[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
UNDER FIRE: DOES THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA'S GUN BAN HELP OR HURT THE
FIGHT AGAINST CRIME?
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 28, 2005
__________
Serial No. 109-40
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee DIANE E. WATSON, California
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
DARRELL E. ISSA, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
JON C. PORTER, Nevada BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia Columbia
PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina ------
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina (Independent)
------ ------
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on June 28, 2005.................................... 1
Statement of:
Lott, John R., Jr., Ph.D., resident scholar, American
Enterprise Institute; Robert A. Levy, senior fellow in
COnstitutional Studies, the CATO Institute; Robert Peck,
president, Greater Washington Board of Trade; Pastor H.
Lionel Edmonds, co-Chair, Washington Interfaith Network;
Sandra Seegars, District of Columbia resident; Tyrone
Parker, executive director, Alliance of Concerned Men; and
Francine Lowe, District of Columbia resident............... 77
Edmonds, Pastor H. Lionel................................ 109
Levy, Robert A........................................... 92
Lott, John R., Jr., Ph.D................................. 77
Lowe, Francine........................................... 133
Parker, Tyrone........................................... 129
Peck, Robert............................................. 105
Seegars, Sandra.......................................... 111
Williams, Anthony, Mayor, the District of Columbia; and
Charles H. Ramsey, chief of police, Metropolitan Police
Department................................................. 41
Ramsey, Charles H........................................ 47
Williams, Anthony........................................ 41
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Missouri, prepared statement of................... 30
Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Maryland, prepared statement of............... 25
Davis, Chairman Tom, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Virginia, prepared statement of................... 3
Edmonds, Pastor H. Lionel, co-Chair, Washington Interfaith
Network, prepared statement of............................. 110
Levy, Robert A., senior fellow in COnstitutional Studies, the
CATO Institute, prepared statement of...................... 94
Lott, John R., Jr., Ph.D., resident scholar, American
Enterprise Institute, prepared statement of................ 81
Lowe, Francine, District of Columbia resident, prepared
statement of............................................... 134
McHenry, Hon. Patrick T., a Representative in Congress from
the State of North Carolina, prepared statement of......... 12
Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, a Delegate in Congress from the
District of Columbia:
Information concerning fatal shootings................... 57
Prepared statement of.................................... 8
Parker, Tyrone, executive director, Alliance of Concerned
Men, prepared statement of................................. 131
Peck, Robert, president, Greater Washington Board of Trade,
prepared statement of...................................... 107
Porter, Hon. Jon C., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Nevada, prepared statement of..................... 151
Ramsey, Charles H., chief of police, Metropolitan Police
Department, prepared statement of.......................... 50
Ruppersberger, Hon. C.A. Dutch, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Maryland, prepared statement of.......... 35
Seegars, Sandra, District of Columbia resident, prepared
statement of............................................... 114
Watson, Hon. Diane E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, prepared statement of................. 152
Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, prepared statement of................. 15
Westmoreland, Hon. Lynn A., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Georgia, prepared statement of................ 39
Williams, Anthony, Mayor, the District of Columbia, prepared
statement of............................................... 44
UNDER FIRE: DOES THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA'S GUN BAN HELP OR HURT THE
FIGHT AGAINST CRIME?
----------
TUESDAY, JUNE 28, 2005
House of Representatives,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Davis of Virginia, Burton, Cannon, Duncan,
Marchant, Westmoreland, McHenry, Dent, Waxman, Cummings,
Kucinich, Clay, Watson, Van Hollen, Ruppersberger, and Norton.
Staff present: Melissa Wojciak, staff director; David
Marin, deputy staff director/communications director; Keith
Ausbrook, chief counsel; Rob White, press secretary; Drew
Crockett, deputy director of communications; Shalley Kim,
professional staff member; Teresa Austin, chief clerk; Sarah
D'Orsie, deputy clerk; Leneal Scott, computer systems manager;
Phil Barnett, minority staff director/chief counsel; Karen
Lightfoot, minority communications director/senior policy
advisor; Rosalind Parker, minority counsel; David Rapallo,
minority chief investigative counsel; Earley Green, minority
chief clerk; Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk; and Chris
Traci, minority research assistant.
Chairman Tom Davis. The committee will come to order. I
want to thank everybody for joining us today, as the Committee
on Government Reform takes a look at the District of Columbia
law banning handguns and most automatic weapons.
In 1976, 3 years after Congress passed the Home Rule Act,
the District of Columbia Council passed the Firearms Control
Regulations Act, a law prohibiting the possession of
unregistered firearms and banning the registration of all
handguns, automatic firearms, and high-capacity semi-automatic
firearms. The District's ban on handguns makes it illegal for
anyone to own a handgun unless he or she is a police officer
who has owned a gun registered prior to 1976. Sales of firearms
are similarly restricted. This makes the District's gun laws
among the strictest of any jurisdiction in the Nation.
Various lawsuits have been filed in recent years
questioning the Constitutionality of the D.C. gun law under the
second amendment. The courts have upheld the ban, finding it is
within the District's power to regulate firearms. Meanwhile,
legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate to
overturn the District's gun ban.
I am a strong supporter of Home Rule. For our system of
federalism and democracy to work, States and localities need to
be able to make their own decisions, even if some of us think
they are bad ones. I believe the citizens of the District, like
residents of any city across the Nation, are best served when
their locality's elected representatives are free to decide how
to manage the city's affairs. After all, the District is
certainly not the only city in America with a ban on handguns.
New York has a restrictive handgun law; so does Chicago; so do
smaller towns such as Morton Grove, Wilmette, Evanston, and Oak
Park, all in Illinois.
I believe there is room in the Congress for debate on the
merits of some of the Nation's gun laws, but I also believe the
appropriate place for debate on the District's gun laws is in
the chambers of the District of Columbia City Council.
Congress, as outlined in the Constitution, does retain
final say over the city's legislative decision. But that is a
power we should, and do, use only rarely. I also believe the
District would be better off if my colleague Eleanor Holmes
Norton would cast votes on the floor of the House of
Representatives. We are, of course, working to build support
for legislation to fix that, but that is a topic for another
hearing--July 15th, for those taking notes.
I personally believe that Federal legislation seeking to
overturn D.C.'s gun laws are an unnecessary and potentially
dangerous assault on Home Rule. I personally believe the net
result could be a less safe capital city. But this committee's
agenda is not about my personal beliefs. The issues raised in
this debate demand our time and demand our attention. The
safety of D.C. residents demands it.
Today's hearing features a compelling array of witnesses
who have differing opinions on the District's gun ban. I called
this hearing because the District's gun ban not only raises
Constitutional concerns among some observers, but it is worth a
look to see if the ban is working as intended. Does the ban
effectively keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of
criminals? Would repealing it lead to a spike in violent crime
and homicides? Or, as one of today's witnesses argued, would
more guns equal less crime?
We are pleased to once again be joined by Mayor Tony
Williams of the District of Columbia and the city's Police
Chief Charles Ramsey to hear the city's perspective on the
current gun laws. In addition, the committee is fortunate to be
joined by an array of witnesses, including residents of the
District of Columbia and representatives from both national
think tanks and community organizations from all sides of the
issue, and we appreciate an informative discussion on this.
Congress has acted on this in the past without any kind of
hearings or anything, and we felt this was appropriate to move
forward today to try to build a record so we can get the city
on record and we can get proponents and opponents, both sides,
to be able to state their case for the public record.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:]
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[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2473.002
Chairman Tom Davis. I would now recognize the distinguished
delegate for the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I thank
you especially for this hearing that is of great importance to
D.C. elected officials and residents. I particularly appreciate
the collegial conversation between you and me, Mr. Chairman,
which resulted in today's hearing and your working with me to
select and secure today's witnesses.
The current effort to repeal D.C.'s gun safety laws is the
second consecutive attack on gun safety and on Home Rule in as
many years, and the fourth attack on our gun laws since I have
been a Member of Congress, thanks to the National Rifle
Association.
I want to begin by making an important announcement.
National organizations can and do get changes in D.C. laws, but
not by coming to Congress. To its credit, Congress, in almost
30 years of Home Rule, has overturned D.C. law only very
rarely. Our local laws can be changed the way yours are: by
showing the minimum respect our elected officials deserve of
lobbying the appropriate body.
If I may, I want to note that what is truly amazing about
the gun safety repeal bill is that any Member of Congress would
desire to introduce gun and pawn shops here, which could then
sell assault weapons like AK-47s in the capital of the United
States in the post-September 11th era, while we still have
checkpoints in our streets stopping people to see if they are
terrorists.
Who will take responsibility for a bill that would allow
legal ownership of an M-16 by a person who might later go to
the roof of an office or an apartment building and take aim at
Federal targets, visitors, and officials? Any security
professional will tell you that official Washington has as much
to fear from the radical repeal in this bill as residents of
the District of Columbia.
My only regret about a hearing on repeal is that any
elected official or any police chief of any local jurisdiction
in our country today would have to suffer the indignity of
appearing before the U.S. Congress on a matter of profound
local concern. The most fundamental guiding democratic
principle of the founders of our country was local control,
first from England and then, because they were deeply
principled, they denied to the national government that they
themselves created any control of the laws of local
jurisdictions.
The entire reason for our founding revolution was that
democracy demanded accountability running from the electorate
to those whom they elected. The framers deeply believed that
democracy required that citizens must be able to judge their
elected officials by keeping or removing them.
No sponsor of this bill could be removed or rewarded by the
voters of the District of Columbia, leaving more than half a
million American citizens stranded and estranged from democracy
in their own country. The ignorant claptrap from those who have
not bothered to immerse themselves in American history that
somehow the root principle of local control and accountability
that gave birth to the Nation was not meant to apply to
citizens living in our Nation's Capital is a slander on the
founders of our country.
Even worse, the claim that democracy applies everywhere
else in our country, but not to the capital of our country,
demeans more than half a million American citizens who live in
the District of Columbia by explicitly classifying them as
second-class Americans.
Nevertheless, I appreciate that Mayor Tony Williams and
Police Chief Charles Ramsey have come to testify as lead
witnesses, and I thank today's other witnesses for their
testimony as well. I hope it gives Mayor Williams some comfort
in coming here to have a unanimous City Council and a virtually
unanimous city behind him as well.
There are two important aspects to this hearing. The first
is who has the right and the qualifications to decide the gun
safety repeal issue. The second issue is the District's reasons
for maintaining strict gun laws in this city.
Let us assume for a moment that the District is wrong in
enacting strict gun safety laws. When Congress passed the Home
Rule Act, it gave the District the right to make this decision,
right or wrong, a matter that should close this case,
particularly today, when Congress is demanding democracy
worldwide.
Even if the District is wrong, can the case seriously be
made in America today that correcting what is wrong lies with
this body, whose members cannot be held accountable for the
consequences of repeal, will not be hammered for increases in
gun violence, and will not attend a single funeral? The
assertion that in undemocratically repealing our gun safety
laws Congress would be doing its Constitutional duty would get
us laughed off of the world stage, particularly today, when the
spread of democracy worldwide is declared national policy.
Since, in looking to the Constitution, Congress placed this
matter in the hand of District officials and residents, we are
left only with the second amendment, except that no local or
Federal court, in 30 years of considering this Constitutional
issue, has ever found that D.C.'s gun safety laws violate the
second amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Thus, sponsors and co-sponsors and proponents alike are
driven back to desiring boldly to override the democratically
enacted laws of a local jurisdiction in the United States of
America today. I invite the co-sponsors to try their hand at
defending the undemocratic repeal of our gun safety laws while
rising to object when other nations ask for a pass on
democracy.
No Member of Congress has the right to usurp our right to
protect ourselves and our kids by introducing more guns that
could take the gun violence already here the next step to a
free-fire zone. No Member of Congress has the right to
encourage guns in homes, when the overwhelming evidence from
all the national data shows that guns in homes rarely are used
to thwart intruders, and are almost always used to kill those
closest to us and in suicides.
No Member of Congress has the right to the odious provision
this bill carries that bars the Mayor and the council from
taking any action, even to an--and I am here quoting--
``discourage the private ownership''--discourage, my friends,
the private ownership--or ``use''--use--``of firearms.'' No
Member of Congress has a rebuttal to the hard data that shows
that one in five police officers is killed by an assault weapon
in our country today, weapons that this bill sanctions to be
sold in the Nation's Capital. And no Member can contest the
tragic fact that more teens are killed by gunfire than by all
diseases combined.
The most bankrupt rationale offered for this outrageous
interference with our local laws is the existing gun violence
in the District of Columbia. Let us hear the proponents and the
co-sponsors argue with a straight face that allowing guns in
people's homes would reduce, rather than increase, the gun
violence here. District officials and residents deserve credit
and they deserve our appreciation for the significant reduction
in gun killings and in crime that they have achieved, and
particularly for the sharp reduction in the number of children
killed this year by gunfire.
Our residents and officials deserve better than
congressional action that would inevitably frustrate their hard
work and drive up these killings. Nine year-old Dante Manning,
shot and killed in Northwest in April, and 1 year-old Miani
Gooding, shot and killed in Southeast in January, deserve
better than to have the memory of their young lives besmirched
by the repeal of the District's gun safety laws in the very
year in which they died by gunfire. Promising 15 year-old
Myesha Lowe, shot and killed as a bystander while eating fast
food a year ago, whose mother, Francine Lowe, is here to
testify today, deserves better too.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2473.003
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. McHenry.
Mr. McHenry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this
hearing today, and I appreciate your leadership of the
Government Reform Committee.
Protecting the second amendment rights our Constitution
provides for is essential to the freedoms of this country. I
strongly support the rights of all citizens to lawfully
purchase, use, keep personal firearms. Gun control laws simply
penalize lawful gun owners who use their firearms for
recreational hunting and self-defense purposes. The best way to
reduce illegal gun violence and crime is through strict
enforcement of current laws and stiffer penalties for
criminals.
As a member of the NRA and a co-sponsor of Chairman
Souder's bill, H.R. 1288, the District of Columbia Personal
Protection Act, I believe it is important to draw attention to
this issue. Restricting lawful residents' use of guns in the
District of Columbia is not what our Constitution intended.
According to the FBI and D.C. Metropolitan Police, the
homicide rate has soured in the District of Columbia since the
city banned handguns in 1976. Before the ban, the homicide rate
was declining. But by 1991 alone it had risen by more than 200
percent. This is in stark contrast to the overall national
rate, which rose only 12 percent. This indicates that the ban
has hurt those living in the District of Columbia and our
visitors to our Nation's Capital. At this time, the District of
Columbia is only three homicides--three homicides--away from
the same number as we had last year, which illuminates that
this gun ban is not preventing violent crime.
I would like to welcome our witnesses today. I certainly
appreciate you being here to testify, appreciate your expertise
on this issue, and look forward to hearing from each of you on
this panel, this first panel as well as the second panel. But I
think we need to look at new ways to take on this issue. It is
not just simply about the residents of the District of
Columbia; it is about our visitors from around the country. It
is about my constituents who come to visit the Nation's
Capital.
Indeed, it is about Americans from all States; it is our
folks from around the country and around the world that come to
our great National Capital. And it is a disgrace that we have
such a high homicide rate and such violent crime occurring here
in our Nation's Capital. Yet, we disarm those lawful citizens
that should be able to lawfully keep firearms, and allow
felons, who are continuing to commit crimes, keep firearms that
they are obviously using to commit homicides.
So I look forward to hearing the testimony of the Mayor and
the police chief here today; I look forward to our future panel
as well to actually illuminate the facts of this issue.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing us the opportunity to
be here today, and thank you for your leadership.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Patrick T. McHenry
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2473.006
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Waxman.
Mr. Waxman. Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this
hearing today, which is cynically titled the District of
Columbia Personal Protection Act. And I commend you for working
with Congresswoman Norton to put this important hearing
together. And I especially want to commend Congresswoman Norton
for her determined leadership on this and so many other issues
that matter to the residents of the District.
Contrary to the bill's title, the legislation we are
considering won't enhance personal protection; it will imperil
it. This is an astounding piece of legislation because it is so
objectionable on so many levels. First, on process. We are
having a hearing on this proposal today, 9 months after the
bill passed the House. This isn't Chairman Davis' fault; the
bill was run through last year over his objection. But passing
a bill on the floor and then having a hearing inverts the
legislative process.
On federalism or Home Rule grounds, the bill is a travesty.
This bill was not requested by the District, is not wanted by
the District, and is vehemently opposed by the District. This
bill isn't even about the District; it is about the NRA and its
right-wing supporters in Congress foisting a misguided proposal
on U.S. citizens who don't even have a vote in the Congress.
The bill is deficient on Constitutional grounds. The bill
says ``The second amendment protects the rights of individuals
to keep and bear arms.'' That is just wrong. It doesn't, even
though the NRA desperately wants to ignore the Supreme Court's
rulings and rewrite the Constitution.
The bill is also objectionable on law enforcement grounds.
It allows not just handguns and rifles, but semi-automatic
assault weapons. It compounds this danger by eliminating any
form of registration, and it is riddled with gaping loopholes
that undermine police efforts to curb gun violence. Here is an
example. It would allow people to carry assault weapons for
``informal target practice.'' How exactly would the District
police enforce that?
And here is another one. It is fine, under this bill, to
carry assault weapons as long as you are on your way to a dog
obedience training class.
The most significant problem with this bill, however, is
that it will directly endanger national security. I would like
to show the committee members a picture. This is an actual size
photo of a Barrett M82A1 50-caliber semi-automatic sniper
rifle. These are what our military troops are using today to
take out enemy positions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military
uses these weapons to destroy armored personnel carriers and
blow up enemy bunkers from a mile away. The Marine Scout Sniper
School at Quantico trains military snipers with these weapons.
Here is another picture. This is a photo of an airplane
cockpit window that was blown out by a 50-caliber sniper rifle.
This photo was on the gun manufacturer's Web page, touting its
destructive force.
If this bill passes, District residents could assemble
these weapons, fully load them, rest them on windowsills along
Pennsylvania Avenue during an inauguration. Every single hot
dog, ice cream, or t-shirt vendor that lines District streets
along the mall on the 4th of July could be stocked with fully
loaded AK-47s. Under this bill, all of these actions would be
totally legal. Why would anyone in their right mind want to
allow these weapons onto the streets of the District of
Columbia?
In short, this is a misguided, destructive, and ludicrous
piece of legislation. If people are visiting the District of
Columbia, they ought to leave their firearms back home. If the
law of the District says they don't want them in this
jurisdiction, then visitors ought to abide by the law, just as
visitors to Los Angeles would have to abide by our law, if duly
passed by the authorities running the city of Los Angeles.
Why should it be any different for the District of
Columbia? Why should people in this district be subjected to
sniper rifles, guns, assault weapons, anything that anybody
wants to have available to them? And to say that the murder
rate in this area is due to the fact that there is a gun ban is
absolutely absurd.
Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that you are holding this
hearing, and it takes some courage for you to do it, because
the Republican leadership of the House has been in the pocket
of the NRA for some time now, and that is why the House of
Representatives rammed through a proposal to overturn the law
in the District of Columbia. I hope it doesn't happen in the
Senate; I hope it doesn't happen again in the House.
But at least we are holding a hearing, unfortunately, after
the House has already taken such an extreme step as to overturn
the law in the District of Columbia. And to have now before us
a proposal which is misguided and called the District of
Columbia Personal Protection Act is a complete misnomer and an
outrage.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]
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[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2473.082
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. I think about 50 Democrats
voted for that too, just for the record.
Any other Members want to make opening statements before we
move on to our panel? I want to get to the panel. Mr. Cummings,
followed by Mr. Clay, and then Mr. Kucinich.
Mr. Cummings. Mr. Chairman, I too want to hear from the
panel, but I tell you, after I heard one of my colleagues on
the other side, I just have to say something.
It is ridiculous to say that, when you have a situation
where you already have a violence problem, to allow more guns
into an area simply does not make sense. And I come from a
district, the 7th Congressional District of Maryland, and
Baltimore is in the center of my district, and we have one of
the highest murder rates in the country. And I can tell you we
just had a gun buy-back, and to my good friend Mr. McHenry, I
can tell you we ran out of money after about a day, because
there were so many guns out there.
I think that we have to do--and I applaud Ms. Norton, too,
for what she has done with regard to all of this, and you, Mr.
Chairman, for holding this hearing, but I think we have to use
some common sense here. I know what it feels like to come home
at 1 a.m., and have two sawed-off shotguns aiming at my head. I
know the feeling. And I know what it is like to go to the
funerals. It is not a very good feeling. I also know what it is
like to go to the funeral of police officers.
And we have police officers that are reminding us that it
is a thin blue line. Well, we also have Members of this
Congress that go to those police officers' funerals, and we
mourn. But the very officers that come and say help us protect
you and give us what we need, the laws we need so that we can
create that atmosphere of safety, suddenly we turn to the NRA
and say what is your advice, and they say more guns, more guns,
more guns. It only leads to more problems.
In my district they say I am the No. 1 target of the NRA.
Well, I have to tell you that is a badge of honor in my
district. And I think that we in this country have to have a
common sense approach. Folks talk about the safety of the
District and visitors coming here. Just a few weeks ago we saw
Congressmen and staff run from these office buildings, trying
to find a place of safety. But the fact still remains that if
we allow guns to just flow in this district like water down a
stream, then the only thing that we are creating is a much more
dangerous atmosphere.
