transaction, a minor offense which many prosecutors would not bother to pursue. The BSCA also created a new firearms trafficking law. Since drug cartel members can't legally purchase firearms, they rely on firearms traffickers to arm them and carry out their violence. Now because of this law, the Department of Justice has a tool to combat cartel violence and prosecute individuals who engage in firearms trafficking. Indeed, the Department of Justice has convicted 459 criminals under the straw purchasing and firearms trafficking laws-- 459--while another 716 violent criminals are currently facing charges under this law. So we all want our communities to be safe, but we also want to make sure that we respect the rights of law-abiding citizens; and no law we would pass restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens, were we to do so, would make a difference. No law-abiding citizen is a threat to their community. But this is one of the reasons why I was a vocal critic of President Biden's open border policies which allowed millions of people to come into the country, including some criminals and cartel members. It is the reason why I opposed the ``defund the police'' movement that left a wave of unchecked violence and crime in America's blue cities. And that is why working together with Senator Tillis, Senator Sinema, and Senator Murphy, we made sure we passed a law which actually would invest in mental health resources to identify individuals who were suffering before they became a danger to themselves or others. We literally made the single largest investment when we passed this law 4 years ago of community-based mental healthcare and made our schools safer for all of our children so they can focus on why they are in school in the first place: to learn. And parents don't have to worry at home about is my son or my daughter going to be safe, all the while protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. So as I reflect back on my time here in the U.S. Senate, there are a few legislative accomplishments I have made that have helped the people of Texas and our country at large--at least I hope that is the case-- but out of all of these, the BSCA was one of the most critical in tangibly making the country safer for families and children. Parents may not know when they interact with security systems at the entrance of their child's preschool that they are actually benefitting from this law, but the BSCA has made a difference, and it will continue to do so. So I am proud, working together with Senator Tillis and Senator Sinema and Senator Murphy, that we were able to accomplish this even in the face of organized opposition. What I did learn--and maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise to me-- is that there are cottage industries in Washington, DC, that spread misinformation about legislation that is actually challenging to pass because it does involve something like a constitutional right--the Second Amendment--but strictly they do it for the purposes of raising money from their membership for using in political campaigns. But the one reason we are here in the Senate, the one reason I am proud to be here is because we are willing to take on some of these hard, complex issues on occasion and to try to come up with tangible results that benefit our constituents and all the American people. So I yield to Senator Tillis.
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