Ranking Member Jamie Raskin opening statement

thank you kindly Mr chairman um just on that interesting point you raised at the beginning um I I think we stand by our math there are more than 50,000 gun dealer licenses in America more than 6,000 pawn broker licenses and more than 20,000 manufacturer licenses who each have the right to directly sell from their unique physical locations and that does add up to more than the various fast food outlets and uh so on that we identified but we we submit for the record the exact arithmetic I'm glad that uh you at least implicitly seem to uh agree that uh if true this is a shocking statistic that there are that many gun violence dealers in the country um in 2022 shocking levels of gun violence caused Congress to come together after Decades of inaction to pass the first major piece of gun safety legislation in 28 years ever since President Biden signed the bipartisan for communities act into law and with the efforts of the ATF we've made substantial gains in reversing the gun violence epidemic um we ended 2024 with a 25% drop in Nationwide homicides compared to 2022 and of course Firearms are involved in more than 80% of murders in the country according to the office of gun violence prevention's one-year progress report in September of last year more than 600 defendants had been charged under our new gun trafficking and straw purchasing laws and 900 firearm transfers to people under the age of 21 were prevented by enhanced background checks the key point is that this law and other Biden Administration regulations saved thousands of lives contributing to 3500 fewer murders between 2023 and 2024 without ever once infringing on the Second Amendment and we know that because the Supreme Court never invalidated any part of the bipartisan safe communities act or any other Biden Administration gun safety rule as a violation of the Second Amendment on the contrary they've all been deemed to be constitutional yet our colleagues continue to insist that Common Sense gun safety laws of this type violate the Second Amendment but the Second Amendment doesn't protect the right of access to a firearm without a violent criminal background check or the right to purchase machine guns or military style assault weapons the Supreme Court uh including uh in the DC versus heler decision has repeatedly stated that reasonable regulations of firearms to protect Public Safety are consistent with the Second Amendment um but our colleagues want to preempt state and local law and force Americans to accept more dangerous weapons in their Community all under the guise of protecting the Second Amendment I challenge my colleagues to explain how any of the Biden Administration reforms actually violate the Second Amendment because no court ever said they did the problem is that some of our colleagues have completely deformed and misstated what the Second Amendment stands for their now Infamous insurrectionist Theory says that the second amendment gives you the right to overthrow the government our former colleague Matt Gates said the Second Amendment quote is about maintaining within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed Rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary this purported right to overthrow the government means that the people must enjoy access to Munitions equivalent to that of the Arsenal possessed by the government as my friend representative chip Roy says the second amendment was quote designed purposefully to empower the people to resist the force of tyranny used against them and my friend Lauren bobert says that the Second Amendment quote has nothing to do with hunting unless you're talking about hunting tyrants maybe despite all of this pseudo revolutionary rhetoric about how the Constitution provides a right of civil Insurrection the actual constitution in a half dozen different places treats Insurrection and Rebellion not as protected rights but as serious and dangerous offenses against our government and against our people article one gives Congress the power to call forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union suppress insurrections and repel invasions the Republican guarantee clause in article 4 tells the US to guarantee a republican form of government to the states and protect them quote against domestic violence these Provisions followed Shea's rebellion and armed Uprising in Massachusetts in the 1780s which the founders strongly condemned and which influenced the writing of the Constitution the Constitution thoroughly rejects the right-wing fantasy that random bands of disgruntled citizens can ca can claim the powers of a militia to commit violent acts against the police um Article 1 Section 8 Clause 16 reserves quote to the states respectively the appointment of the officers and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress this intergovernmental cooperation is how we come to have what the Second Amendment calls for in its first Clause a well-regulated militia this means well regulated by the government as the Supreme Court has repeatedly said the proud boys and oathkeepers are not a militia a private militia is a contradiction in terms in 1886 the Supreme Court upheld a state law criminalizing private paramilitary groups in every state in the Union today bans private militias a militia is not the reserve power of the people to attack the government on the contrary it is the instrument by which the federal and state governments can suppress violent insurrections against the government now today um when I point out these problems uh with their Theory to my distinguished colleagues they generally fall back on two responses one is they will quote Patrick Henry who said Give me liberty or give me death which is great because that was a great bumper sticker in the 18th century but Patrick Henry was an anti-federalist who opposed the ratification of the Constitution so that's like quoting speeches by Jefferson Davis to settle the meaning of the 14th Amendment they also invoke more plausibly the American Revolution in the Declaration of Independence for the idea that after a long train of abuses and user ation and AG grieve people have the right to alter or abolish the bonds holding them to a tyrannical government now that's true of course but it's irrelevant because the revolutionaries undoubtedly asserted their right not as a right under the British constitution or the Magna Carta but is a matter of natural right to overthrow a tyrannical government that's very different from saying the Constitution itself guarantees the right to have the means to overthrow the government if you think that the 2020 presidential election for example which Joe Biden won by more than 7 million votes 306 to 232 is an exercise of tyranny akin to King George's tyranny against the colonist by all means you can come down and beat up our police officers and try to overthrow the government but if we catch you and we stop you we will prosecute you under the full force of the law and put you in jail at least until the next president decides to pardon the people who've done that look this fraudulent constitutional philosophy of insurrectionism is exacting a brutal toll on the American people in our social contract by blockading perfectly reasonable and constitutional gun safety measures that are saving lives in America the whole purpose of the social contract is to make ourselves safer than we would be in a lawless state of nature which Hobbs described as a state of war and yet the insurrectionist caucus has brought us gruesome episodes of high-tech military style violence everywhere in America from Walmarts to grocery stores to elementary school class rooms it's time to reassert the real Primacy of the Constitution and its real meaning thank you I yeld back to you Mr chairman