Last, but not least, let me say this. In the middle of my
district, in Baltimore, which is only an hour ride away from
here, there was an incident the other day--and I just read very
briefly, Mr. Chairman, from the Baltimore Sun June 28, 2005:
``Lost inside an adult t-shirt, a 13-year-old boy stood before
a juvenile court judge yesterday and became the city's youngest
murder suspect this year. The child is accused of being among a
group of kids who had thrown an empty wine bottle at the victim
Saturday morning, hitting the man in the foot. The victim
protested, and at least a half an hour later police say the
youngster covered his face with a bandanna, took a gun from a
friend, and shot the victim several times. Police say the
Pimlico Middle School pupil, who stands less than 5 feet tall,
then shot in the back a second man who tried to drag the first
victim to safety.'' One of them died, by the way. One of these
victims died.
My point is simply this: that I don't know where that gun
came from, but anybody who has done the research on guns knows
that guns that are in a home--and I am sure there will be
testifying on this--you have a much greater chance of that gun
being used by somebody in that house, or perhaps stolen, and
that gun being used in a crime of passion or a crime which
involves somebody that they know than it is to be used to
protect themselves from an intruder. That is a fact, and those
statistics have stood the test of time.
So it is that we gather here, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you
again, but I say that we go forward with some sensitivity and
some understanding. This is not a world about the NRA. This is
a country that is about laws. This is a country about a thin
blue line. And it is a very thin blue line, and we must do
everything in our power to uplift them so that they can protect
us.
With that, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings
follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Clay.
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank Ranking Member
Waxman for holding today's hearing on the District's gun laws.
In response to my colleague from Baltimore, I too want to
say that I must be in good company being one of the most wanted
of the NRA in Missouri, too. So I am in good stead with Mr.
Cummings.
Let me say that this hearing comes at a time when the total
number of homicides in Washington has fallen to the lowest
level in 18 years. Repealing the D.C. gun ban would be a step
in the wrong direction. Judges in two cases challenging the
District's gun laws have ruled that these laws are
Constitutional. Although this ruling is being appealed, it is
an issue for the courts to decide, and not this Congress.
Pending legislation to repeal the District's gun laws would
allow this Congress to arrogantly deny the District's right to
enact its own laws. Opposition from District officials remains
unanimous and consistent. It is unjust that my colleague,
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents the
District of Columbia, could not vote on behalf of the wishes of
her constituents when the last Congress voted to repeal the
District's firearm laws.
Today's hearing serves as glaring reminder that Congress
must grant equal voting rights for the citizens of the District
of Columbia so that its residents will have voting
representation in Congress. The Federal Government continues to
direct billions of taxpayer dollars to make our Nation's
Capital safer for residents, commuters, tourists, public
officials, and law enforcement professionals dedicated to
public safety. It would be hypocritical of Congress to
undermine the District's gun safety laws.
And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, again, and I yield back my
time.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Kucinich.
Mr. Kucinich. I thank the Chair and the ranking member for
holding this hearing, and welcome his Honor, the Mayor, and the
chief to this Committee.
There are a number of different issues involved here. The
first issue that needs to be addressed immediately is the issue
of Home Rule. Do the people of Washington, DC, through their
elected representatives, have the right to make laws to protect
and provide for the safety of their community? I think there
can be no other answer to that than the answer yes.
Now, as a former Mayor of the city of Cleveland, I
understand full well the concerns of the Mayor of the city of
Washington, DC, because the Mayor of the city of Washington,
DC, and the members of the Council are forever being haunted
with having to visit the families of victims of violent crimes.
It goes with the territory. It also goes with the territory of
the police officers.
This isn't theoretical. It is not some Constitutional
debate that is arcane. There are people dying on the streets of
our cities because of the proliferation of the handguns. It is
just a fact. Now, my travels across this Nation, your Honor, I
had the opportunity to meet with--in one community in
particular, which I won't name--to meet with the families--
mothers, mainly, and some brothers and sisters--of children who
were casualties of the warfare that goes on in America's
cities, and I saw hundreds of pictures spread out over a card
table in a high school gym, and I saw various displays of
pictures which kind of told the lives of young people.
And it is really remarkable when you think about it, about
the carnage that goes on in America's cities. And we have all
this attention in this country on a so-called war on terror,
when there are people living with terror in their own
neighborhoods because of the proliferation of handguns. And you
are trying to tell the people of Washington, DC, they can't
control their own destiny in this regard?
I read too many stories--and everyone here knows what I am
talking about--too many stories about the brilliant careers of
young people in school who have overcome all kinds of odds in
the inner city, who were the pride of their mothers and
fathers, and all of a sudden cut down by handguns. Anyone here
who reads has read those stories. You only need to pick up the
metro section of any major newspaper in this country to see
those stories.
We are acting as if there is not a problem here. We are
acting as if a community doesn't have the right to protect its
own interests and the safety of its own people. When I was
Mayor of the city of Cleveland, I took an oath to uphold the
safety of the city of Cleveland, the same oath that every
public official takes.
Mr. Mayor and to the police officers and the people who are
here from Washington, DC, you should know that there are people
in Congress who understand what you have to deal with on a
daily basis. You should know that there are people who
understand what it is like to grow up in a city, to love a
city, to want to live in a city, and, at the same time, to have
to contend with the day-to-day challenges in a city. I thank
you for your perseverance, and I pledge to you there are many
Members of Congress who are on your side who are going to work
to support not only Home Rule, but work to support your right
to be safe. Thank you.
I yield back.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Are there any other Members who wish to make opening
statements? Yes, Mr. Ruppersberger.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Mr. Chairman, a very important issue, a
very important subject matter we must deal with. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman and Ranking Member Waxman, for this hearing.
It is imperative that our Nation's Capital should be the
model for the rest of our Nation. However, it faces the same
problem as many of our urban areas must deal with on a daily
basis, the problems of violence and also gun violence.
Last year, Congress considered legislation repealing the
District of Columbia gun ban, and what I believe in a
Constitutional right to bear arms, I also believe the
Constitution charges lawmakers with the explicit responsibility
of protecting our citizens. We are here today because
legislation has been introduced that would again attempt to
repeal the longstanding gun ban.
I believe this is an issue of balance. While there are many
valid arguments for reconsidering the gun ban, Congress must
also consider what would take its place. Simply deregulating
gun ownership could create a lawless environment and breed more
violence. Instead, the question for us should be what laws
would govern the District of Columbia's gun ownership if the
current ban were repealed.
It truly disturbs me when there are more people in jail
than college. I don't believe that people should live in fear
because we have firearms in the wrong hands. And that is the
issue: in the wrong hands. We in Congress share the same
mission as the community and the Metropolitan Police
Department: to prevent crime and the fear of crime as we work
with others to build safe and healthy neighborhoods throughout
this Nation. Preventing crime through problem-solving,
partnerships among communities, police and other city agencies
is one solution to this growing problem. But our main concern
is the accountability of this violence. How are we helping the
citizens of the District of Columbia be accountable for
firearms being in the wrong hands?
Getting involved to try to stop firearms is an area where
we all can debate back and forth all day. Working to prevent
crime is one of our No. 1 priorities. And I don't mean just
catching the criminals, but looking at the whole picture as to
how the individual even got in this situation from the
beginning, especially juveniles.
Congressman Cummings talked about an incident in Baltimore
yesterday where a 13 year-old child shot someone in the head
and then his mother came to court with him, and on her hat she
had ``Stop Snitching.'' That is one of the major issues that we
have to look at, just other than guns.
Now, today I hope we can gain new understanding of the
effects of the current gun ban, as well as the impact it is
having on the fight against crime. Making our neighborhoods and
our cities a great place to live, work, and visit is a concern
that will drive us all to hopefully make the right decision. I
look forward to hearing the testimony.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Hon. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger
follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Westmoreland.
Mr. Westmoreland. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
committee looking at such an important issue as gun
restrictions in our Nation's Capital, and glad to have the
witnesses joining us today.
One thing I believe we will hear from the witnesses today
is that guns deter crime. As I have witnessed in my home State
of Georgia, citizens who possess their own guns are able to
effectively use them in self-defense, while ensuring that
others are not hurt. The legislation before us today does not
open the District's gun laws as wide as in Georgia, but makes
an excellent step forward in protecting a fundamental right of
American citizens: the right to keep and bear arms, and using
those arms in self-defense.
The right is guaranteed in the second amendment and is not,
as some courts claim, a right reserved only to State militias.
The right of the citizens to be armed protects our fundamental
liberties, as our founding fathers recognized. I look forward
to hearing from the scholars today on this subject as well.
It also makes sense that criminals are far less likely to
break into homes if they know there is a chance that people
inside could be armed. Citizens use their weapons in self-
defense hundreds, if not thousands, of times a year, and
preventing residents of D.C. from enjoying that protection
simply does not make sense to me, and I hope not to others on
this committee. I look forward to hearing from the witnesses on
both sides during this hearing and seeing what their debate and
their excuse for this bill is.
And, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you again for holding
this hearing.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Lynn A. Westmoreland
follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Van Hollen.
Mr. Van Hollen. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to
thank Congresswoman Norton for requesting this hearing and you
for holding it, Mr. Chairman, and I will be very brief.
The fundamental question here, it seems to me, is who
decides? You can hear people on one side of the aisle make the
argument that more guns are going to make people more safe.
However you want to make that argument, that is your right to
do it. And you have people making the argument that we need
reasonable restrictions on handguns and that will make people
more safe. The question here is who is the right decisionmaker.
Are they Members of Congress from other States, or are they the
people of the District of Columbia, through their elected
representatives?
Nobody here is going to the State of Georgia or to
California, or any other State and saying we know better than
your local legislators, we know better than your State
legislature. And, yet, the authors of this bill are doing
exactly that to the people of the District of Columbia. The
arrogance of saying we know better as to what is in your
interest. We understand your public safety interest better than
you do. We don't say that to the people anywhere else in this
country, and yet that is what Members of Congress here are
trying to do, is impose their views on the District of
Columbia.
It seems to me that in the interest of democracy, we should
leave it to the people of the District of Columbia to elect
their representatives, who use their best judgment as to what
is best for the people. And if the people don't like the
decisions they make, that is what elections are all about; they
can turn them out at election time. But I don't think that
people who represent folks from thousands of miles away should
be making the decisions that should be made by the people of
the District of Columbia.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. I think we are now
going to hear from the elected officials of the District of
Columbia, the two-term Mayor, Tony Williams, and Police Chief
Charles Ramsey.
As you know, we swear our witnesses in before you testify,
so if you would just rise and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. I can't thank you enough for being with
us here today. Mayor Williams, we will start with you. Try to
keep it to 5 minutes, if you can, but this is an important
issue, and some of the Members have gone over 5 minutes, so
take as long as you need to to make sure you get your points
across. But your entire statement is in the record.
And the same with you, Chief Ramsey. We appreciate very
much your being here.
STATEMENTS OF ANTHONY WILLIAMS, MAYOR, THE DISTRICT OF
COLUMBIA; AND CHARLES H. RAMSEY, CHIEF OF POLICE, METROPOLITAN
POLICE DEPARTMENT
STATEMENT OF ANTHONY WILLIAMS
Mayor Williams. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My full testimony
has been submitted for the record, but I want to thank you and
Congresswoman Norton, the ranking member, and all the
distinguished members of the committee for the opportunity to
testify today on the gun control laws in the District of
Columbia.
And I want you to know that I am pleased that our chief of
police, Charles Ramsey, is here with me today. He has led the
effort to reorganize, reconstitute our Police Department and
has led the effort to bring substantial reductions in crime
over the last 2 years in our city, and that effort continues.
And he is going to provide greater detail about how our gun
control laws help prevent and combat crime.
What I want to focus on today is the focus of Congresswoman
Norton's remarks, your remarks, Mr. Chairman, and Congressman
Van Hollen's, and that is the critical importance of our gun
control laws as a matter of our local democratic processes and
the limited Home Rule that we enjoy.
As Mayor of the District of Columbia, it is my
responsibility to do what I think is best to provide for the
public safety of my citizens. That is my trust. Any attempt at
the Federal level to pass a law or otherwise replace my
judgment and our City Council's judgment with that of officials
elected elsewhere I believe honestly and very sincerely is an
indignity to the democratic process and to our citizens. It
really represents student government more than self government.
This legislation, in fact, is a slap in the face to me and
to the people who live in my city. People who live in Texas
should be respected, but should no more impose their values on
the people of the District than the people who live in one of
my neighborhoods should impose their values on the people of
Houston or Dallas or Fort Worth.
I am also really offended by this effort because of the
hard work I have invested in returning my city to fiscal
soundness, to economic viability, to operational
responsiveness. Together we have worked to end the reign of the
Control Board; together I have worked with the Federal
Government and with the Congress diligently, hand in hand, to
foster greater autonomy for my city, with an eventual goal of
full voting representation in Congress. And I have to tell you
a congressionally driven gun repeal takes us exactly in the
wrong direction.
The District of Columbia has been governed by, in modern
times, an elected Mayor and 13 elected council members, since
1975. During the Council's first legislative session in 1976,
the District passed legislation that restricted the possession,
use, transfer of handguns and semi-automatic weapons.
I support our gun control laws because, in my view--which
is also the view of the overwhelming majority of my citizens--
any increase in the number of guns in the District we believe
will increase the likelihood that crimes will be committed with
those guns. We have made significant progress in reducing
crime, although we still have a substantial amount to do.
The residents of the District I know, we all know all too
well the human costs exacted by guns and violence. Seventy-nine
percent of all homicides in the District last year were
committed with guns, all of which were probably brought into
the city illegally. Because of the porous nature of our
borders, we can never rely on laws alone to keep guns out of
our city, but these laws I believe are important local tools to
help combat crime.
Now, the District is far safer than it was a decade ago. In
1995, which was not even the peak of the 1990's crime wave,
more than 68,000 serious crimes were committed in our city.
Last year, fewer than half that number was committed.
Significantly long-term efforts--such as increasing the number
of sworn officers to 3,800, restructuring our patrol service
areas, strengthening our investigative capacity, improving 911
response times--have contributed to these great strides in
public safety.
The Police Department is also taking aggressive action in
the short term to reduce homicides and other crimes in the
city. Though crime decreased 18 percent last year, arrests
actually increased 14 percent. Project Safe Neighborhoods--in
which, incidentally, we are working hand-in-hand with Federal
law enforcement--is helping to stop the cycle of gun violence
in the city. The Metropolitan Police Department is working with
Federal law enforcement agencies and the courts to target and
apprehend members of the most violent gangs in the city, and we
are using the example of their prosecution and incarceration to
deter other groups from resorting to similar violence.
I have to tell you it is inconceivable that Congress would
encourage more people in D.C. to pick up a gun just when we are
successfully working with the Federal Government to convince
others to put down their guns.
Now, I awake every morning aware of my enormous
responsibilities as Mayor to the nearly 600,000 residents of
our Nation's Capital, certainly the people who work here and
the visitors here. I am humbled by the honor bestowed on me as
a trustee of the Nation's Capital. Being Mayor is a wonderful
job.
But it is a difficult job, because I have the duties of a
Mayor, I have the duties of a county manager and of a Governor.
My city is host to the seat of the Federal Government, the
largest diplomatic community in the world, more than 20 million
visitors each year. The District Council, when I govern this
city, through partnerships that we believe very importantly
must span ideologies, political parties, geography, and every
other thing we need to span, this is essentially especially
true in the area of public safety.
I have traveled to every area of my city to hear first-hand
from my citizens about their concerns and to enlist them in our
crusade against crime. I have aligned my entire city budget to
what I call ``lift all communities,'' starting with those that
are mostly left behind, in our city's renaissance. Every one of
these communities is struggling with a crime problem that I
have identified. The city has responded with a successful Hot
Spots Initiative that has produced--by focusing all of our
government and non-profit efforts in these communities--a 32
percent reduction in violent crime and a 25 percent reduction
in overall crime in these violence-prone communities.
It has been mentioned that we are only 3 homicides below
last year. That is true, and I don't relish that; I would like
it to be lower. But that number last year was a 20-year low. So
we are moving in the right direction, and I believe that the
additional measures we are taking, such as a comprehensive
crime bill that I have sent to our District Council, which
would substantially toughen our penalties, will take us in the
right direction to reduce crime.
I talk about my partnership with the Federal Government.
You know, I support and I participate in the Criminal Justice
Coordinating Council, which is an intergovernmental body.
Members of my administration are open to every aspect of
dialog--and I think everyone knows this--every aspect of dialog
with our Federal partners.
But my point is that there are many ways for the Federal
Government to work with local officials. Our public safety
agenda must be, and is, community-based and ought to be
supported by Congress, not undermined. You have my cooperation.
You have my respect. You have my ear. In turn, the citizens of
Washington, DC, do not need disrespect or second-guessing. And
I say that very respectfully.
We ask that the Federal Government support the efforts I
have outlined to reduce crime in our city, especially our
prerogative: locally based on a democratic basis to enact local
gun control laws that provide for the public safety of the
citizens of the District.
The long and short of it is that the citizens of the
District of Columbia want nothing more than other American
citizens would demand and get, and that is the right to make
their own decisions about their own public safety.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for
the opportunity to testify to you today. As always, I am
available to answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mayor Williams follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Mayor, thank you and thanks for the
job you are doing for the city.
Chief Ramsey.
STATEMENT OF CHARLES H. RAMSEY
Chief Ramsey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congresswoman
Norton, other members of the committee, staff, and guests.
Thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony
concerning the District of Columbia's handgun laws. I appear
before you today not just as the chief of the Metropolitan
Police Department, but also as a D.C. resident, as a father of
a teenage son, and as a 36-year veteran of the law enforcement
profession. It is in all these capacities that I express my
strongest possible support for the District's current law
restricting possession of handguns and encourage Congress not
to overturn or weaken our laws in any way.
Before discussing the situation here in D.C., I do want to
point out that the District of Columbia is hardly the only big
city in the United States to have a strong handgun control law.
Prior to coming to the District in 1988, I spent close to three
decades in the Chicago Police Department, which has a local law
on handguns that is very similar to the District's. Chicago
residents and their duly elected representatives have chosen to
restrict the ownership of handguns, and D.C. should be afforded
the same rights.
Politically, I understand why some Members of Congress
consider the District's law to be ``fair game,'' even if those
same Members would never contemplate similar attempts to undo
laws elsewhere. But from a public safety standpoint, the
reasons to enact and maintain strong and sensible handgun laws
are as compelling in D.C. as they are in Chicago, New York, and
other cities across the Nation. Our residents and our locally
elected leaders have all come to the same conclusion:
restricting the same and possession of handguns makes our
community safer.
What impact would the repeal of D.C.'s gun laws have on our
city? From my perspective, the answer to that question is
straightforward and it is scary. Repealing our gun laws would
mean substantially more handguns in the District of Columbia,
and more handguns would mean more gun crimes, more gun
violence, and more homicides, as well as more accidental
shootings and suicides. More guns will also mean a greater
threat to our police officers.
Even with our strong gun laws, the District already
struggles with the problem of gun violence. Last year, 79
percent of the homicides in D.C. were committed with firearms.
This includes 18 youth or young adults--the youngest just 7
years old--killed with a firearm last year. Moreover, almost 50
percent of our robberies and 20 percent of our aggravated
assaults are committed with a firearm. Introducing even more
firearms into our city would undoubtedly cause these figures to
rise.
This is especially true in the area of homicide. Our
figures show that homicides in D.C. are frequently motivated by
arguments and retaliation. Together with domestic violence,
these motives account for half of all the homicides in the
District. These types of homicides are seldom premeditated
offenses, but rather spur-of-the-moment ``crimes of passion.''
When a handgun is readily available in a home or on someone's
person, the changes of these encounters turning lethal increase
significantly.
Repealing our gun laws would mean more guns being more
readily available to more people. And with handguns more
readily available, I am concerned that more people would be
inclined to use those handguns to settle arguments or domestic
disputes, or to retaliate against someone else. I am convinced
that these types of incidents, along with the increased
likelihood of more accidental shootings and suicide, would far
outnumber any instances in which a handgun in a home might be
used as protection.
Repealing D.C.'s gun laws at any time would be
counterproductive to our public safety goals. But repealing our
laws now would be particularly devastating. While D.C.
continues to face challenges with murder and other violent
crimes, we have made tremendous progress in the last few years
in bringing down our violent crime rate. Last year, D.C.
recorded fewer than 200 homicides for the first time since
1986. Overall crime declined by nearly 9 percent in 2003, and
by another 18 percent in 2004. So far this year, crime is down
by another 14 percent, according to preliminary data.
The bottom line: crime in D.C. is moving in the right
direction and our neighborhoods are safer than they have been
in many years. Now is definitely not the time to put this very
encouraging trend at risk by introducing more firearms and
greater potential for violence into our city.
In fact, part of the reason for our success in reducing
crime has been our ability to take more firearms off the
streets. So far this year, 1,200 firearms have been recovered,
an increase of about 15 percent from 2004. And in 2004 our
firearm recoveries topped 2,000 for the first time in several
years. We have put a high priority on removing illegal
firearms, and our efforts are paying off.
In 2004, of the almost 1,600 registration checks for
recovered firearms preformed by MPD, only 16 of the firearms,
or 1 percent, were registered in the District. Of course, the
vast, vast majority of the weapons we recover originate from
jurisdictions outside the District. Last year, the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives performed trace checks
on over 1,500 firearms recovered by MPD that were linked to
crimes. Of these, 736 firearms were successfully traced. Six
out or 10 firearms were from Maryland and Virginia. The next
highest source States were North Carolina, Georgia, West
Virginia, and South Carolina.
So we are continuing to face a serious problem with
firearms being brought illegally into the District from other
jurisdictions. Unfortunately, that problem is not likely to go
away anytime soon. But we certainly should not compound this
situation by weakening D.C.'s gun laws and making firearms even
more prevalent in our city.
Another reason we have been able to reduce crime in the
District of Columbia is through our partnerships with other
agencies and community-based organizations. On the enforcement
end, we work closely with the ATF and other Federal agencies on
tracing firearms and trying to link them to unsolved crimes. We
are also working cooperatively with the U.S. Attorney's Office,
the DEA, ATF, and others on the Project Safe Neighborhoods
Initiative, which is targeting the most violent criminals in
some of our historically violent neighborhoods, such as Sursum
Corda and Barry Farm.
Coordination with the community to combat gun violence is
another priority. In just the past 2 weeks, we have joined
forces with the East of the River Clergy-Police-Community
Partnership; ROOT, which stands for Reaching Out to Others
Together; No Murders DC; and other community-based
organizations on a number of anti-violence initiatives,
especially initiatives that target young people during the
summer months.
The Metropolitan Police Department is very proud of our
record in reducing crime and violence in D.C. But we also
recognize that we still have a lot of work to do and that, to
be successful, we must coordinate our efforts with other
agencies and organizations both inside the criminal justice
system and in the community.
To be successful, we also need strong and sensible laws to
protect not only our residents, but also our police officers,
as last week's tragic shooting death of an officer in Prince
George's County illustrates. The District's ban on most handgun
possession is an essential element in our overall crime
reduction strategy. This law was enacted with the overwhelming
support of D.C. voters three decades ago, and the law continues
to enjoy widespread support among our residents and our police
officers today.
Repealing or weakening this law will not make our residents
and our neighborhoods any safer. Such a move would actually
endanger both our residents and the hard-working, dedicated
police officers who already put their lives on the line to
safeguard our Nation's Capital. For the sake of our residents
and the safety of our police officers, we need to retain the
District's strong and sensible law on handguns.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Chief Ramsey follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. I am going to
start the first 5 minutes with Mr. Burton, who wasn't here for
an opening.
Mr. Burton, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Burton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I really
appreciate that.
You know, when I first got off the plane and became a
Congressman, I got in a cab with a cabdriver, Mr. Mayor and
Chief, and I asked the cab driver, I said, what is the
situation like here in Washington? He said, well, the crime
problem is pretty bad. I said, well, you know, I have a permit
to carry a weapon back in Indiana. Maybe I should get one here.
He said, oh, you can't get a permit to carry a gun in D.C. I
said, oh, is that right? He said, yeah. He said, the only
people who have guns in D.C. are the criminals and the police.
And he reached under the front seat of his cab, pulled out a
.38 and said, but if you want one, I can get one for you in
about 15 minutes.
That is a factual story.
I had a young lady that worked for me, she lived about
three blocks from the Capitol. A guy shinnied up the drainpipe
and came in through a window that was open on the third floor
about this much. He attacked her with a 4-inch knife, stabbed
her about four or five times. She had to beat him off with a
pan; she couldn't have mace or a gun or anything in her place.
And she survived and, fortunately, she got away. But the
problem was she had no way to defend herself.
You know, I want to give you some statistical data. In all
50 States people have the right to keep a weapon in their home,
but they don't in D.C. Now, I don't know what your latest
statistics are, but by 1991, D.C.'s homicide rate had risen
more than 200 percent. By comparison, the U.S. homicide rate
had risen by only 12 percent. As of 2002, D.C.'s homicide rate
is almost double the rate than when its handgun ban took
effect. As of 2002, it is almost five times higher than the
national average.
According to DOJ's crime statistics, 2002 saw D.C. once
again earn its infamous distinction as the murder capital of
America, and it was the 14th time in 15 years that it got that
dubious distinction. The gun control capital of the America,
D.C., is almost the violent crime and murder capital of the
country, the place in this country that comes the closest to
having this kind of gun law that gun advocates would want in
D.C.--and I think the results speak for themselves.
As long as law-abiding citizens cannot protect themselves
from somebody breaking into their home with a gun, then the
criminal has the advantage. I won't live in D.C. I live in
Virginia, and have a gun permit in Virginia because I want to
protect myself. And I would urge you to look at the crime
statistics over there in Virginia and in Indiana, and I bet you
will find that the statistics show that people are safer there
than they are in D.C. because they can protect themselves.
If a criminal knows you cannot defend yourself except with
a pan, like my secretary did, then he has no deterrent to break
into your house with a gun and to attack you. It is insane, in
my opinion, it is insane for a law-abiding citizen not to be
able to protect themselves against somebody in the murder
capital of the United States by having a weapon in their home
to protect themselves.
Now I want to read to you what the current law is here,
because I think people need to know this; it is very, very
important. Just 1 second. Bear with me.
Well, you have to disassemble a gun, you can't have it in
your house.
Excuse me, Mr. Chairman.
OK, registrants must keep any firearm in their possession
unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar
device unless the firearm is kept at their place of business or
used for lawful recreational purposes within the District of
Columbia. Sales of firearms are similarly restricted. In
addition, the possession of ammunition is restricted. The
minimum punishment for violation of these restrictions is
$1,000 and 1 year imprisonment. The maximum fine is $10,000 and
imprisonment for up to 10 years.
I have to tell you, Mr. Chairman--and I appreciate very
much your yielding to me--I am against violent crime. I am
against criminals who use guns in the commission of a felony.
But I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why a law-abiding
citizen in a city like Washington, DC, that has the highest
crime rate in the country 14 out of the last 15 years, cannot
have a weapon in their own home to protect themselves. It makes
absolutely no sense to me.
And Members of the Congress of the United States have been
mugged, been beaten up, and gun-whipped. One of my staff people
was gun-whipped by a guy not too long ago and robbed on the
streets of Washington. Bob Michael, when he was the minority
leader, was beaten up outside his garage and they took whatever
he had on him at that time, and they had no way to defend
themselves.
We had a prominent writer here in Washington, DC, who has
come out openly against owning a gun and having it in their
home. Somebody tried to break in his home and he had a gun in
violation of the law. That was in the paper not too long ago.
I think it is extremely important that we make sure the
people of this city are protected, just like the people in
every other part of the country, and that their right to own
and bear arms to protect themselves and their families should
not and will not be infringed upon by this city.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Burton.
Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. First of all, these witnesses didn't get the
chance to respond because after the questions were asked----
Chairman Tom Davis. Well, if you would like to respond to
that, we won't go into Ms. Norton's time; we will start that
again.
Mayor Williams. Well, I will just respond to the notion
that we are the only citizens in the country with ``restrictive
gun laws.'' That is not true. There are restrictive gun laws in
cities across the country. The difference is, again, apparently
they have the ability to set these laws and keep them in place,
and we don't.
And then on the statistics, I just think we are using
particular statistics to make a point, and not the most current
statistics. I would ask the Chief to speak to that.
Chief Ramsey. Yes. Earlier it was mentioned that the year
the handgun ban was passed, in 1976, we had 188 murders. And
that is true. Last year we had 198. That is an increase of 10
over that year. So certainly you can look at numbers. And it is
not that we haven't had years where we have had tremendous
spikes. We have also had 2 years when we were below that; we
had 175 in 1984 and 148 in 1985. So statistics can be used any
way they can, any way you want them to be used.
I am from the Midwest, and I would love to compare my crime
stats with Gary, IN. I don't know about the rest of Indiana,
but I think that Gary is a place that has more than enough
problems on its own. So when it comes to taking a look at crime
statistics and crime numbers, we have a ways to go, and we are
working very aggressively. But we have made tremendous
progress, tremendous strides in lowering the amount of crime in
the District of Columbia, and I feel that adding more guns on
the street is only going to cause problems.
My officers have to confront gunmen on a regular basis.
This weekend alone we took 17 guns off the street. Friday we
got an AK-47 off a 15-year-old boy. Now, I don't know how many
folks you have confronted, sir, in the alley at night with a
gun on them that was intent on doing harm, but my people have
to do it every single day. And adding more guns into the mix is
not a good thing; it is going to get one of them killed, and I
would hate to see that.
So I would appreciate it--I am just telling you, sir, and I
realize that we disagree. I realize we disagree, but to me it
is a matter of safety, it is a matter of what is best for the
people of our city. And that is all we are asking for here, is
to get the same respect as everyone else.
Not being from the District, I never realized that this
sort of thing went on. I just never realized. But I do now. And
I am here to tell you that the people that we elect, that I
helped elect ought to be the ones to make that decision. The
men and women of the Metropolitan Police Department have put on
that uniform, put on a bulletproof vest, and get out there and
police our streets every day ought to have a say in what they
are confronted with out there on the street. And we are going
to open the floodgates and we are going to have nothing but
problems, and it is going to be my people suffering as a result
of it.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much. Thank you both for your
testimony. It is important to hear you because you are the
experts on this subject, and we are trying to learn here today.
Mr. Chairman, I note for the record that last year there
were 157 homicides, all homicides in D.C. We are at 63 this
year, on record, therefore, to reduce that. Last year,
tragically, there were 18 juvenile homicides. To date,
tragically, four, but only four.
So I want to begin by congratulating you on a very
significant reduction over even this year and ask unanimous
consent that these figures be put in the record, Mr .Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2473.030
Ms. Norton. Could I ask both of you? Council has a bill
pending here. I am going on the floor tomorrow to try to get
our appropriation out of here, your money, not a cent of it
money from the U.S. Congress. It will contain money in there
for police and money in there for economic development. So I
would like to ask you both what effect having guns, yes, in
homes, but having more guns in the District of Columbia will
have on two notions: one, the police workload, and two, the
economic development that we see going on all around the city.
Mayor Williams. Well, our effort generally, Congresswoman
Norton--and I will let the Chief speak to the police department
particularly--but our effort overall has been to address the
needs of our neighborhoods, stabilize those neighborhoods,
harness all the resources of our government to attack problems
in those neighborhoods. First step, get the agencies on their
feet. Second step, harness all the efforts of our agencies
around general problems within the wards.
One problem we have made a lot of progress is cleanup and
stabilization of abandoned housing. Another area we have made a
lot of progress with another agency is improving substantially
response to 911. We then took that a step further and combined
with redeploying our police and better patrol service areas,
focused on hot spots in the city. And what drove down our crime
over the last 2 years was our intensive focus on these hot
spots, driving down crimes 30 to 35 percent.
Our next step, as you heard in the state of the District,
was to build what we are calling new communities, mixed income
communities with hope and opportunity for all the citizens in
those communities, again, to pacify and stabilize these
communities. I stress these words: pacify, stabilize these
communities; revitalize these communities.
Bringing guns on the street--and the Chief is right, I
believe guns unleashed, if you will--or allowed, I guess to be
more polite--under this bill are not going to be used primarily
by citizens protecting their homes, they are going to end up in
the streets and the alleys, and our police are going to have to
face them.
Chief Ramsey. Ms. Norton, the addition of guns or the
availability of guns, I don't see how it is going to help our
situation here in the District of Columbia in terms of our
fight against crime. I just don't see how that can happen.
Ms. Norton. In terms of your own workload and the number of
police, what is your view about having more guns in the
District, in people's homes?
Chief Ramsey. Well, we are going to have burglary,
unfortunately, it will continue to be problem. I take the
opposite view, that a person would not refrain from breaking in
a house that they know they have a gun; they will wait until
the opportunity to present themselves to break into the house
that has a gun, because they can take the gun and they can sell
it on the street or use it themselves.
There is no one thing that we can come up with that is
going to be the end-all strategy of fighting crime, but I think
we have to do what is sensible and what is reasonable. And
reducing the amount of guns that are available is certainly a
sensible and reasonable approach.
I was watching an old movie a couple of nights ago,
Tombstone, a Wyatt Earp thing. They were standing on the edge
of town collecting guns from people in 1881, keeping them from
bringing them into Tombstone. I mean, it was a sensible,
reasonable thing for them to do. I had to kind of chuckle when
I saw that because, you know, here we are today, a century or
so later, still trying to stand at the borders and saying, hey,
you need to leave your gun somewhere else; you don't need to
come to town with your gun. I don't think that is all that
unreasonable, especially when the average person that comes
into this building--it is easier to get into the airport than
it is to get into this building with all the screening for
weapons and guns and so forth.
I mean, not everyone has the luxury in our neighborhoods,
unfortunately, of having a situation where they have that up-
front screening of individuals to make sure that anyone who is
in possession of a firearm is decent, law-abiding, and
authorized to do so. They have to live day in, day out in
circumstances that can put their lives at risk. We do the best
we can, but adding more guns to the mix I don't think is a
solution, not for the District of Columbia. It may be for
someplace else, but not for D.C.
Chairman Tom Davis. Chief, Ms. Norton's time is up. The
Members have three votes to go over and cast, and if you can
stay for questions, I am going to allow Ms. Norton to continue
questions, and then recess the meeting. If you and the Mayor
can stay, it would be important. This is important. I think you
made news, bringing out Wyatt Earp as an advocate for the D.C.
gun ban today. But I am going to allow Ms. Norton to continue.
Members will resume questioning when we get back. And I
appreciate your being able to continue with this.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The chairman has given
me the gavel. It shows you he trusts me. He ought not be so
sure about that when it comes to the gavel.
I do have a few more questions. I would like to speak to
the Chief. In another role he has had since September 11th. I
used to talk to you only occasionally, Chief Ramsey, because
these matters are not in my jurisdiction; the jurisdiction is
of the Mayor and your jurisdiction. But I have had a lot of
contact with you since September 11th because of the security
measures around the Capitol.
There has been a lot of discussion about these bills in the
abstract, and I go back to my roots as a law professor. I
continue to teach a course at Georgetown, so I have to go back
to the hypothetical. If you read this bill, you could have
something that no one has ever seen in the District: gun shops
and, if you were licensed, pawn shops where people could deal
guns across the counter. We could have them on Capitol Hill, we
could have them in Georgetown, you could have them across the
river, because this bill keeps the District of Columbia from
doing anything that would discourage the possession of
firearms. So there is no way to read that except there is
nothing you can do; Home Rule hands are tied.
D.C. couldn't require, for example, background checks. If
somebody wanted to have gun shows in the District of Columbia,
you could have gun shows, because the Mayor and the council can
do nothing to discourage--here is what the statute says--the
possession and ownership of guns.
I am trying now to lay out some of what could happen and
what you have to prepare to have happened.
You might, for example, think, well, let us pass an
ordinance at least, some kind of law that says, OK, you can
have them everywhere, but you can't have them in bars or you
can't have them in churches or restaurants or in schools. Of
course, I think that would violate the explicit language here.
Because you can't ``discourage'' the possession of guns
anywhere in the District of Columbia.
Now, let us leave aside District residents and their safety
for a moment. Would you speak to me as a security official who
is a part of the Federal team to keep the Nation's Capital
secure from terrorism?
Chief Ramsey. Yes. Guns can very easily fall into the wrong
hands. There is no question about that. We see it with street
gangs, where they go out and they use people to legally
purchase guns, and then they transfer those guns to gang
members and others. There is no way that once you open those
floodgates, you can really control it.
In a city like the District of Columbia, which has more
than its own security risks just by the fact that it is the
capital of the United States, high-risk protectees that
constantly visit here, it is a full-time job guaranteeing the
safety, or at least trying to ensure the safety of those
people, as well as the residents of the District of Columbia.
Again, adding more guns, I don't think there is a security
officer anywhere, a responsible security officer, that would
say the way to enhance security is to increase the number of
guns. To me, there is no logic there, at all. I think that it
is going to pose a tremendous burden on those Federal agencies,
like the Secret Service, that have responsibility for the
protection of the President. It certainly will put a huge
burden on my department. And one of the first things I will do
is ask for more manpower, because I know I am going to need it,
because it is going to start and it is going to start fast.
And it is going to spill over into Virginia and Maryland,
because anything that happens in D.C. spills into Maryland and
Virginia, and vice versa. Gang problems, drug problems,
whatever it might be, in that small area there within the
National Capital region, we all impact one another to a degree
that you can't just do it in isolation. So it is going to have
a tremendous negative impact on all of us in law enforcement,
period.
Ms. Norton. Thank you. I just think that is one aspect of
this bill that isn't even considered. They consider, you know,
just hammer the District and you will be fine, and the changes
since September 11th aren't discussed.
The argument is made that this is a bill for law-abiding
citizens, in homes, people's homes, they should be able to keep
it in their homes; this is not a bill that would allow felons
to have guns. Would you speak to the notion of keeping guns in
homes? And which homes you think, in the District, would be
likely to have those guns and what you think would happen as a
result of those guns in those homes in the District?
Chief Ramsey. Well, I don't know who would be most likely,
but I can assume that people in more crime-ridden areas of the
city would tend to be the ones that think they need this for
their own protection. However, they are the ones that are most
likely to be burglarized. Mistakes can be made and accidental
shootings take place all the time; children finding guns and
accidentally shooting another sibling. There have been
instances where parents heard a sound, didn't know who it was,
wound up shooting one of their own kids or a loved one that
they think is a burglar and turns out not to be.
And bullets have no eyes. The one part of this argument
that kind of goes without too much comment, if you have two
people, both legally in possession of a handgun, they decide to
exchange gunfire, you know, most people don't hit what they are
shooting at under those circumstances. Those bullets keep
going, and they keep going until they strike something, and
that something could be another Chelsea Cromartie, like we had
happen over in Southeast last year, an 8-year-old girl shot in
the head, sitting in her own living room watching television.
Dante Manning, just this year, that got shot on 13th and Euclid
Street, because whoever was being shot at they missed and they
hit this child.
So having guns, firing guns in an urban area is just a
mixture for disaster. Absolutely no good can come of it. Having
guns in homes, again, is just something else. Burglars take
what they can sell. Handguns bring a good price on the black
market, and a handgun would be one of the first things that a
person would take if they break into a house.
Ms. Norton. You can't have a gun in the District of
Columbia, apparently, legally, so where do they get the guns
from?
Chief Ramsey. We trace our guns, the ATF traces our guns.
The two source States that come up most frequently are Maryland
and Virginia. Six out of 10 guns that we recover come from one
of those two States. That is followed by North Carolina,
Georgia, West Virginia, and South Carolina. Pennsylvania was in
there. We haven't gotten as many out of Pennsylvania recently
as we had in years past. But those are the cities where most of
the guns that come into the District, that is the source of the
firearm, from those two jurisdictions closest to us.
Ms. Norton. So, at the very least, then, the District of
Columbia makes it more difficult to get a gun because you have
to either go across the line or go into the street to illegally
get a gun. You can't get it, become a criminal after you get
it, and then deal with it that way.
Chief Ramsey. Yes, ma'am. I realize that, you know, again,
nothing is foolproof. We certainly don't claim that having a
gun law means that there is no gun violence that can possibly
happen in your jurisdiction. But there is no point in making it
easier by making guns more available, by putting it in the
hands of those that will misuse it.
We also get about 3,000 offenders back a year from our
various penal institutions around the country. Again, we have a
lot of issues that we need to deal with in the District of
Columbia. Most of them go on to not re-offend, but some do re-
offend. So we have a lot of people that we just need to just
make sure that guns don't fall into the wrong hands. We have a
growing problem with juvenile violence.
You mentioned that earlier in your testimony, the number of
homicides we had, car thefts, things of that nature. Last year
we arrested 17 percent more juveniles than we did the year
before. So juvenile violence is a problem, and they are younger
and younger, and they are getting very sophisticated weapons. I
mentioned just last Friday a 15-year-old boy with an AK-47 in
his possession. I mean, that is the kind of thing that our
officers are facing out there on the street, and we just don't
need to make it easier.
This is not the time to go backward. We are making very
good progress in our fight against crime, and I would just hate
to see this happen, because it is going to have a negative
impact.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much.
Final question for you, Mr. Mayor. In your role as
President of the League of Cities, you must have some
familiarity with the way in which other cities view gun laws of
the kind we have, the role of the League of Cities itself with
this kind of legislation. I wonder if you could somehow compare
where we are with other cities across the United States and
with where the League of Cities--which has big cities and
little cities alike--where the League of Cities would stand on
a bill like ours.
Mayor Williams. Well, Congresswoman Norton, I couldn't
speak for the League in terms of taking a position on this. I
know that the League of Cities and U.S. Conference of Mayors
supported the strong anti-crime measures that were taken in the
Clinton administration. I am not sure about this particular
bill, but I can tell you this----
Ms. Norton. You mean things like the assault weapon bill.
Mayor Williams. Oh, the assault weapons I am sure that, by
and large, cities are----
Ms. Norton. And you are aware that Congress has failed to
renew the assault weapon law? So we have a situation where now
you can sell assault weapons in this city and elsewhere.
Mayor Williams. And cities in general that are opposed,
obviously, to that, would support strong measures. I think you
could find that, by and large, your larger cities would have
stronger gun control measures, as does the District of
Columbia, and your smaller rural towns and communities would
have different arrangements, in other words, more liberal
measures to allow gun ownership.
But I think the point that you have made and the point that
I am making and the Chief is making and other members have made
is that this really ought to be a local prerogative, especially
where, in my mind, I can give you examples of cities that have
tough gun control laws that have had increases in crime. I can
give you examples of cities that have tough gun control laws
that have had decreases in crime.
I don't think you can make a direct linkage to gun control
laws adding to an increase in crime. I think you can make a
strong case, as we are making here, that if you relax these
laws in an environment where one of your No. 1 problems is gun
violence, adding more guns to the mix just, to us, is
completely counter-intuitive, and I think most cities would
tell you that.
Ms. Norton. Well, thank you, Mr. Mayor. On behalf of the
chairman and other members of the committee, I want to thank
both of you for coming forward. There has been a lot of cheap
talk about gun repeal and about crime in the District of
Columbia, almost always at least for national exposure by
people who have no expert background, as both of you have, and
your testimony has been very valuable today.
Thank you very much. The hearing will be recessed until
after the vote, by those who can vote.
[Recess.]
Mr. McHenry [presiding]. The committee will come back to
order.
I certainly appreciate, Mayor and police chief, your
waiting during our series of votes. Members will be returning,
but as I know you have a very busy schedule, the chairman is
actually on the floor at this moment trying to work an
amendment, so he will be here shortly. He does have questions
for you all, so if you would be good enough to stick around for
those, we would certainly appreciate it.
At this time, I wanted to first start kindly with the chief
of police. Chief Ramsey, was the Metro difficult getting over
here today?
Chief Ramsey. Well, we could work a little bit on the
scheduling.
Mr. McHenry. I have seen that the thefts have gone down in
D.C. It actually illuminates a point of progress you have made.
Actually, I was here in 2000 and 2001, and I believe at that
time your leadership during the WTO protests was quite
heralded, and the issues and difficulties you dealt with there.
Chief Ramsey. Thank you.
Mr. McHenry. So we appreciate your leadership.
I do think there has been progress made in Washington, DC.
When I lived up here and worked up here as a staffer in 2000
and 2001, before my service in Congress, my house was broken
into, my townhouse was broken into living in Southeast. And it
was quite interesting to me that we are living in the Nation's
Capital, yet we have a crime problem. And certainly it is a
problem not uncommon across the United States. But what we are
trying to do today is look at solutions for this.
There is a basic question that I have. Chief Ramsey, aren't
guns illegal in Washington, DC, now?
Chief Ramsey. Well, we have a restriction on the
registration of handguns. There are some rifles that are able
to be properly registered, shotguns with a barrel length of a
certain amount--not, certainly, sawed-offs. That is not part of
the ban; the ban is against the handguns.
Mr. McHenry. Just handguns. Now, in terms of crimes
committed with handguns, do you have any statistics on that?
Chief Ramsey. About 75 percent of the homicides, robberies,
assaults with a dangerous weapon are committed with the use of
a handgun.
Mr. McHenry. Seventy-five percent.
Chief Ramsey. About 75 percent of the violent crime.
Mr. McHenry. And so the question is aren't they illegal?
Chief Ramsey. Yes, sir. And individuals are charged with
those offenses when they are arrested.
Mr. McHenry. So the handgun ban isn't working?
Chief Ramsey. Well, sir, I am not intimately familiar with
laws across the United States, but I believe murder is illegal,
rape is illegal, robbery is illegal. I can't think of a city in
the United States that doesn't have those same problems. So
laws are designed to keep decent law-abiding citizens safe, but
there are always those that will break those laws, which is why
I have a job and thousands of others like me have a job in
this, to get those people off the street and do the best we can
to try to control it. But it is not absolute.
Mr. McHenry. It is not absolute. Therefore, a ban on
handguns only prevents those law-abiding citizens from not
having a handgun. Isn't that correct? If you are a law-abiding
citizen and you uphold the law, you generally would not break
the law by carrying a handgun in places where it is banned.
Chief Ramsey. Well, unfortunately, there is not a ban and
the rest of the country doesn't follow D.C.'s lead in having
strict gun control laws. That is a very unfortunate
circumstance. And because of that we do have guns that make
their way into the city. If we had a stronger stand across this
country about handguns, then I think you would see the benefits
of that throughout this country in terms of a lowering of
violent crime, particularly those crimes committed with
handguns. But because of the unevenness of the laws as they
exist now, it makes it very difficult.
Mr. McHenry. It makes it difficult. So the question I have
to you is, generally speaking, with your history in law
enforcement, I would probably say that those that have an
advantage, criminals that have an advantage over the people
they steal from, for instance, assault, batter, murder, they
typically have an advantage of some sort, whether it is not
just criminal intent, but perhaps the weapon they have and they
use versus the people they are stealing from. Isn't that the
case you have seen?
Chief Ramsey. Well, if a person is armed and another one is
unarmed, then obviously the person that has the gun would have
an advantage.
Mr. McHenry. Therefore, if you level the playing field, for
instance, if I broke into your home--and, as a police officer,
you are entitled to carry a gun in Washington, DC, and I
suspect that you would have a weapon in your home. If I broke
in and I had a handgun, and I pulled a handgun and brandished
it at you and said, give me your money, and you pulled out a
handgun and said, no, not so fast, do you think there is a
detente there? Wouldn't you say that would prevent me from
stealing from you and assaulting you and stealing from your
home?
Chief Ramsey. Well, this is an interesting discussion that
we are having here, I guess, and I think I kind of understand
where you might be coming from. But if you had a gun on me and
I didn't have mine with me, I would give you my money, quite
frankly, seeing as how you had that kind of advantage.
Mr. McHenry. Well, I would hope----
Chief Ramsey. I have been in a situation like that before,
quite frankly.
Mr. McHenry. And tens of thousands of people in Washington,
DC, do that.
Chief Ramsey. But let us get down to the meat of I think
where you might be trying to go with this, sir. If you have two
people with guns and they decide that one is going to rob the
other one and the other one says no, and they get into an
exchange of gunfire, in most instances, including with highly
trained police officers, they don't hit what they are aiming
at. Those bullets don't stop; they keep traveling until they
hit something.
Now, in the case of Dante Manning, he happened to be a 13
year-old boy standing in the street in front of his house, 13th
and Euclid, that got hit in the head and is dead. Last year, 8
year-old Chelsea Cromartie shot, while sitting in her home
watching television, by a stray bullet.
There are consequences way beyond the scenario that you are
laying out that causes a public safety threat, sir.
Mr. McHenry. But all those folks that use those weapons
were breaking the law. Am I correct?
Chief Ramsey. Sir----
Mr. McHenry. Absolutely yes. So the conclusion of this is
do you steal from the strong? No, you steal from the weak. Do
you assault those that are mighty? No, you assault those that
are meek. And if you level the playing field, if you level the
playing field--you used the reference that your police officers
encounter folks in a dark alley with a weapon.
You know what the advantage, though, that your officers
have? It is that they have a weapon too. And they level the
playing field. And you know what? It is shown statistically
across the country that simply brandishing a handgun by a law-
abiding citizen can prevent a crime. Brandishing a handgun, if
I broke into your house, would maybe, possibly make me leave
your premises. In fact, probably run.
Chief Ramsey. Mr. McHenry, I appreciate all this, and, you
know, you mentioned the officers have an advantage. I think if
you talk to the family of 110 of my officers whose badges are
hanging on that wall right now in my training academy that got
killed in the line of duty, they didn't have much of an
advantage. And I don't think that Officer Gauguin had much of
an advantage last week when he was gunned down in Prince
George's County.
And you keep using a very curious term of leveling the
playing field. It seems to me like the only thing you are doing
is playing with the lives of the people of the District of
Columbia. And that, sir, is a game that I don't happen to want
to participate in. We have laws in place. Those laws were put
in place by the people who were elected to represent us as
residents of the District of Columbia. And most--not all, but
most folks would prefer they just be left alone, myself
included.
And as far as my police officers go, and the kinds of
dangers they confront on a daily basis, it is bad enough out
there now. We don't need any more. Most homicides, the majority
of homicides in the District of Columbia--and this has been
true historically, as far back as I have gone--the main motives
are argument and retaliation.
When people are in the heat of passion, when they are
angry, if they have a weapon, they will use it. If they get
into a fistfight, someone is going to win, someone is going to
lose. The loser is likely to pull that handgun. We are going to
have tragedies. We are going to have problems beyond what we
have now. And this just isn't the time to do it.
Mr. McHenry. But our discussion, up until you threw out
some very emotional things--and I certainly want to give our
officers on the streets everything they need. But the question
I have is for those that are victims of crime. And in
Washington, DC, we all admit we do have a crime problem. So I
am looking at ways to actually solve this problem. As someone
who lives in Washington, DC, a greater portion of the year, I
want to have security in my own apartment here on Capitol Hill,
just blocks from the Capitol.
Chief Ramsey. Well, sir, I understand all those arguments,
and I guess that part of the plan is probably to loosen some of
the security around the buildings here, which, again, it is
harder to get into the airport than it is to get into this
building when it comes to checking people for weapons. And I
don't hear anybody saying that we ought to allow handguns in
here.
You mentioned earlier in your opening statement that your
folks from your jurisdiction who want to come and visit D.C.
want to carry their guns. Can they bring it with them when they
come to see you in your office? You want to put it on us and
put it on our backs. Yet, there are two Capital policemen for
every single Member of Congress. The rest of us don't have
those odds. So all we are asking is that we work together
collectively to put in place the kinds of laws--which we
already happen to have one, by the way--which will help us
protect our people.
Mr. McHenry. What am I going to do with----
Chief Ramsey. You want to help my police officers? Help us
by not passing this law. That is how you can help my policemen.
Mr. McHenry. You know what you can do to help me in my
life? Is allow me to carry a handgun so when somebody breaks
into my house at 3 a.m., and wants to beat me up and take
everything from me, and maybe possibly kill me and shoot me, if
I just simply brandish a weapon and I am able to level the
playing field, then I am going to have a chance of survival
before I have to wait 30 minutes for your folks to come out
there, if I have the ability to communicate with you all and
call 911 to get a response.
So I will tell you, sir, that our motivation is to allow
protection of individuals, not to spread more handguns. What we
are trying to do is allow law-abiding citizens the same
opportunity that these folks, these crooks, these criminals,
these murders that are out on the streets have because they are
willing to break the law. As a law-abiding citizen, we are
trying to give that same opportunity and level the playing
field.
Chief Ramsey. Well, I am very appreciative of how motivated
you are to do this, sir. I am just simply saying I am equally
motivated not to let you do it. I think that it is really not
in our best interest here in the District of Columbia--perhaps
in other jurisdictions, but not in ours--to have the current
handgun law in any way tampered with.
I think it is a good law, I think it is a solid law, I
think it is good for the citizens of the District of Columbia.
And if they choose to change it, then it should be their right
and their decision to change it. And I think that is basically
what we are saying here.
Mr. McHenry. Well, thank you for the exchange. I certainly
appreciate it. Appreciate your testifying.
Chief Ramsey. Thank you.
Mr. McHenry. At this point I would like to recognize
Congresswoman Watson, if you have questions.
Ms. Watson. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank our chief of police and our Honorable Mayor
for being here. Those of you who are on the streets every day
realize what the problem is, and the problem is guns in the
hands of the irresponsible. But I would never want a shootout
at the O.K. Corral, and that is exactly what it would be if we
liberalize the gun laws here.
How do we know who the innocent people are? Because a youth
is innocent until he pulls that gun. I am dealing with that
right now in my district, South Central Los Angeles, and I have
an illegal gun shop that has been operating for 15 years, and I
went to ATF and I went to Customs, and we can't get them to
close down, and they have violated every law.
So the people with the power get the guns, and the
powerless become the victims. And I would not solve the problem
of violence in this city where we work by letting everyone have
a gun. You know, children find those guns. I know in my
district they find them all the time. Kill their playmates,
kill themselves. I see adults passing the guns on to children
and having them fire that shot. The gangs started in my
district. So I live with this problem every day. And the
solution to gun violence on the streets is not allowing
everyone who walks through the door to have a gun.
So my question to you, Chief Ramsey, is how do we, how
would you--and I hope this law goes nowhere, and I am very
sympathetic to the statement that let us make that decision,
because I did put an amendment in this bill that we had
fighting drugs and so on to let the local elected officials
help determine what is a high violence area, because we live
there and we represent these. And I was born in my district.
Under the Constitution there are people who have a right,
if there is a militia, to carry a rifle. How would you balance
that right and keeping guns away from irresponsible people? Can
you deal with that?
Chief Ramsey. Well, I wish I had the answer to that, ma'am.
Unfortunately, I don't. I personally think that if you commit a
crime with a handgun, I would like to see you get 10 years just
for doing it with a gun, separate from whatever gun it is;
robbery, rape, whatever it might be. You do 10 just for having
a gun and using the gun that way, as opposed to anything else.
But that is not the way it really works. So there is not a
whole lot of disincentive for people not to use guns to commit
crimes, and that is because of some of the laws that we have
that, quite frankly, I think are a little weak when it comes to
violence committed with the use of a handgun.
I don't think you solve that problem by introducing more
guns. I think you deal with the criminal element in the
harshest way you can in terms of letting them know and sending
a clear message that if you commit a crime and you use a
handgun, where you can potentially take somebody's life, then
there is a very, very stiff price to pay. Maybe then we will
start to see less and less of it. Maybe then this kind of
debate can take place, where we don't find ourselves in the
midst of the kinds of problems and issues that we have now,
where there is no disincentive for people who do that.
When you look at the amount of violence that is being
committed out here, younger and younger people--and if we have
a law where you can buy guns--let us say 18 year-olds are able
to buy guns. Can you imagine 18, 19 year-old boys being stopped
in many of our neighborhoods with a gun by a police officer?
And you think nothing is going to happen? I mean, we are going
to have some serious consequences here.
And this could be a good kid, perfect kid, but at night, in
a dark alley, two, three guys in a car, it is a felony stop--at
least you think it is a felony stop. I mean, those are the
kinds of things that we confront every day. And by just having
more guns available, it just doesn't make the situation any
better.
In my department, our officers have to go through firearms
training twice a year, 8 hour segments. Twice a year every
year. They have to qualify not only with marksmanship, but also
in their judgment in when to use deadly force. Now, we are
talking about selling guns over the counter to people who get
no training, get no supervision; there are no rules, there is
no nothing. I mean, there are people who right now think they
can kill an auto thief. Because somebody is stealing their car,
they have the right to shoot them. And I am here to tell you
that in most States you can't.
So those are the kinds of things that you are going to
have, in addition to the other problems, the inappropriate
application of the use of deadly force by private citizens,
because they thought they were threatened. We have very, very
strict guidelines in policing. We have police officers that get
indicted, that get sent to jail for inappropriately using
force. All kinds of regulations. Everybody in the world is
looking at us. Who is going to be looking at Joe Blow Citizen
who inappropriately uses deadly force because in their mind
they thought they were justified, and yet they took a life? And
there is nothing more serious than taking somebody's life, and
you better be right when you do it.
Ms. Watson. Thank you.
Mayor Williams, I think a lot of the criticism relative to
the violence in this city is warranted, because it is a very
violent city. Where do the guns come from?
Mayor Williams. Congresswoman, again, thank you for your
leadership where I grew up, in LA. You do a wonderful job, and
I really appreciate it. And when you talk about those
neighborhoods in South Central, I know those neighborhoods. I
still have many family members there. And I know you are
fighting valiantly to lift those communities.
We are still a violent city, although, as you know, and as
Congresswoman Norton has submitted for the record, crime has
gone down substantially over the last 2 years. And we aim to
bring it down even further this year and are on track to do
that. But it is a violent city. And as the Chief reported--and
he had a documented list of this, which I think we have also
submitted for the record--Maryland, Virginia lead the
categories--and he had a list of other areas. The fact is we
have laws here, but we are in the midst of a very porous
metropolitan area, so our laws only have limited effect where
guns are readily available elsewhere.
But I would join with the Chief and say that where you have
applied a law and there is, admittedly, in some cases wanton
disregard for that law, the answer isn't to remove the law; the
answer is to add to your arsenal the tools to see that the law
is enforced. So, for example, in our city--and I would argue in
many cities across the country--there are still too many
assaults. There still is too much sexual violence. There still
is too much violence of all kinds. But we don't say, well,
because so many people are violating the law, let us just
remove the law. No. We add to our arsenal the tools to see that
law has greater and greater effect. And I think that applies to
the use of guns.
Mr. McHenry. The gentlelady's time has expired.
Congressman Westmoreland, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Westmoreland. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mayor, I think in your opening statement you talked
about the guns--I believe there was about 1,200 or 1,500 guns
that you all confiscated last year, is that correct? You said
that they were probably----
Mayor Williams. 2,000, sir.
Mr. Westmoreland. I am sorry?
Mayor Williams. 2,000, sir, the Chief reports.
Mr. Westmoreland. OK. You said they were probably brought
in illegally. Wouldn't you say that every one of them was
absolutely brought in illegally if they were brought in?
Mayor Williams. If they were brought in, out of the 1,500
that we actually traced last year--we took in 2,000, but we
traced 1,500. All but 16 were illegal. There were 16 that we
got that had been registered prior to the 1976 ban.
Mr. Westmoreland. But they were legal in the States that
they came from, they were just here illegally?
Mayor Williams. Some were legal in the States they came
from; some had been stolen; some they had lost track of who
purchased it last, because it had gone through so many hands.
But there were some that had been legally purchased, but the
majority of them no longer belonged to the individual who made
the original purchase.
Mr. Westmoreland. Mr. Mayor, I know there has been some
concerns today about Home Rule. Do you believe that Article I,
Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the explicit power
to enact or regulate legislation in the District of Columbia?
Mayor Williams. I think technically it has that power. But
I think that my own personal view is that was a defect in the
creation of the Constitution. As Mayor of this city, I have
read God knows how many books now on the history of this city,
and it isn't as if a lot of thought was given to that
particular provision; it was put in place to solve an immediate
problem, and almost immediately everybody involved understood
that they had created a problem, and they indeed had.
I am the fourth modern Mayor of the District of Columbia,
but, indeed, we had a number of Mayors and councils from the
very creation of this city and from the very beginning that
complained about this provision. So everybody knew--like the
whole issue of union, the whole issue of slavery, the whole
issue of emancipation and voting rights, all these issues--that
this was a problem that we would get to later, and we still
haven't gotten to it. I think it is a fundamental issue here.
Mr. Westmoreland. But you agree that is what the
Constitution of the United States says, that Congress has the
explicit power to do that. Do you not agree with that?
Mayor Williams. Legally, but not morally. I think it is
wrong.
Mr. Westmoreland. OK.
Mayor Williams. I really do, respectfully.
Mr. Westmoreland. Chief, let me ask you a question. Do you
all do Neighborhood Watches in the District?
Chief Ramsey. Yes, sir.
Mr. Westmoreland. Let us say you were at a Neighborhood
Watch meeting with some neighbors and someone gave you the
scenario of coming in and finding their family held hostage by
someone with a weapon, or let us say someone came in and found
someone pistol-whipping his wife. If you were at a Neighborhood
Watch, what would you instruct that neighbor or that homeowner
to do when he walked into a situation like that?
Chief Ramsey. I would instruct him to call us. If they are
not in harm's way, I would instruct them to call 911 as quickly
as possible. Obviously, in a case of someone being pistol-
whipped, if it was a spouse or something like that, you would
try to take some action on your own in order to try to stop
that from occurring, and that would be human nature. But odds
are there would probably be two victims, as opposed to one. But
they should contact the police immediately, if that is
possible.
Mr. Westmoreland. I believe that you all probably haven't
had the best 911 response time in the country.
Let me ask you another question. You are around criminals
all the time, and I am sure you ask them questions and
interview them as to crimes they have committed. So let us put
your criminal mind on for a minute or one that you could
associate with a criminal. If you were living on the border
between Maryland and D.C. and you had a drug problem, or if you
were in need of money or something that you could sell for
money, and you had a weapon and you were going to make a
decision on who to rob, would you rob somebody in Maryland that
had an opportunity to have a weapon, or would you go to D.C.,
where you knew the victim was going to be unarmed?
Chief Ramsey. Well, I can use a real-life example. I think
Prince George's County has more robberies right now than we do
in the District, so I guess that particular----
Mr. Westmoreland. Well, that is not my question.
Chief Ramsey. That is your question. You said Maryland or
the District.
Mr. Westmoreland. I am saying if you were a criminal--I am
asking you a question. If you had to make a conscious decision,
if you were going to commit a crime, would you rather try to
commit the crime against someone who might be armed or against
someone that you knew would be breaking the law to be armed?
Chief Ramsey. First of all, sir, I am not a criminal and I
don't think like a criminal. So that is No. 1. So I can't
answer your question. I have no idea what is going through
their mind.
Mr. Westmoreland. OK. Let us just----
Chief Ramsey. No, sir. And you took an unfair shot at us
and the hard-working men and women of the Metropolitan Police
Department about response times. Our people have done a
remarkable job over the last 3 years. We have enjoyed a 9
percent decrease in 2003, 18 percent last year, and so far 14
percent this year. We are not perfect, but we don't deserve
that. We don't deserve it at all. We have people that lay their
lives on the line every day answering calls for service. We run
toward danger that most people would be running away from. And
I am very proud of them, and they don't deserve that, sir. I am
sorry.
Mr. Westmoreland. Well, sir, listen. I have police officers
in Georgia every day that stop cars where the people can have
guns. So, to me, they are braver stopping the ones that can
have a gun than somebody without it. But I think you have
answered my question about which would be the easiest prey.
But let me say this. You said you had recovered, I think,
2,000 firearms?
Chief Ramsey. Yes, sir.
Mr. Westmoreland. And I believe Mr. Burton read the
penalty, that the penalty was a minimum of $1,000 and 1 year in
jail or the maximum of $10,000 and 10 years in jail. Could you
tell me approximately what percentage of those paid the $1,000
or served the 1-year in jail, or what percentage of them paid
the $10,000 and they are serving now or could serve up to 10
years in jail?
Chief Ramsey. That information would have to come from the
U.S. Attorney's Office or the courts. I don't have that
available to me off-hand.
Mr. Westmoreland. Is that some information that you could
get?
Chief Ramsey. I could certainly make them aware of your
request, sir, and see whether or not they could look that up.
Mr. Westmoreland. And isn't it true that the last
statistics I have for the population, this is estimate
population for the murders, as verified by the FBI is 2003. New
York has a population of 8,085,742. They had 597 murders, or
7.38 murders per 100,000 people. Washington, DC, has a
population of 563,384, had 248 murders, or approximately 44.02
murders per 100,000 people. How many of those murders do you
know that you all solved?
Mr. McHenry. The gentleman's time has expired, so if the
Chief would----
Chief Ramsey. Our clearance rate over the last--and I think
you are referring to 2003 statistics. Our clearance rate in
2003 was about 56 percent, if I am not mistaken, right in that
area. I would have to look it up in order to be able to give
you the precise number.
And it is interesting you use New York. They do have good
gun laws in New York.
Mr. McHenry. At this time, Congressman Duncan from
Tennessee is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I
know that we need to get on to the next panel, so I will try to
be very brief. I am curious about one thing. There have been
instances in the past or over the last many years where D.C.
residents have shot criminals in their homes, and I wonder do
you know if any or how many of those have been prosecuted
because those guns have been illegal? I was told that none of
those people have been prosecuted in all those years. Is that
correct?
Chief Ramsey. I would have to do some research,
Congressman, because I am not aware of any inordinate number of
instances where we have had people shooting others inside their
home in protection of themselves. I am sure that it is possible
that could have happened. I would have to check to find out how
many justifiable homicides we had in any given year.
And we do average anywhere from three to four justifiable
homicides a year. Most of those are police shootings, however.
So I would have to check to find out how many citizen
homicides--because it still counts as a homicide, it just
doesn't count as a criminal homicide--we had in any given year,
and I would be glad to get that information to you.
Mr. Duncan. Well, let me ask you this. I spent 7\1/2\ years
as a criminal court judge in Tennessee trying the felony
criminal cases, and I had, I can tell you this, almost
unanimous support from my local law enforcement people. And you
do have things going in the right direction, I will give you
credit for that.
On the other hand, I will say that, unfortunately, we have
over 2 million people now in the prisons and jails of this
country, and a lot of that is that we have started locking up
for much longer sentences the violent criminals and the
criminals who have used guns. It is a shame that we have that
many people locked up, but it was necessary to do it. And what
that has done, that has brought down the crime rate in almost
every city in this country. So that same trend line has taken
place in almost all the cities.
Yet, a witness in the second panel will say this: over the
last 5 years, the District, never far out of the running, had,
in three of those years, the highest murder rate among cities
over 500,000. The other 2 years the city ranked second and
third. It seems clear that D.C. residents need more protection
than they are receiving. Nor has there been any success in
Chicago, the only major city to have roughly similar laws, and
a city that has consistently had the highest murder rate of the
10 largest U.S. cities.
What do you say to that?
Chief Ramsey. Sir, I guess, you know, I mean, statistics
can say whatever you would like them to say. And if all that is
true, fine. I don't think the solution is in putting more guns
on the street. I just don't. I mean, I have been a policeman
for 36 years, and I have been in many situations and, believe
me, I just do not think that we need more guns on the street. I
just don't believe that.
We have worked very hard to get our murder rate down.
Granted, our past has not been all that great. But we are
moving in the right direction. As I said before, we are at
about a 20-year low now, and we are even under that so far this
year. And we are going to continue to aggressively fight crime
in our city. It is not perfect. It is not going to get down to
zero, maybe, but we are doing everything we possibly can.
But introducing more guns on the street, there is going to
be a lot of these guns that are going to be used
inappropriately by people who would not otherwise be committing
crimes, but during road rage, domestic disputes, or other types
of situations they find themselves in. That handgun being
available, I am afraid we are going to have some tragedies. I
hate to see it.
Mr. Duncan. All I can say is a better job is going to have
to be done, because this city has more police officers than any
city in the entire world by far, when you add in the D.C.
police force, the Capital Police force, the Park Police, all
these other institutions that have all these police forces. You
have all these Federal law enforcement officers all over the
place here. It is an astounding number of law enforcement
officials. And to have these kinds of statistics is just almost
beyond comprehensive, when you consider the number of law
enforcement personnel in this city.
And I think you can talk about statistics, but every place
in this country where they have fewer or more lenient gun laws,
the crime rates are at the lowest; and where you have the
toughest or strictest gun laws, the crime rates are at the
highest. And you look at Virginia and Maryland and these
surrounding places where you say these guns are coming from,
but they have more lenient gun laws and, yet, their crime
rates, murder rates, and all these other violent crime rates
and use of guns, they are so much lower. It just makes you
shake your head in amazement at what is going on here.
So I certainly don't have all the answers, but somebody
ought to be ashamed on all this that is going on in this city.
Chief Ramsey. Well, Congressman, I would like to say that
it is true we have a lot of police departments that operate in
the District of Columbia. There is only one that answers 911
calls, and that is the Metropolitan Police Department, and
there are 3,800 of us. The Capitol Police protect the Capitol,
and you have about two cops for every Congressman up here on
the Hill, so it is a very safe place. We have the Federal
protective FBI, Secret Service. They all have their own
responsibilities, and those responsibilities do not include
regular routine patrol and answering 911 calls for service.
That falls on the Metropolitan Police Department.
And, in addition to that, we also have the responsibility
of assisting those Federal agencies in providing protection for
the President, the Vice President, visiting dignitaries, and
all these different security alerts that take place, protests
that take place in the District of Columbia, not against the
local government, but against the Federal Government, but we
are charged with the responsibility of maintaining order.
So there are a lot of responsibilities inherent in being a
member of the Metropolitan Police Department that other
jurisdictions have no clue as to what all it entails. And I
think our people do an outstanding job. They have nothing to be
ashamed of.
Mr. Duncan. Well, all I can say is this. I live in an area
where there is heavy tourism, and we have millions of people
coming to our area and through that area, and we have about
one-eighth or one-ninth the number of police officers per
population. So it looks like to me like something better and
more is going to have to be done.
Mr. McHenry. The gentleman's time has expired.
At this point we will allow Delegate Norton to have a final
set of questions.
Ms. Norton. Very few questions.
And I know the Mayor and the police chief are always under
pressure to bring crime down, and I do want to congratulate you
that you are at a 20-year low in crime and in homicides in the
District of Columbia. You deserve great credit for that. And
you have a lot of pressure from our own residents--you don't
need any from anybody up here--because they are the ones that
have to live with it. And I think the record needs to show that
the rate has gone down very substantially.
I do appreciate the members who have offered statistics on
the number of homicides in the District of Columbia, because
they have made the very best argument for why we should not
introduce more guns into this city.
I would just like to clear up one thing. There was a
question that asked you, Chief Ramsey, about guns you have
taken off the streets, and asked you how many of these people
had to pay a $1,000 fine and got the 1-year in jail for
possession of firearms. Is it not the case that most of the
guns that you take from people on the streets are taken from
criminals and felons, who would not be charged, usually, simply
with possession, but would have much heavier charges because
they shouldn't have had the guns in the first place?
Chief Ramsey. That is true, ma'am, and that is a good
point. A lot of times the U.S. Attorney's Office or the AG will
not move forward with those charges because they have more
serious charges placed against the individual, and those gun
charges tend not to be placed. There are some instances where
they are. I don't know, off the top of my head, how often that
occurs, but because in most instances they are charged with
other crimes, they are not charged with those particular
crimes.
Ms. Norton. The Congress is full of folks who like to talk
about handling guns and just being ready for people who might
break in. I would hate to have any of them actually tested one
night to see if they really were ready when somebody broke in.
But I really would like to just straighten this matter of
leveling the playing field out, about who is most likely to
have the advantage, a gun experienced in breaking in and
handling a gun in holdups, or a homeowner who is caught unaware
if somebody breaks into his or her home. I mean, let us discuss
the real level playing field here. Is the citizen likely to
have a level playing field if she or he is up against an
experienced criminal?
Mayor Williams. I would like to let the Chief speak to the
dynamics of the situation, but I just want the record to
reflect what the Chief reported but I think went unrecognized,
and that is I applaud my friend and colleague, Jack Johnson,
and what he and the chief are trying to do out there in Prince
George's County, but the fact is Prince George's County and
Maryland have more lenient gun laws than the District, and
crime has been going up out there, as opposed to the District.
So if you take the philosophy that more lenient gun laws
and this more level playing field is going to result in a
reduction of crime, it is not proving true in just that one
comparison--and I could give you others--statistically.
Chief Ramsey. And, ma'am, I don't know who has an advantage
in that particular situation. But I do know who has a
disadvantage, and those are the people who are standing around
the two guys with the guns, because they are the ones that are
more likely to get shot than the people that they are shooting
at. And that is just from experience. That is just what
normally happens, is that the people who have nothing to do
with it at all wind up catching a round and wind up getting
seriously injured or killed as a result of it.
So each situation is different. You know, getting to a gun,
being able to locate it, being able to fire, knowing when the
use of deadly force is appropriate. And I think that is a key
issue here. Again, police officers go through hours and hours
and hours of training in the use of deadly force and the
handling of a firearm. We sell weapons to citizens and there
are no rules of engagement.
So that is just something that has to be seriously
considered should something like this wind up taking place, is
that you can't just lift the ban and just leave it open for us
to try to figure out what to do. There are a lot of serious
consequences to this if it should go through.
Ms. Norton. Important point.
Chief, I know that in all the crime town meetings in the
city I have been to, police say give it up, give up your money.
I mean, if somebody is pointing a gun at you, it is hard for me
to believe that a police officer would say shoot it out and may
the best man win.
Chief Ramsey. Well, there are studies, ma'am, that show
that the person who has a gun drawn on you has an advantage.
There is something called lag time, the time it takes for you
to be able to actually respond, should you be in a situation
like that. It depends on the frame of mind of everybody
involved. There are so many factors.
But it really, I think, is beside the point in a sense that
the real people that are at a disadvantage are the children
playing in a schoolyard, people sitting on their front porch,
other people that are out. You know, we are trained not to fire
if the background isn't clear, meaning that if that bullet
should miss the target, what is behind it, because, again, you
could unintentionally shoot and seriously injure or kill
someone else. All those things go into the training of a police
officer.
And I think that when we find ourselves in a situation
where we have gone back to that old movie I talked about before
with Wyatt Earp, with everybody being armed--which, by the way,
there is another section of that movie that says their murder
rate was actually higher than that of New York City in its hay-
day--you know, we go right backward to that. And I just think
that a lot of innocent people are going to wind up suffering.
There are unintended consequences from this action. No one is
intentionally trying to do this, but there are serious
unintended consequences to lifting our gun ban.
Ms. Norton. One last note.
Mayor Williams. And I would add, Congresswoman Norton, I
think there are unintended consequences to what I think is just
a breathtaking usurpation of what limited Home Rule we have. I
think we need to decide, do we want the District officials to
run the District government or someone else? For someone who
has worked as aggressively as I have with the Federal
Government to try to bring the District forward, and suffered,
as you know, all the brick bats and criticisms of my
constituents and colleagues and media cognoscenti about being
too lenient, to have to turn around now and go back to my
people and say the reward for good behavior and everything that
we have done is to undermine something so fundamental to
democratic free will, to me is just tragic. It is horrible. I
can't over-emphasize that.
Ms. Norton. And in a real sense that says it all.
Mr. Mayor and Chief Ramsey, let me just ask you this final
question. You have town meetings around the city all the time.
Police go to Mayor's town meetings; you each have your own town
meetings. When you go to these town meetings, is there any
sentiment in the District of Columbia for weakening our gun
safety laws? What do you pick up from people who talk to you
about guns?
Chief Ramsey. Ma'am, I have not heard any meeting--I can't
say anyone; there are certainly those proponents that would
like to see the ban lifted, I would imagine. In fact, I know
there is one that will testify, at least a couple that will
testify a little later on. But for the most part people do not
even discuss it, and if they do, they talk about gun violence
and our need to get more guns off the street; and why don't we
do gun buy-backs and why don't we do this and why don't we do
that. The focus is always on what can we do to get more guns
off the street.
Reverend Young, earlier this year, started something where
he started a gun buy-back program. And like the gentleman
mentioned who said that they had it in his community and they
ran out of money, well, Reverend Young ran out of money too.
Reverend Young is the minister that presided over Princess
Hansen's funeral and a couple other funerals of young people in
the District.
Again, the emphasis and the focus is on how can we get
these guns out of the hands of people, as opposed to anything
else, for the most part.
Mayor Williams. I would agree with that, Congresswoman. In
hundreds and thousands now of questions at community meetings
and thousands of e-mails, I have not detected a significant
concern about this issue. I would just echo what the Chief has
said. It is to bring more enforcement, not less, to the gun
laws.
Ms. Norton. Well, I want to thank both of you, because for
the Mayor and the police chief to spend this kind of time
outside of their jurisdiction actually, I think, says all we
need to know about the importance of this issue to you.
And I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the leeway you
have given all of us to ask questions.
Chief Ramsey. Thank you, ma'am.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. McHenry. Thank you, Delegate Norton.
At this time this panel is dismissed. I certainly
appreciate you dealing with our lovely congressional schedule.
Unfortunately, Chairman Davis was not able to come back. I know
he did want to have a conversation with you all. Thank you all
for testifying.
At this time we will recess for 2 minutes.
[Recess.]
Chairman Tom Davis [presiding]. Please rise with me and
raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. We will start with Dr. John Lott, the
resident scholar from the American Enterprise Institute;
followed by Robert Levy, senior fellow in Constitutional
studies at the Cato Institute; Robert Peck, president of the
Greater Washington Board of Trade; Pastor Lionel Edmonds, Co-
Chair of the Washington Interfaith Network; Sandra Seegars, a
District of Columbia resident; Tyrone Parker, executive
director, Alliance of Concerned Men; and Francine Lowe,
District of Columbia resident.
Mr. Levy, would you just raise your right hand right there?
[Witness sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. We are going to start with Mr. Lott and
move straight on down. Your entire statements are in the
record, so you don't have to take the full 5 minutes.
Mr. Lott, thanks for being with us.
STATEMENTS OF JOHN R. LOTT, JR., PH.D., RESIDENT SCHOLAR,
AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE; ROBERT A. LEVY, SENIOR FELLOW IN
CONSTITUTIONAL STUDIES, THE CATO INSTITUTE; ROBERT PECK,
PRESIDENT, GREATER WASHINGTON BOARD OF TRADE; PASTOR H. LIONEL
EDMONDS, CO-CHAIR, WASHINGTON INTERFAITH NETWORK; SANDRA
SEEGARS, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA RESIDENT; TYRONE PARKER,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ALLIANCE OF CONCERNED MEN; AND FRANCINE
LOWE, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA RESIDENT
STATEMENT OF JOHN R. LOTT, JR., PH.D.
Mr. Lott. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and
distinguished panel members. I appreciate your time here today.
Guns make it easier for bad things to happen, but they also
make it easier for people to protect themselves and prevent bad
things from happening. And what concerns us all is what is the
net effect that guns have on crime. Does it increase or
decrease murders? The impacts it has on rape, robberies, and
aggravated assaults.
We all want to keep guns away from criminals, but the
problem that you basically run into is that when you pass these
different type of gun control laws, it is the law-abiding
citizens, and not the criminals, who are most likely to obey
them, you can actually see increases in crime rather than
reductions in crime.
My own research shows that police are the single-most
important factor for reducing crime. Surely, Police Chief
Ramsey talked about some of the things that he is doing to
increase arrest rates and conviction rates. But even though
they are extremely important, one thing I think is clear, and
one thing that the police themselves understand, when you look
at surveys of them or talk to them in different places, and
that is they realize that they virtually always arrive on the
crime scene after the crime has been committed.
In D.C., in 2003, the average response time for priority
one calls was about 8 minutes and 25 seconds. So the question
that you run into, then, is what do you advise someone to do
when they are having to confront a criminal by themselves, if
they have to wait that 8\1/2\ minutes before the police can
arrive, and then assuming that they can make a 911 call.
And there is a lot of evidence on this. Probably the
largest study that has been done is the National Crime
Victimization Survey done by the Department of Justice, which
surveys about 100,000 to 150,000 people each year, and it has
been doing this survey for about 25 years now, almost. And what
they find is that you look at victims of crime, you find how
they responded to the crime, you found how the criminal
responded--was the criminal armed or not--what was the type of
crime that was involved; what were the circumstances, time of
day, many different factors that were there--did it occur in a
house, outside the residence. And what you can find is that
given the residence or given that victims respond in different
ways, what was the probability of serious injury to them with
all those different factors.
And what you find is that by far the safest course of
action for victims to take is to have a gun. We frequently hear
that passive behavior is a safe course of action. We heard that
today. And there is a kernel of truth to it, but when you look
at the survey, you find, in fact, that is very misleading and
actually dangerous advice. If you compare passive behavior to
all forms of active resistance lumped together, passive
behavior is, indeed, slightly safer.
But the problem with it, and the reason why it is
misleading is that, under active resistance, you are lumping
together 10 different types of active resistance, everything
from yelling and screaming, running away, a baseball bat, mace,
a knife, a gun, or a stun gun. Some of those are indeed much
more dangerous than passive behavior.
For example, for a woman, by far the most dangerous course
of action for her to take when she is confronted by a criminal
is to use her fists. There is a very simple reason for that,
and that is you are virtually always talking about a male
criminal doing the attacking. In the case of a female victim
and a male attacker, there is a large strength differential
that exists there. The second most dangerous course of action
for a woman to take is to run away. If she can run away and
escape, that is great. But the problem is that women victims
tend to be significantly slower runners than men are, and in
the process of being tackled and subdued significant injury
frequently results.
Again, as I say, if you look through these numbers--and I
am happy to go through it more in depth--by far the safest
course of action is particularly true for people who are
relatively weaker physically--women and the elderly--is to have
a gun.
There are other things that have been brought up today
about fears about what might happen. We see this debate
occurring time after time. We have 37 States now in the United
States that have ``right to carry'' laws. A lot of the concerns
about people using guns improperly, in the heat of the moment,
other things that could happen, in these States you
consistently find that the people who carry these concealed
handguns tend to be extremely law-abiding, they lose their
permits for any type of gun related violation at hundreds or
thousands of 1 percentage point, and virtually always for
fairly trivial types of violations.
There were discussions today about the assault weapons ban.
I find it a little bit interesting it was just brought up
today, because just a few weeks ago we had the first crime
numbers come out after the assault weapons ban sunset last
year, and there was obviously a lot of concern about what would
be happening to crime. Well, it turns out now that murder rates
and robbery rates fell last year. Murder rates fell by 3
percent. And, more interestingly, the murder rates fell by more
in the States that didn't have their own assault weapons ban--
over 4 percent--than the States that did have an assault
weapons ban of their own.
We could talk about other things. The risks of having guns
in the home is something that has been brought up multiple
times. There are a couple of serious issues with the study that
people were citing earlier in the testimony, and that is that
what they would do is they would look at a city over the course
of a year, identify people who had been killed or injured from
a gun, and then ask the relatives of the deceased whether a gun
was owned in the residence.
Then, as a comparison group, they would find people who
lived within a mile who were the same age, sex, and race, and
ask them whether they owned a gun. And they would run a
regression that would say what is the probability of dying
based on whether a gun was said to be owned in the home.
When people have gone back and looked at that data, what
they found is that in only, at most, 14 percent of the deaths--
and that includes suicide, was the gun in the home that was
mentioned in the survey actually the weapon that was used in
the death. Eighty-six percent of the time it was from weapons
being brought in from the outside, which raises an issue of why
it would have been beneficial for them to own a gun.
But, on the other side, they only count as benefits times
when you actually killed the attacker. Killing the attacker in
self defense occurs fewer than once out of every 1,000 times.
You are ignoring the benefits from simply brandishing the gun
and you are ignoring even times where you would wound the
attacker or fire a warning shot.
Now, what I would like to try to do in the brief minute or
so that I have left, is just to turn to some data, because--if
I could see the first slide there--we have been talking about
what might happen after the D.C. ban was removed. Well, one
thing you can go and look at is what happened when the ban was
imposed to begin with. In the 5-years before the D.C. ban in
late 1976, murder rates declined from about 37 to 27 per
100,000 people. In the 5-years afterwards, they went up to 35
per 100,000 people.
And you can see from the graph here--and 1976 is the line
there--there is only 1 year between 1976 and, in fact, today,
that you find a murder rate even just slightly below the murder
rate that existed in 1976 before the ban went into effect. And
even that it is a small tenth of a percent difference in terms
of murder rates.
Now, one of the things that the police chief was bringing
up is he would talk about numbers in terms of the number of
murders. One concern just to bring up there and keep in mind is
that the population in D.C. has fallen by about 20 percent over
that period of time. And when you take that into account, it
helps explain why the murder rates--in 2004, for example, the
murder rate, even with all the drops that they were talking
about, was still about 30 percent higher than the murder rate
was in 1976.
Can I see the next slide, please?
This shows you how violent crime rates have changed before
and after the ban went into effect. You basically find that
violent crime rates were falling, on average, prior to the law
going into effect, were rising for the next 7 years basically,
and they have gone up and down since then. But, again, after
that point in time there have been 2 years after 1976 where the
violent crime rate was as low or as low as it was when the ban
went into effect; all the rest of the time it has been
dramatically higher than that.
Now, you can compare D.C. to the changes in murder rates or
violent crime rates in Maryland or Virginia, the next graph
that is there. And it is very difficult--that is for murder. Or
you can look at the next slide for violent crime rates.
And it is very hard to see. Violent crime rates were
falling relative to Maryland and Virginia up until 1976, and
then they were flat or rising in the period of time afterwards.
And I can go and show you the numbers for Chicago--I won't
go through that right now--and other places in the United
States, but Chicago you actually see a very big increase in
robbery rates after they instituted their ban. And if you
compare it relative to the counties that surround it, you see
very large increases that occur in either murder rates or--why
don't we skip a couple slides just to show you. Next one.
That is robbery rates. That just shows you how the robbery
rates changed before and after the Chicago gun ban.
The next slide, please.
That shows you, when you compare the murder rates relative
to the counties that are surrounding Chicago, how there was a
substantial increase in Chicago murder rates relative to the
surrounding counties.
And if you show the next slide, that shows you how violent
crime rates changed.
You know, the bottom line--and I have data in here from
Australia and from England that show you after they had their
bans.
It would be nice if simply banning the guns took guns away
from criminals. But the problem is that it seems to be mainly
the law-abiding citizens, and not the criminals, who obey these
rules. And you end up having unintended consequences in terms
of higher crime rates, at least, certainly not lower, as a
result of these changes.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lott follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Levy, thank you for being with us.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT A. LEVY
Mr. Levy. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members, thanks
very much for inviting me to testify. I want to comment very
briefly on the Home Rule question, since that came up several
times. The question was raised why shouldn't D.C. officials run
the D.C. government. Well, the short answer is because D.C.
officials are violating the U.S. Constitution.
Now, Congress has expressly set out in Article I, Section
8, has plenary power over the District of Columbia. Moreover,
every Member of Congress has an independent and affirmative
obligation to uphold our Constitution. So if the District's
handgun ban violates the second amendment, as it almost surely
does, then Congress should act to defend D.C. residents' second
amendment rights, much as Congress would act if a State were
violating rights of free speech or discriminating against
racial or religious minorities. The question in all of those
cases is whether the challenged law is Constitutional. And, in
D.C., the gun ban is indisputably unConstitutional.
I support the principles underlying H.R. 1288, but I must
say that I oppose enactment of the bill at this time. My
written testimony establishes four points: first, the second
amendment secures an individual, not a collective right;
second, the second amendment indisputably applies to the
District of Columbia, despite the fact that D.C. is not 1 of
the 50 States; third, District residents and other citizens
across the Nation can best secure their second amendment rights
through the judicial process, not through the D.C. Personal
Protection Act; and, fourth, Congress should, for that reason,
step aside at least until Parker v. District of Columbia, which
is the second amendment challenge to the D.C. gun ban, is
resolved in Federal court.
Of course, I would be happy to answer questions on any of
those points, but in the next few minutes I want to focus on my
third and fourth points exclusively. So let us begin with this
question: How can D.C. residents most effectively secure their
second amendment rights? And then I will discuss the best role
that I think Congress should play.
To permanently guaranty the rights of D.C. residents, a
Constitutional challenge to the District's gun laws should be
brought in a Federal court, like the D.C. Circuit, where there
is no adverse precedent. Preferably, the challenge should be
civil, not criminal, filed by sympathetic, law-abiding
plaintiffs, not bank robbers or drug pushers.
And, in fact, that case is now in litigation. In 2003,
three local attorneys and I filed Parker v. District of
Columbia, pro bono, on behalf of six D.C. residents. The case
is not about machine guns; it is not about assault weapons. It
is about the right to own an ordinary, garden variety handgun.
Nor do the plaintiffs argue in that case for the right to carry
a gun outside their home. That is another question for another
day.
This case is about a pistol in the home for self defense.
In effect, no one in the District can possess a functional
firearm in his or her own residence, and the law applies not
just to unfit persons like felons or minors or the mentally
incompetent, but across the board to ordinary, honest,
responsible citizens.
There have been more than three dozen challenges to the
D.C. law that have already been filed, mostly by criminals who
are serving longer sentences for gun possession. The Parker
case is quite different. The lead plaintiff, Shelly Parker, a
young lady who resides in the heart of D.C., where she and her
neighbors are relentlessly harassed by the drug dealers. Ms.
Parker decided to do something about it. She called the police;
she organized block meetings; and she encouraged her neighbors
to complain.
Not surprisingly, she was labeled as a troublemaker by the
dealers, who threaten her at every opportunity. One dealer, in
fact, tried to pry his way into her house repeatedly yelling,
``Bitch, I'll kill you. I live on this block too.'' But Ms.
Parker knows that the police are unlikely to shut down the drug
traffic on her block, and she would like to possess a
functional handgun within her home for self-defense. But she
fears prosecution because of D.C.'s unConstitutional ban.
A second plaintiff is a private police officer who carries
a handgun to provide security for the Thurgood Marshall
Judicial Center. But when he applied for permission to possess
a handgun within his home to defend his own household, the D.C.
government turned him down.
The six plaintiffs in Parker live in D.C., they pay their
taxes in D.C., and they obey the laws in D.C., but the District
of Columbia says that if somebody breaks into their house,
their only choice is to call 911 and pray that the police
arrive in time. That is not a good enough choice. The right to
keep and bear arms includes the right to defend your property
and your family and your life, and no government should be
permitted to take that right away.
And, yet, that is why I argue that Congress should step
aside until Parker v. District of Columbia is resolved. Parker
is now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.
Circuit. If H.R. 1288 is enacted, the lawsuit will be dismissed
as moot. Plaintiffs, of course, cannot challenge a law that no
longer exists. Otherwise, Parker could well be headed to the
Supreme Court, and that is where it belongs.
It is a compelling case. The citizens of this country
deserve a four-square pronouncement from the Nation's highest
court about the real meaning of the second amendment for all
Americans, not just the residents of D.C.
Temporarily, the rights of D.C. residents can be secured
either by litigation or by legislation. But the Parker
plaintiffs know--indeed, we all know--that a narrow bill aimed
at the D.C. Code could easily be repealed by the next anti-gun
Congress, and the bill will have no effect outside of the
District. That means it will have negligible impact on second
amendment rights when contrasted with an unambiguous
proclamation applicable across the Nation from the U.S. Supreme
Court.
Thanks very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Levy follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Peck.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT PECK
Mr. Peck. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I particularly want
to thank you for all that you do to make the greater Washington
area such a great region. My name is Bob Peck, and I serve as
president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade. I also want
to thank--since we have a regional group--the members from
Maryland who came here to uphold the District's right to enact
its own laws and make them stick. And I also want to thank
Congresswoman Watson for staying here for so long during this
hearing too.
The Board of Trade consists of about 1,200 members who
represent 40 percent of the region's private sector work force,
and I would note to you that 80 percent of this region's work
force is in the private sector. As a voice of business in the
National Capital Region, we have been deeply troubled by
attempts over the past year to repeal the gun safety laws that
were in place to protect the families, workers, and tourists in
the District of Columbia.
Today, Washington is in the midst of an economic
renaissance. It has earned the acclaim of urban advocates
throughout the country and the world and has captured the
interest of investors throughout the world, even more
important. For 2 years running, we have been rated as the best
place to invest in real estate in the entire world. Downtown
blocks that were once lined with vacant or dilapidated
buildings now comprise the second largest office market in the
Nation, behind only Midtown Manhattan. We have crowds on the
streets daytime and nighttime, and we have tourism back up to
levels that we haven't seen since September 11th.
From January 2002 to December of this year, 5,000 new
residential units will have opened in Downtown Washington, an
area that was once an office area only. As a District employer
ourselves, the Board of Trade, which has been in the city for
115 years, vividly recalls worse times in this area, and we
take considerable pride in our city's transformation.
To sustain this climate of economic revival and this
outcome, our city's elected officials and business leaders have
worked hard to overcome the perception that Washington is not a
safe place to bring the family. And I submit to you that the
economic numbers that we have posted over the past few years
are proof that we have made that stick.
And I have to say that I am appalled at the comments we
have heard today about the Nation's Capital. I think it is a
deliberate attempt to malign the people, the businesses of this
city, and it has the effect of making our Nation's Capital look
bad not only to our country, but to the entire world.
Moreover, the comments are just untrue and unfair. We have
a hardworking employee community here, and you would not know
it to have heard what we heard from some of the Members today.
We also, I have to say, have a hardworking, effective police
force and I was particularly appalled to hear our police
department maligned the way it was today.
Passage of the D.C. Personal Protection Act would garner
plenty of national attention for the city by reinforcing the
harmful perception, no longer true, that the District is a
haven for crime. Our business community has worked hard,
invested dollars, and taken risks to bring this community back
together and some of the rhetoric we have heard here today
threatens our success.
We know that there is work to do in the District of
Columbia. We know that we have room for improvement on the
crime front. We wish, quite honestly, that some of the Federal
police forces here spent more time working with our
metropolitan police to patrol all the areas of the city. I know
that Ms. Norton promoted legislation that would have the other
Federal police forces cooperate with the metropolitan police.
We support the police department and its chief. We do not think
that this area needs a change. We do not think that we are
doing so well that we do not want to see a change in our basic
gun laws.
I also have to tell you I am appalled at this notion that
people who go buy a weapon are going to go out and use it
presumably whenever they feel like it. In my training as a
military officer and in what I have seen of police training,
including in my stint in the Government when I had a Federal
police force under my jurisdiction, I know how hard all of us
who have been authorized to use weapons are trained not only in
using them, but in when not to use them. And I doubt that we
would find the sympathy among the supporters of gun repeal for
very extensive training among our private citizens for how
safely to use a weapon or to learn, for example, fire
discipline or rules of engagement.
We will continue to support responsible and collaborative
efforts to improve the safety of District communities, and we
will continue to fight the imposition of policies that could
take our city back to a time most of us would rather forget.
And finally, I will say this about the business community
and the D.C. government. We do not support everything that the
D.C. Council does. We do not support everything that the
executive branch of the District government does. But we sure
as heck do support the right of D.C. citizens to fight out our
policy disputes in our own forums. We win some in the business
community, we lose some in the business community, and that is
the way democracy is supposed to work in towns and cities all
over the country, and we think that should be true in
Washington also.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Peck follows:]
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Chairman Davis. Thank you very much.
Pastor Edmonds, thank you for being with us.
STATEMENT OF PASTOR H. LIONEL EDMONDS
Pastor Edmonds. Good afternoon, Congresswoman Norton, my
Congresswoman, Congresswoman Watson, and Chairman Davis. My
name is H. Lionel Edmonds and I am a co-chair of the Citizens
to Save D.C. Gun Safety Laws. I also am the pastor of Mount
Lebanon Baptist Church in Northwest Washington, D.C., and I
serve as president of the Washington Interfaith Network.
I would first like to thank Chairman Davis for the
compassionate leadership that you so graciously offer to the
citizens of the District. The District of Columbia as well as
the Nation is both blessed by your efforts to make the places
where we work, worship, and live environments that enrich and
enlarge us.
My first contact with a gun came as a small child in the
great State of Indiana, Congressman Burton's home State, in the
city of Fort Wayne, in the home of my Uncle Jesse, the
neighborhood barber. His son Marshall and I had just finished
playing some catch in the backyard of the house. We ran into
the house to refresh ourselves when Marshall went somewhere in
Uncle Jesse's room and came back out with a loaded gun. ``Look
what I found,'' Marshall said. ``I saw this game on television
called Russian Roulette, let's play some of that.''
Thank God that the bullet that was left in the chamber of
that gun by accident never was fired. Yet, I cannot help but to
think that the trouble that Marshall got into later on in life
first found fertile soil within the curious little mind of that
little boy in a barber's house.
I support the gun safety laws in the District. These laws
attempt to limit the access to guns. Such laws may prohibit the
curiosity of children who may by chance come across a gun in
the home of a relative or a friend and may use it for something
other than its intended purpose.
As the pastor of a church just a couple of blocks from this
place where our testimony is now being given, I could tell you
if time permitted the countless number of tearful funeral
services that I have both participated in and conducted where a
little boy or girl's cold corpse lays still in a coffin all
because of a senseless verbal argument which led to someone
going back home to get ``my mother or father's gun.'' Places of
worship ought to be places where young people gather to
celebrate life, not to weep and cry over its ending.
How can anyone be pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage, and
pro-gun at the same time? Repealing the gun laws in the
Nation's Capital is a gamble where too much is at stake. The
parent or adult may purchase the gun for protection and yet
they are promoting the idea within the conscious of their child
that it is all right for me to take some matters into my own
hands. Children ought to be learning on the computer or reading
a book in the house, not coming across a misplaced case of
bullets and then bring them to school for show and tell.
Thank you so much, Chairman Davis, for your leadership on
this issue.
[The prepared statement of Pastor Edmonds follows:]
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Chairman Davis. Thank you very much.
Let me just note, I was gone because we had an amendment on
the floor I had to sit there and rebut, it was the committee's
jurisdiction, and that is where some of the other Members are,
too. So we are holding down the fort. But thank you very much
for staying with us.
Ms. Seegars, thanks for being with us.
STATEMENT OF SANDRA SEEGARS
Ms. Seegars. Good evening, and thank you for holding this
hearing. I am a resident of Congress Heights in Southeast
Washington, DC. I am the chairperson of Advisory Neighborhood
Commission 8E, a commissioner with the D.C. Taxicab Commission,
a member and the public relations person for the Seventh
District Metropolitan Police Department Citizen Advisory
Council, member of the National Rifle Association, and an
unchallenged candidate for president of the United Planning
Organization ``Petey'' Green Center.
I do not support the current gun laws of the District of
Columbia. I do support repealing the strict gun ban laws in the
District.
Repealing the current handgun ban in the Nation's Capital
would permit persons who want or need a loaded handgun to own
one for his or her protection of person, property, or family. I
am of the opinion that if law-abiding citizens could own loaded
handguns, it would create a deterrent because thugs would know
that some of us have a handgun, but not which ones.
It is time to face reality. The District's handgun ban is
not working. It has not worked for a long, long time. What it
is doing is giving more control and power to the thugs, and
making law-abiding citizens more vulnerable and fearful. The
ban has allowed thugs more reason to prey on law-abiding
citizens because they are not armed. Thugs are using handguns
on innocent law-abiding citizens and on each other. I know many
criminals and some of them have told me that they like easy
prey; that is, seniors, women, and frightened people. Sure, the
victim can arm themselves with baseball bats, knives, and mace,
but they are no match to a person with a handgun.
I have seen this city go from good to bad to hell. I am
fully aware of the acceleration of handgun fatalities, which
has occurred since the handgun ban went into effect. My oldest
brother, who owned a handgun, was shot down in the streets in
1978. It so happened, that day he did not have his with him. I
believe this triggered my younger brother to shoot someone to
death in 1980.
The crying mothers and tearful family members of gunshot
victims have every right to cry and be angry. My heartfelt
sympathy goes out to all of them, including my mother. However,
this is not an emotional, subjective issue. It is a
Constitutional right that should be granted to all Americans,
including the citizens of the District of Columbia. I want my
rights honored, so who would cry for me?
I, along with the residents of the District, am being
denied the right of self-protection because we are being denied
the right to bear arms. I feel that we are being victimized
twice--once by the strict handgun ban, and second by the
handgun-toting thugs. For those of you who live where handguns
are legal, how many shootouts have there been? Is crime high or
low? Are crimes being committed by legal or illegal handguns?
Reflecting back to pre-handgun days, there was not a
handgun in every household. Therefore, when the handgun ban is
repealed, everyone is not going to rush out to purchase a
handgun. However, we should have that option; to bear arms or
not to bear arms would become the question. At that time a
person can make a conscious decision to bear arms or not to
bear arms, whichever best fits their circumstances. Those who
do not want to own a handgun should not stand in the way of
those who do. If a person has a child or a mentally challenged
person in the home and feels that it would create havoc, they
could decide not to own a handgun.
We can compare other situations with owning a handgun. When
a person fears height, that person would avoid high places. A
person who has a fear of automobiles more than likely would
choose not to own an automobile. The government has not banned
automobiles because someone has a fear of them. Nor does the
government ban automobiles, trains, or airplanes because people
died in them or by them.
All I am saying is that an individual's personal
circumstances should not stand in the way of others. As far as
suicide, people have not stopped committing suicide because
they do not own a handgun. Suicide being an issue, the
government needs to ban knives, ropes, medicine, and bridges.
Even with suicidal attempts with these items, the doctors do
not ask the government to ban them. They tell their patients
and their family members to keep the items away from the
individual.
Currently, we can own unloaded rifles and shotguns. I
believe handguns are safer because they are less cumbersome.
When a rapist or burglar enters my home, I would like to have
an even playing field by being able to defend myself with a
loaded handgun, not a bat, knife, or mace. I say loaded because
an intruder is not going to wait on you to go get a weapon and
load it.
It is strange that the same District residents who cannot
own handguns to protect themselves are the same ones who are
enlisted in the armed forces protecting our country with
handguns, rifles, and other artillery and munitions.
Once the ban is repealed, in order to get a license
approved to own a handgun, I believe a thorough criminal
background check, a physical and mental exam should be done
upon submission of an application for a license, and before the
person purchases a handgun. The persons licensed to own a gun
must have proof that they have successfully completed a
firearms training course. There would be one handgun per
household.
Once approved to own a handgun, I believe that the handgun
should be examined periodically by the police or another
authorized entity, at the expense of the handgun owner, to see
that the handgun is still operable, if it has been fired, and
that it is still in possession of the legal owner.
If there is a felon or ex-felon in the household, or if a
felon plans to return to the household, everyone in the house
would become ineligible to submit an application. Some
misdemeanors should be denied as well; such as, drunkards and
drug addicts. The applicant must be a citizen of the United
States, and there should be a specified period of time that the
applicant lived in the District prior to the application for
the license.
Another reason the residents of the District should be able
to own handguns to defend themselves is because of a 1981 court
ruling in the Carolyn B. Warren case, which is attached to my
testimony. It was declared that the police do not have to
protect individuals, only the public at large. It was stated
that the police owe an individual nothing, thereby not liable
for injury occurring due to an officer's neglect or refusal to
assist a victim of a crime. If you may have noticed, very
seldom is a police officer found guilty in court when liable or
negligent charges are filed against them.
I believe the right to bear arms is a Constitutional issue,
which Congress does play a role and has a responsibility to
ensure this right to the residents of the District. Once
Congress repeals the ban, the City Council at that time should
introduce laws accordingly. I believe the application to own a
handgun should be stringent. I believe that Congress' decision
to repeal the handgun ban in the District should not be guided
by emotions and subjectivity, but by intellect and objectivity.
As to Home Rule, our Representative has already weakened
that when she approved expanding the Capitol Hill Police
Department's patrol area. I believe Judge Reggie Walton made an
incorrect decision when he ruled on our case to bear arms in
the District, just as the judge did when she ruled on baby
Briana returning to her abusive family. Now Briana is dead. I
believe that denying the right to bear arms is denying a right
under the Constitution.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Seegars follows:]
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Chairman Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Parker, thank you for being with us.
STATEMENT OF TYRONE PARKER
Mr. Parker. First of all, let me thank you for your
continued consideration and regard to the citizens of the
District of Columbia, and for this particular hearing. Ms.
Norton, I continue to support and be behind your outstanding
work because I know beyond a doubt you have always been for the
least and the less and those who do not have a voice. Ms.
Watson, I heard you say that you are from the place that
started gangs, so I know that you can sympathize and understand
the testimony that we, the citizens, come forth with.
I am the executive director of the Alliance of Concerned
Men, a 501(c)(3), that offers two to three different
perspectives in regard to my presentation today. The Alliance
of Concerned Men is an organization that basically was composed
of previously incarcerated men that understood the conditions
of our community and wanted to step forward and make a
difference. To this point, the last 13 years we have been
involved with working with the gangs, working with the crews,
working with returning prisoners in the whole compound in an
attempt to get them back on the right track. So we understand
beyond a question of doubt what the impact of this particular
law would be in regards to repealing the ban pertaining to guns
in our community.
We have already begun to make a significant change in
regards to public safety. In the public housing areas that we
primarily work with, we have been able to negotiate seven peace
treaties in the District of Columbia in the last 8 years and
have not had one single retaliation, simply because they have
seen the opportunity to turn their lives around and not
increase the prison population which a number of our men are
basically going into now.
I think that this is one of the greatest challenges that we
are confronted with--the massive number of prisoners that are
basically returning from the prison, but as well as are in the
prisons today. It has destabilized our family structure and our
community structure. Therefore, these individuals do not have
anything to be able to model after or anything to be able to
margin themselves after.
So they tend to look at the one single thing that is so
blatant today in our community, unlike the times of our days,
which I consider, as we say, the ``baby boomers.'' We look at
the echo generation that does not have the components in place,
so when it comes time for them to settle an argument, they tend
to do the next best thing, to go for a gun. A gun has been the
common denominator.
But now we are beginning to see changes in our particular
communities. We are not hearing about the drive-by shootings
every morning that we are accustomed to hearing about. We are
no longer hearing about gang turf wars over drugs as we have
been hearing. I know when their lives are concerned, men began
to go into some of these communities and the topic of the
conversation they heard was who got shot, what was the
magnitude of the gun, how fast can you buy one, and they could
respond on a dime by getting as many guns as they wanted.
Now, as we see the momentum of what is occurring in regards
to the initiative that is in place and other things that are
happening, we are beginning to hear the texture of the
conversation change. We are beginning to hear the kids talk
about baseball games and the opportunity to go to school. We
are beginning to see the public elements of human fear no
longer in these communities. People are beginning to live as
they should live and not be just simply because they do not
have the economical dollars to be able to leave and live in
other places, but having a high quality of life. We are
beginning to see a movement take place where the quality of
life is beginning to surface from those individuals who at one
point in time considered that they had no chance.
For us to take a step back and lose the momentum of
victory, in which we are current in a number of these
particular places where most folks dare not go, it would be a
sin and a shame. The information that I have heard today has
saddened my heart and just basically made me feel so bad,
because it talked about outstanding law enforcement agencies,
and it talked about people that were doing their very best to
make the quality of life what it is. But it is one thing, as
they often say, the road to hell is paved with a lot of good
intentions. And even while some of the intentions may be good,
the outcome will not be.
I speak also from the perspective of being a previously
incarcerated person, having done time for armed robbery in the
District of Columbia some 26 years ago. I understand the impact
of who I was and who I had to become. This last year, I was
given the award of Washingtonian of the Year because of the
work and outstanding support that our type of organizations
have been able to do. But as we see the men and the women
return back to the District of Columbia with nothing in place
to the point of employment, shelter, health care, they will
have very little opportunities to be able to work themselves
back, especially as things are today.
So I would truly hate to see this gun ban lifted, where
each and every household basically lives in fear because of the
environment that has been created to have the gun in the house.
I tell you, we would create bands of individuals who see no
opportunities and, instead of stealing cars, they would become
house-breakers and the new commodity would be the guns that
they would bring out of these particular places, the guns that
they believe would give them another opportunity to be able to
rid themselves of the problems that they have.
No, we cannot afford to step back 1 inch and relinquish the
momentum that we have accomplished. I know it is not perfect,
but it is quite a way from how it once was. And victory is
truly in sight for the storm has passed. And for that I say,
``Thank you, Jesus,'' because I do not have to attend the
number of funerals or see the mothers cry as they have cried. I
do not have to see the communities in the conditions that they
have been. We are there each and every day.
I thank you for your time, I thank you for your spirit, but
I pray that this bill goes nowhere.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Parker follows:]
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Chairman Davis. Thank you very much.
Ms. Lowe, last but not least, we appreciate your patience.
Thanks for being with us.
STATEMENT OF FRANCINE LOWE
Ms. Lowe. Good afternoon, Mr. Davis, Ms. Eleanor Holmes
Norton, Ms. Watson. My name is Francine Lowe. I am an employee
of the Department of Public Works Solid Waste Management
Division. I am proud to be a native Washingtonian. I have seven
kids, four girls and three boys, ranging in age from 4 years
old to 20 years old. They were also born in the District of
Columbia.
I am asking the Congress to leave our gun laws alone in the
name of my daughter, Myesha. Myesha was an innocent bystander
who was shot and killed July 24, 2004. I testify here today
because that is the least I can do. But I come in great sadness
because my family and I have not gotten over, and will never
get over, the death of Myesha by gunfire. Yet Congress keeps
trying to repeal our gun safety laws.
Does Congress think that repealing our gun laws will save
children like Myesha? Many mothers like myself who are raising
their children in tough neighborhoods in D.C. know otherwise.
If Congress makes it easier for residents to have guns, there
will be more mothers like myself and more children like Myesha.
We had much hope for my wonderful daughter, Myesha. She was
what mothers want daughters to be, pretty, bright, and polite.
Myesha was an honor roll student and had graduated from Hine
Junior High School. Her school this last fall was going to be
Dunbar. She never made it. Myesha and her sister Rasheida were
in the Trinity College Upward Bound program. She was shot and
killed on a Saturday, and that Monday Trinity College was going
to take them up to Niagara Falls to tour some colleges.
Myesha had permission from my mother to go to Checkers to
get her something to eat on the evening of July 24th. Some kids
drove by and had words with a passenger in another car. All
agree that Myesha was not in the dispute and was not the
intended victim, but Myesha was shot twice, one in the head and
once in the leg, sitting in a car full of girls. My heart
started aching then and I do not think it will ever stop. When
I arrived at the hospital Myesha was dead.
Anyone with a teenage child knows that a gun in the house
will almost be impossible to keep from a teenager. There is a
saying, you can run but you cannot hide. You can hide guns and
lock them up, but if someone can get to it, a teenager can. I
know there are people who would think a gun in their home would
protect them. But anyone who knows our city knows that our guns
are more likely to be pulled out and used to cause tragedies in
our homes and streets.
A gun caused a tremendous tragedy in my family. The last
thing I would want this city to do is to have more guns, legal
or illegal, in homes or in the streets. Please, Congress, do
not pass this legislation to repeal our gun laws.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Lowe follows:]
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Chairman Davis. Thank you very much.
This has been a very, very interesting hearing. Part of it,
I think we see the cultural divide in this country in terms of
how people view guns, people's rights to own them. To me, the
ultimate question I think is, however you feel about it, who
should be making the decisions: should they be made locally or
do they get made nationally?
Dr. Lott put up some very interesting statistics. Of
course, I am reminded that statistics can show anything. But is
there anything that can show statistically how this has reduced
crime? The interesting thing to me is are there any facts that
we can show that have shown that preventing guns legally in the
city has reduced crime? Because according to Dr. Lott's
statistics, it has actually gone up, and I have seen that used
before. It is kind of counter-intuitive that it would work that
way.
But the committee would be very interested in looking at
that, and we will ask the police chief as well. A lot of this
is I guess I would say intuitive in terms of what it would
mean. But I thought those statistics were interesting at least
in terms of putting a case together.
I am not sure how relevant they are because crime is
dependent on so many different things than just do you own a
gun or not. You look at when crack cocaine hit the city, the
crime rate went up, and that did not have anything to do with
guns. But I would be interested if anybody has any statistics,
not today, and we will ask the police chief at the same time
for that and see what he can produce on that.
Mr. Levy, let me ask you. I have not followed the court
suit. Where is that at this point? Because ultimately, if it is
a second amendment question, Congress is not going to decide
it, it is going to be decided in the courts. I think your point
is you want to pick the best case you can and take it up the
ladder and the courts will ultimately decide if cities have the
right to do that, not just the District of Columbia, but all
the other cities that have passed these bans on handguns. Is
that correct?
Mr. Levy. That is correct. There were two cases involved,
parallel cases. In the Seegars v. Ashcroft case, the trial
court Judge Walton dismissed the Seegars case holding that none
of the plaintiffs has standing to challenge the D.C. handgun
ban. One of the plaintiffs who owned a shotgun had standing to
challenge another portion of the D.C. law.
But Judge Walton found that the second amendment did not
protect an individual right to keep and bear arms. On appeal,
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit determined that
none of the plaintiffs has standing in the Seegars case. So
that case has been resolved and dismissed on June 21st, just 1
week ago. We do not know whether the Seegars plaintiffs will
seek to obtain certiorari at the Supreme Court level.
The parallel case is the one that I spoke about, and that
is Parker v. District of Columbia. Even though it was filed 4
months before the Seegars case, it was resolved by the District
Court later by Judge Sullivan. He found that the Parker
plaintiffs were not protected because, again like Judge Walton,
he found that the second amendment did not secure an individual
right to keep and bear arms. That has been appealed to the D.C.
Circuit. The D.C. Circuit put that case on hold until the
Seegars case was resolved. One week ago today the Seegars case
was resolved and dismissed. And so now the Parker case is front
and center.
The Parker plaintiffs, we think, will have standing and so
the D.C. Circuit will address this case on the Constitutional
merits. The Parker plaintiffs were told that they would, in
fact, be prosecuted by the D.C. government at oral argument in
the trial court. So standing is likely to be conferred and the
D.C. Circuit is likely to issue a merits-based opinion on the
second amendment very soon.
Chairman Davis. Why do you think there has not been more
litigation like Shelly Parker's suit over restrictive gun laws?
Mr. Levy. In D.C.?
Chairman Davis. Everywhere. This is a case of the city's
right to do it, I guess there are probably some nuances with
the city, but in any city being able to ban them outright.
Ultimately, this is a second amendment decision that should not
be resolved legislatively, it ought to be resolved
Constitutionally.
Mr. Levy. I think a couple of points in that regard. One of
which is that D.C. has the most draconian gun laws in the
Nation. So one would expect that the suits most likely to
succeed would be the ones here in D.C.
A second issue is a complicated legal issue, and that is
the issue of incorporation. The 14th amendment has incorporated
a number of the Bill of Rights provisions to apply against the
States. Prior to the 14th amendment, the Bill of Rights only
applied against the Federal Government. Most of the Bill of
Rights provisions have been assessed as to whether or not they
are incorporated. The verdict is still out on whether the
second amendment has been incorporated.
So not only in other States than D.C. would you be faced
with a merits determination on the second amendment, but you
would also be faced with the issue of whether the second
amendment even applies against States. You do not have to
address that issue in D.C. D.C., not being a State for purposes
of the 14th amendment, the incorporation issue is a non-issue.
So you can bring a second amendment challenge in D.C. without
concern over incorporation problems.
Chairman Davis. I think we actually heard some very cogent
arguments from everybody today in terms of whether this works
or does not work. But I guess where I come down is that is
ultimately up to the voters of the city to make that decision.
If you are out in Shenandoah County or out in rural Virginia,
they are going to make one decision.
But in cities that are plagued by high crime, the elected
officials, and this has been pretty uniform, and the elected
officials in Washington too, you do not find a lot of urban
Members opposing gun control laws. It seems to be kind of a
cultural phenomena depending to some extent on where you live.
But here is my difficulty. Washington, D.C. does not get a
vote in Congress. We are spending billions of dollars to bring
democracy to Baghdad, to other parts of the world, and then
here we do not allow a vote even in the House for the Nation's
Capital, if you will, which is the Capitol of democracy. And
when the local officials make decisions we do not give them
sometimes the kind of respect and rule that we would in other
city in the United States as well, which kind of compounds it.
And if you want democracy ultimately to be successful here,
you have to hold elected officials accountable. That means a
high crime rate, let the people in the city hold them
accountable and let them sort that out. Cities are going to
come to different conclusions the way they deal with that.
The city has a lot of laws on the books that I am not happy
about, particularly the cell phone law that they have gotten in
terms of when you are driving. But my feeling always has been
that if it does not interfere with the operations of
government, that you let the people make those decisions and
that is just kind of the way it is.
Mr. Levy. May I comment on that, Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Davis. Sure. Yes, please.
Mr. Levy. I think the issue of whether or not the District
has a vote in Congress is quite a separate issue and need not
impinge upon this issue as to whether or not the District
government is now violating the second amendment. The very
nature of a Constitutional republic is----
Chairman Davis. Correct. That is on a Constitutional basis
and that is why getting it resolved in the court is different.
I do not disagree with you on that. But, of course, what we are
talking about today is a legislative solution and a legislation
solution that applies just to this city and just to the one
city in the United States, that happens to be the capital of
the free world, that does not have it, which makes me, at least
from my perspective, more reluctant to try to engage in it from
a legislative position regardless of the merits.
Mr. Levy. The position of the Federal Government in regard
to enforcing rights violations against the States was changed
in 1868 when the 14th amendment was ratified. After 1868 the
Federal Government had every right to step in and stop the
States from violating provisions of the U.S. Constitution. That
is what the civil rights cases were all about.
Chairman Davis. But we have not stepped in with any other
cities. This is not the only city with a gun ban. There are
other cities in the country that have them.
Mr. Levy. It is the city with the most draconian gun ban in
the Nation.
Chairman Davis. I think if you look at some of the suburban
Illinois cities, they also have it. You could pass I guess a
conceal and carry law nationally, you could pass I guess a
national law on that basis. But if you can do it nationally one
way, you could probably legislate it the other way as well. But
I understand your argument. But understand, this is just one
Member's perspective, my reluctance, whatever you might think
about the merits of this thing, to pass a hurdle here where we
would impose nationally, 435 Members impose their will on a
city that has elected officials.
Now, I understand that within the city there is always some
controversy on these amendments. And the city would have the
right, by the way, to change this if the Council wanted to
change it, and that would be the right of members here who
advocate gun ownership rights to elect council members and
Mayors who take an opposite view, if that is what they choose
to do. We would respect that and I would feel the same way,
that you kind of respect the ability and the rights of the city
to make that decision.
Ms. Seegars, did you want to say something?
Ms. Seegars. I hear everything you are saying, but D.C. is
unlike anyplace else in the country or in the world. We have a
representative there who is basically a lobbyist for us. When
she gets a vote, then you can say all those things about D.C.
and other States and it will apply to us. Right now, with no
vote, that does not apply to us. And we do plan to take the
case to the Supreme Court.
Chairman Davis. I agree. But she is an effective lobbyist.
Ms. Seegars. She does fairly well. No, she is good.
Chairman Davis. Even when she goes down, she goes down
fighting. I can testify to that.
Ms. Seegars. She sure does.
Chairman Davis. I have a couple other questions, if I could
get to them before I hand it over to Ms. Norton.
Ms. Seegars, let me just ask you, do you think that
repealing the handgun ban would encourage D.C. residents to
take the law into their own hands? Or do you think it would
just be used by law-abiding citizens to defend themselves?
Ms. Seegars. I believe it will stop the criminals from
attacking us. I believe that we, the law-abiding citizens, as I
am, I do not think we will just run out in the street and start
shooting people. I think we will use it in our homes. And yes,
we do plan to take this case to the Supreme Court.
If you look at other cities in other States, they do not
run out on the street and shoot people for no reason. So I do
not think we would be so stupid as to go out and start shooting
people.
Chairman Davis. Mr. Lott, let me ask, you had your stats up
there, murders, rapes, and robberies have all declined the last
couple of years.
Mr. Lott. Correct.
Chairman Davis. The gun ban of course predated that. Do you
think these recent numbers could be indicative of a long-term
decline in the crime rate in the city?
Mr. Lott. We have been seeing a drop nationally in violent
crime. There have been increases in arrest and conviction
rates, and I think those are important in helping to explain
it.
Chairman Davis. Do you think the gun ban effectively keeps
dangerous weapons out of the hands of criminals?
Mr. Lott. I think it keeps the guns out of the hands of
some criminals. But I think it has a relatively bigger effect
in terms of disarming law-abiding citizens relative to
criminals. And the net effect of that is to actually lower the
cost for the criminals committing crimes.
Chairman Davis. Is it your opinion, and I guess it would be
Mr. Levy's opinion, that the right to bear arms is one that
belongs to individuals, not just members of the militia?
Mr. Lott. I am a statistician. I will leave the law
questions to others.
Chairman Davis. All right. You are a numbers guy.
Would you agree with that, Mr. Levy?
Mr. Levy. Well it is not just Mr. Levy's opinion. I think
it is important to note that it is the opinion of most legal
scholars now. Here is Alan Dershowitz, former ACLU board
member, who says he hates guns and he wants to see the second
amendment repealed. But he condemns ``foolish liberals who are
trying to read the second amendment out of the Constitution by
claiming it is not an individual right. They are courting
disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to
eliminate portions of the Constitution that they don't like.''
Harvard's Laurence Tribe, another liberal icon, who in his
latest treatise on Constitutional law, joined by Yale's
professor Akhil Amar, writing that ``reasonable regulation in
the interest of public safety'' is permissible but that there
is an indisputable individual right to keep and bear arms. I
think Tribe and Amar, and Dershowitz, and I can name dozens and
dozens of other respected legal scholars, they agree with
Attorney General Ashcroft and they agree with the Fifth Circuit
Court of Appeals in the case of U.S. v. Emerson that there is
an individual right, not a collective right.
The only thing they disagree on is what constitutes
reasonable regulation; that is, where do you draw the line. One
place we know we are not do draw the line, and that is where
D.C. has drawn it, where there is an absolute ban on handguns,
even in your own home for your own family's defense.
Chairman Davis. OK. But the courts have not ruled on that.
Mr. Levy. The appellate court has not ruled. It is pending
now and we hope for a ruling sometime soon.
Chairman Davis. And that decision was not successful at the
lower court, correct?
Mr. Levy. The lower court ruled in favor of a collective
right, not an individual right. The appellate court of course
reviews this de novo; that is, this is strictly a matter of
law, it is not fact-dependent. The appellate court will look at
this from scratch.
Chairman Davis. Sure. I think this works its way up.
Mr. Peck, what would be the economic impact on tourism if
the gun ban is repealed? Do you see any economic impact at this
point? Is it a perception issue, or is it a real issue?
Mr. Peck. It is mostly a perception issue. As I said in my
testimony, I think our fear, were this law to pass, would be
just to highlight again for people what is an unfair
characterization of the city as an unsafe place to be. We
market this region around the country and around the world and
we are still fighting perceptions from 20 years ago about
crime.
The fact is, on an economic basis, aside from, and I say
that advisedly because it should never be aside from, the
personal tragedies that happen with gun play in this city,
there is an impact on even the areas of the city that we can
prove statistically are safe because people do not make those
kinds of distinctions.
And I will say this, it is not just an impact on the city,
it is an impact on the whole region. When the city had a
reputation for being unsafe, not being well-governed, not
handling its infrastructure well, it had an impact on the
economy of the entire region.
Chairman Davis. Thank you very much. Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to particularly thank all of today's witnesses for
staying so long. You see the way the Congress operates. There
is nothing that any of us can do about the fact that votes come
and people have to go and do them, or at least most people do.
I want to thank all of you. All of you have presented important
testimony for us to hear. I have only a few questions for each
of you.
Ms. Lowe, I cannot bear to ask you any questions. I just
think we have to let your testimony stand for itself. It would
break my heart to ask you any questions. I can only thank you
for having the courage to come here and speak out.
Chairman Davis. Let me just associate myself with those
remarks, and we appreciate that very much.
Ms. Norton. Reverend Edmonds, just let me compliment the
work of the Washington Interfaith Network. It is the most
extraordinary community organization in our town, where the
ministers from around this region, from congregations White and
Black and Hispanic, work together on the toughest issues--
housing, after school, in the most extraordinary set of
organizations that really force elected officials to come to
bear with issues. It is quite an extraordinary organization
that I tremendously admire.
You are pastor of a church near Dunbar High School where I
went to school, Myesha was on her way. This is in a hard core
part of the District of Columbia, hard core.
Pastor Edmonds. Yes.
Ms. Norton. Where the District had to go in with lots of
resources to clear out folks with guns. You also are a member
of ministerial organizations in the District. Where do
ministers of the gospel, ministers in our city stand on the gun
laws in our city, so far as you know? Do they support the gun
laws, or would they support repeal?
Pastor Edmonds. From my perspective and position, I do not
know of any minister who would want to see the gun laws in the
District repealed. To us, that is an appeal to the lower
instincts in man. And when I hear the conversation and the
argument to repeal the gun laws, to me as a minister, it is an
attraction to the base elements in us that seek to resolve
issues by violence, retribution.
I could go to a young person's funeral each week, I could
conduct a funeral each week due to gunfire, due to some type of
weapon violence. And so, in summary, I do not know of any
pastor worth his or her salt that wants to see an increase in
the accessibility of guns in the District.
Ms. Norton. Thank you. I regard you as an expert witness on
that, Reverend Edmonds.
Mr. Levy, I understand and appreciate that at least you
want to step aside until the Parker case is resolved. You and
the NRA have a beef on your competing lawsuits going in various
ways, all on the second amendment. You opine that our laws are,
``indisputably unConstitutional.'' Well, fortunately we have
courts for that. I guess I have to repair you to the courts.
You have argued the case here and your lawyers will argue it
there.
I only note for the record that, for whatever reasons, you
and Ms. Seegars have lost below. And to the extent that you
want to argue, and here you are speaking also, sir, to a
Constitutional lawyer, to the extent that you want to argue
that you did not lose on the merits but on some other matter,
such as standing, may I say to you that it is the obligation of
courts to avoid reaching the Constitutional issue if they can
sidestep it by going to another issue.
So the only answer we can get for you is the answer you are
seeking in the proper forum. Having lost below, you are now at
the next court. You will go to the Supreme Court. Good luck.
There is very definitive language at the Supreme Court level
about the second amendment.
I want to therefore move on to Mr. Lott, who tells us that
a woman even would be better when attacked if she had a gun in
her hand, safest course of action. Let me just ask you, Mr.
Lott, do you oppose the assault weapon ban that Congress has
not reenacted? Would you oppose that?
And I am sure you were in the room when Mr. Waxman held up
the gun, life-size, that could be sold in the District of
Columbia now that there is no assault weapon ban and presumably
therefore could be legally owned. Would you therefore sanction
the ownership of assault weapons in the District of Columbia
today?
Mr. Lott. Assault weapons is a made-up term.
Ms. Norton. AK-47s, M-16s. You name it what you want to
call it that sounds better. Would you in fact sanction the
ownership of such guns as, call it what you want to, Mr. Waxman
held up in the District of Columbia in homes owned by law-
abiding citizens in the District of Columbia?
Mr. Lott. When you use the term AK-47, that is not----
Ms. Norton. Answer the question outright, Mr. Lott, and
call it what you want to.
Mr. Lott. OK. I do think the assault weapons ban made no
sense. I think it had no beneficial impact in terms of crime. I
think, if anything, it just imposed costs on some law-abiding
citizens. But I know of no statistical study that has been
done, nothing that has been published in any academic journal
that shows there has been any benefit in terms of reduction in
crime with the assault weapons ban.
Ms. Norton. I just want to be clear. All I want to do is to
be clear, as you are aware, this is an area, a high terrorist
target, I just wanted to have it on the record.
Mr. Lott. Sure.
Ms. Norton. And you have been honest and you have been
clear. I just want to go now to your own statistics where you
compare, first of all, States. I am really wondering about your
statistics and causation.
For example, you compare the District of Columbia to
Virginia and Maryland. Not only are these huge jurisdictions,
Maryland has one large city like the District of Columbia. One
might want to compare the District of Columbia to Baltimore.
Virginia has maybe one, that would be Richmond, like the
District of Columbia. Meanwhile, Maryland has jurisdictions
like Montgomery County, one of the richest counties in the
United States, and Virginia has Fairfax and other of the
richest counties in the United States.
Chairman Davis. Wealthier than Montgomery, for the record.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Norton. Therefore, I am questioning your statistics.
Did you control, because I could see nothing in the text of
your testimony, that controlled for concentrated poverty? In as
much as the data shows that Census tracts with high poverty are
where the crime rose in the District of Columbia, from 36 to 44
tracts. That is to say, as the tracts of poverty increased,
this figure from 1976 also increased.
I am a native Washingtonian. When I was born and raised in
the District of Columbia it was a largely middle class city,
Black and White. Like every other city, the middle class moved
out, except for some of us. My own sister, who also went to
Dunbar High School with me, raised her sons in Montgomery
County. Did your study, which compared us to two of the richest
States that surround us, control for concentration of poverty
when you compared us to Maryland and Virginia?
Mr. Lott. I have two books, one published by the University
of Chicago Press, that are the largest studies that have been
done on crime. I have data in those that look at the 10,000
largest cities in the United States as well as all the counties
in the United States over a 24 year period of time, where I
literally control for thousands of different factors. I have
detailed information----
Ms. Norton. What I am asking is, look, you cannot put
testimony before us and----
Mr. Lott. Right. All I tried to do----
Ms. Norton. If you want me to quote from your testimony, I
am going to quote from your testimony.
Mr. Lott. Sure.
Chairman Davis. Let him answer.
Ms. Norton. But he is now going into his books, Mr.
Chairman. My question is----
Mr. Lott. All I tried to do in these----
Ms. Norton. Much larger than the changes in neighboring
Maryland and Virginia. You come in here with it, I have a right
to cross examine you on it.
Mr. Lott. Right. All I tried to do for those things is just
in a very simple way just show how the crime rate in D.C. has
been changing, mainly just to show that it has not fallen. It
has gone up, if anything, in these simple things that you can
do there.
Now I have books where I try to control for lots of factors
in regression analysis over a long period of time looking at
all the jurisdictions in the United States, control for
poverty, different measures of income, multiple demographic
type measures that are there. And what you find is that the
stricter the gun control laws that you have, you see increases
in violent crime.
Ms. Norton. Mr. Lott, I asked you a simple question. You
answered my first question. I asked you that in offering us
this sentence, ``These drops and subsequent increases were much
larger [here] than any changes in neighboring Maryland and
Virginia,'' I simply asked you whether you controlled for
poverty?
Mr. Lott. No, I do not. But I am saying that I have done
that in other places where I have gone--I just did not want to
go into regression analysis----
Ms. Norton. I would just ask you to do it here as well. I
would just appreciate it.
Finally, I must say to you, Mr. Lott, because I think it
needs to go on the record, I am going to read from a Washington
Post article, since, as you have said, you are only a
statistician, I am going to read from it because I think it is
relevant in evaluating your testimony. ``Lott's greatest fan
and defender online, Mary Rosh, a former student of Lott's, has
jousted online for 3 years against Lott's harshest critics who
have bitterly attacked his research and data which he says show
gun ownership deters crime. Rosh said Lott taught her at the
University of Pennsylvania in the early 1990's and was `the
best professor that I ever had, would try to take any class he
taught'.''
I am not even going to read all of this. He posted an
effusive review of his books on the Amazon.com site, giving it
the highest five star rating. It was signed Mary Rosh. Mary
Rosh was not real. She was actually John R. Lott, Jr. That was
you.
Mr. Lott. There are multiple mistakes in that piece.
Ms. Norton. Mistakes? It was an intentional--it is
something that an academic, someone with a Ph.D. should have
known better than to do.
Chairman Davis. Well, let him explain it. Do you want to
explain it or say anything about it?
Mr. Lott. Yes. I have to go through things. The reviews,
the books that you are talking about was one review. The
account was my children's account. My four sons' names are
Maxim, Ryan, Roger, and Shirlin. And you take the first two
letters of those and my wife set up an e-mail account. And the
book review was done by my son. It was not done by me. He had
shown me the review but it was not anything that he had done
that was--you know, it was just a son writing a review of his
dad's book that was posted there and he just used the e-mail
address that was there because that was the one that my wife
had set up for him to go and use.
With regard to the other things, I did use that e-mail
address for postings in Internet chat rooms. But the things
that were there that were done were based upon some facts. So I
was just referring to a graduate class that I had taught where
I had gotten perfect evaluations in the class and what some
people had said.
So some of the things are taken out of context there, and
other things are just wrong as to ascribing who was writing
what, when.
Ms. Norton. Well Mary Rosh did not exist. I think we ought
to leave it there because apparently you said, ``We should not
have done it.''
Let me go on to Ms. Seegars. There are only two more
witnesses. I want to be able to ask everybody who is left a
question. Ms. Seegars is a good friend in the prayer circle.
You cannot have 100 percent of anybody.
Actually, Sandra Seegars is a wonderful community activist,
a good friend who does a lot of good work in the District of
Columbia for the people of the District of Columbia in the
toughest ward. She deserves to be heard, even when she is as
wrong as she is today, because she has earned the right to come
forward, and when she wants to challenge us she has gone into
court.
I have to ask, Ms. Seegars, were you born in the District
of Columbia?
Ms. Seegars. I was born in Alexandria but I have lived in
D.C. since I was 3.
Ms. Norton. Do you believe in Home Rule for the District of
Columbia?
Ms. Seegars. Sometimes.
Ms. Norton. Oh. Would you explain yourself?
Ms. Seegars. I believe in Home Rule when we have a
Representative that will stick to Federal levels instead of
butting in and out of local levels when they feel it necessary.
So, yes and no.
Ms. Norton. Well, this is a Federal level, is it not,
because the Congress of the United States is trying to pass
this law.
Ms. Seegars. But when you came over to ward 8, about 30
people were there when the lady was called ``White trash,'' you
were all up in that and it was very local. And so to me, you
cannot have it both ways. So my answer is, yes and no.
Ms. Norton. First of all, Ms. Seegars, if you want to
change the subject, I want to proudly say that if anybody wants
to use a racial epithet against anyone Black or White, Jew or
gentile, I will rise up and criticize that person. But let us
get to what the Congress has control of. You say you are for
Home Rule. Do you think the Congress of the United States, you
are going to court now, that is fair game, but do you think the
Congress of the United States should repeal this or any other
law of the District of Columbia?
Ms. Seegars. By us not being a State, and by us only having
the top official as a Mayor, yes.
Ms. Norton. So you then believe that democracy should not
be the rule here? That the 600,000 people here are not entitled
to the same democracy that they would be entitled to if they
continued to live in Alexandria, where you were born?
Ms. Seegars. We are not entitled to a whole bunch of things
in D.C. That is why I need to move back to Alexandria. There
are a lot of things we are not entitled to. We do not have a
Governor, we do not have Senators, we do not have any of that.
So I believe it is a Constitutional matter and I believe that
Federal is in charge of the Constitution. I think the elected
officials, I voted for none of them, are not representing me
properly.
Ms. Norton. At least you got to vote for them and you can
take them out. You cannot vote for anybody sitting up here
except me, and I cannot vote.
Chairman Davis. If she moves out to Virginia, she might be
able to.
Ms. Seegars. I will say that I have gone to Mr. Davis and
got some successful results.
Ms. Norton. Well, we are very pleased for that. Let us see
if you will get some successful results from the Congress of
the United States when they decide that they want to do
whatever they want to do for the District of Columbia.
Let me move on to this bill. I notice in your testimony
that you are for a whole set of things that are not in this
bill--criminal background check, completion of a firearms
training course, even periodic review by the police department
or some other authorized entity into seeing whether or not the
handgun owner has fired his weapon or anything. In as much as
none of that is in the bill pending before us, I take it that
you oppose the bill pending before us.
Ms. Seegars. No. That is when the local officials can step
in and write laws accordingly. Once it is repealed, then the
local officials can write that.
Ms. Norton. If you want it repealed, why do you not just
get us to write it, since you want us to repeal it?
Ms. Seegars. Can you? Will you?
Ms. Norton. Of course. We can rewrite everything in the
District of Columbia law.
Ms. Seegars. I understand what you are saying, Ms. Norton.
I understand full well what you are saying. But sometimes we
have to step over something to get to what we want. Right now,
I am willing to step over the elected officials in the city to
get this, because I want to be able to protect myself and my
home. I really do. I would like to have a handgun, a loaded
handgun so if somebody comes up to my house in Southeast
Washington I can shoot them. That is what I do believe.
Ms. Norton. I understand, Ms. Seegars. Let me just say,
before I go on to Mr. Peck, that one of the reasons that I have
credibility when I go on the floor to defend Home Rule is I
have to tell Members of Congress that whether or not I would
agree with a law of the District of Columbia, then I give them
the one I most disagree with. And that law is one, by the way,
our ministers, I think, were instrumental in defeating, and
that is I would most disagree if the District Council decided
to impose the death penalty in the District of Columbia.
Ms. Seegars. I am for that.
Ms. Norton. Excuse me. I have conscientious objections and
I have other objections based on the efficacy of the death
penalty.
But let me just say this for the record in light of your
selective view of Home Rule, when you are for it and when you
are not. If the Council passes a law imposing the death penalty
on the District of Columbia, as a matter of principle I would
feel that I would have to as ardently argue that Congress could
not step in as I do on bills that I favor. I just want to tell
you, I have you in a prayer circle, so I want you to just think
about it, whether one can selectively be for Home Rule.
Mr. Peck, finally, Board of Trade here is a Regional Board
of Trade. Let me ask you this, what does the region have to do
with it? Why would the Regional Board of Trade be against
repeal of our gun laws?
Mr. Peck. I can give you two reasons. One is, as I have
tried to express, the economic health of this region depends,
as we have learned and can show over some business cycles now,
on the economic and social health of the District of Columbia.
So we have a concern, we in fact have a specific objective in
our policy agenda of supporting measures that would fight
crime.
Specifically in that, we decided that since we are not
great experts at this, we support police efforts. Not
uncritically. We have gone to Chief Ramsey and suggested more
vigorous patrolling, which he has done, but we generally
support what the police chiefs think is best in their
jurisdictions.
We believe, as I have said, that this perception out there
that the District is an unsafe place will hurt the District
first, but, by definition, the entire region. It is like
pebbles in a pond and it spreads out. Or like I say sometimes,
we have a very vibrant economy also in Fairfax County in Reston
and Tyson's Corner, but when you go around to the rest of the
country or go around the world and say you want people to do
business in the Washington area, you are talking about the
Washington area.
Second, we believe fundamentally, and this is a change I
have to tell you from where the Board of Trade was 30 years
ago, that Home Rule is a good thing. And if you believe in Home
Rule, and what I am talking about now is a locally elected body
that gets to make the laws and decide what happens with, for
example, the money that is raised on business people in the
District of Columbia and then spent in the District of
Columbia, that we are prepared to rise and fall, win and lose
on locally elected officials for our laws.
Ms. Norton. I thank you for that, Mr. Peck. I note for the
record as well that our tourist industry is a regional cash cow
for the neighboring regional counties as well.
The final question for Mr. Parker.
Mr. Peck. May I say one more thing. I want to explain why I
took umbrage before at what people were saying about the
District of Columbia. It is this, No. 1, we are benefited by
the presence of the Federal Government in many ways. We are not
adequately compensated for all the services that we give, but
we are benefited in all kinds of things--free museums, 40
percent of the regional economic product comes one way or
another out of the Federal Government. So I say that.
But you know what, no other city is subject to scrutiny by
the national legislature for what is going on inside its
jurisdiction or we would have an awful lot of cities and
districts all over here who we could up at a table with
witnesses and question their policies, question what they are
doing. I would love to ask some other cities why their
economies are not doing as well as ours. But we do not get to
do that.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Peck. My goodness, those are
important words.
Final question to Mr. Parker. Mr. Parker, everybody I think
had to listen very closely to what you had to say. There are
different ways to bring credibilities to the table, but you
bring it in the hardest, perhaps most important way because you
bring it from all sides--you now work with ex-offenders, you
yourself are an ex-offender, used a gun. I am not sure you
testified about this, but I know that you lost a son to
gunfire.
Mr. Parker. Absolutely.
Ms. Norton. Therefore, I said I regarded Pastor Edmonds as
an expert witness on where the pastors of this city would be on
gun repeal, I certainly regard you as an expert witness on the
question I am about to ask you. This bill would assume that a
person who could get a gun would have to be himself a person
who did not have the kind of record you had. You could not get
a gun probably under this bill. So it would have to be a law-
abiding person; that is to say a person without a conviction
record.
I want to ask you what harm it would do in light of the ex-
offenders with whom you work? I am assuming a scenario where an
ex-offender comes back home, and we know the thousands that are
coming back now, I am assuming that he does not have a place to
live, I am assuming that he certainly does not have a job,
because we are making jobs very well but we also have high
unemployment with people who do not have any record.
Mr. Parker. Absolutely.
Ms. Norton. I am assuming he is going to stay with
somebody. I am assuming he is going to stay with his mother or
his girlfriend or his uncle. And now assume that law-abiding
person probably living in a part of the city where there is a
fair amount of crime, because those might be the people most
likely to have guns, I am assuming for purposes of this
hypothetical situation that this law-abiding person has a gun
in the home. I would like for you to describe what you think
would happen as far as the ex-offenders coming back to the city
and finding themselves in a home now with a gun.
Mr. Parker. Well, there is an old saying that they often
utilize with that population, and it goes like, ``I prefer to
be in jail broke than on the street with no money.'' And when
you look at it from the perspective that a large number of the
returning brothers and sisters are looking at in comparison to
being able to obtain employment, to a degree of actually having
a dream that they would like to manifest but not having the
necessary means to, they would primarily take almost any means
necessary to be able to obtain some of the things that they
wish to obtain.
And this particular population here I think is actually
confronted with a number of serious challenges. As you made
mention in regards to employment, how competitive that actually
is, even with individuals that do not have a prison record.
When you look at the environment today pertaining to these men
and women that are returning home, I have heard numbers of
500,000 and 600,000 people, basically the same equivalency of
the city of the District of Columbia, that are coming back and
just do not have the means to actually make a transformation
into the everyday way of life. It is a challenge within itself.
I do not think that the environment that we are talking
about creating will actually be anything for the good in
regards to working with this particular population, or for the
city as a whole. I think that we are confronting with some very
serious challenges. I heard my good friend, Mr. Peck, who
primarily deals with the business aspects of the city, I think
if we can begin to get the business community to the table in
the sense of employment for this particular population and look
at it from the perspective of redemption in the highest sense,
in which it may not occur.
But to answer your question, long story short, I think from
that perspective that this would be a very serious challenge
for us.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Parker.
May I say, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the way you have let
this hearing go on. I know we have one more person who wants to
ask a question. Mr. Parker, we do have a period of time during
which people who get out of prison are tested for drugs? We do
not have any way to test them for guns that may be in the home.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Davis. Thank you. Ms. Watson.
Ms. Watson. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
To everyone here, I want to apologize to all of you for the
disparaging remarks made by my colleagues to the first panel. I
think that both our Mayor here in Washington, DC, and our
police chief, Mr. Ramsey, have done an honorable job in trying
to protect the citizens of this district. I think you heard him
say if we could combine--I think it was Mr. Lott who said you
have more law enforcement officers here than anywhere in the
country, and that is true, but they have their responsibilities
and their assignments. If they could all work on street crime
and, as the chief said, answer the call when it comes in to
911, we probably would see crime go flat.
Let me say this, I am very, very sensitive to guns in homes
because my cousin, 6 years old, was the first victim of a
loaded gun. It was in his house, somebody had it in his house,
the young man who shot him, and here comes little Leonard
looking in the screen window and the 14-year-older said, let me
show you how this gun works. My aunt, his aunt was upstairs and
she heard the gunshot and ran down and he was still quivering
with his brain shot out. So ever since then, I do not want guns
in any home.
I want Mr. Lott to tell me how lifting this ban against
guns will stop the drive-by shooters; how lifting this ban
against guns will protect the innocent on the streets. I see it
every day. I speak of what I know, not what I am experiencing
here in Washington. I just want to know how by putting guns in
the hands of law-abiding citizens, you are going to restrict
them to protecting their homes? How are you going to stop the
violence that comes from a gun when it is on the street? Can
you respond.
Mr. Lott. Yes, guns do make it easier for bad things to
happen. But they also make it easier for people to protect
themselves to prevent bad things from happening. Criminals like
to go after victims that they perceive as being relatively
weak.
Ms. Watson. Reclaiming my time. Are you saying that we
should arm everyone with a gun and let us have these shootouts?
Suppose the person who is coming to do harm to a home runs on
the street. Should the homeowner be allowed to run out there
and shoot him, when we have traffic, when we have children
coming from schools? If we lift the ban against guns, how do we
control their use when they are on the streets? And I am going
to give you another question that you can respond to.
Mr. Lott. Am I going to be able to answer this one?
Ms. Watson. Let me just finish with my second question and
then you can respond.
Chairman Davis. But we do not control the guns now. That is
one of the problems. You have the laws, but that is why we have
had some of the issues. But go ahead, Ms. Watson.
Ms. Watson. Let me reclaim my time and then you can respond
to both. They reference the second amendment. I have read it
over and over again. I was on the judiciary committee in my
State of California for 17 years and the NRA had a seat in
those chambers. I have looked at the second amendment. Is the
word ``militia'' in that?
Mr. Lott. You would like me to answer both questions now?
Ms. Watson. Yes. Is the word ``militia'' in there, yes or
no?
Mr. Lott. Yes.
Ms. Watson. OK. And I have interpreted the second amendment
as saying in regards to a militia, citizens have the right to
bear arms. I asked professors at Harvard and all around and
said would you interpret this for me, and it arguably states
that it is related to a militia. So tell me in response, how do
you read the second amendment? And then also tell me how you
see repealing this law that bans guns will make people in this
city safe?
Mr. Lott. OK, and I will take them in the order you want. I
am not a lawyer. I have taught at law schools; I have taught at
the University of Chicago Law School, and I was at Yale as a
research scholar for a couple of years. I can tell you what
those scholars who look at this tell me, and basically it is
that there is a clause there that says the ``right of the
people,'' and the other parts of the Constitution that refer to
the right of the people mean it as an individual right, whether
you are talking about the first or the 14th amendment. And that
is the second part of the clause there in the second amendment.
So that is basically my knowledge of the issue.
Now on the other question you are asking, I feel more
knowledgeable to try to talk about. And that is, the concerns
that you raise are concerns that have been addressed over and
over again in States that have right to carry laws. You are
talking about people carrying guns outside their homes. You
have 37 States, including Virginia next door here, that allow
citizens, with certain basis requirements, to go and carry
concealed handguns. You have another nine States that have more
restrictive rules but still also, including California, still
allow some citizens to carry concealed handguns. A county like
Orange County, which obviously is not the same as Los Angeles,
issues a lot of permits.
The types of concerns that you are raising about people
acting irresponsibly is just not something you observe. These
people lose their permits for any reason, in hundreds or
thousands of 1 percentage point, and most of those times are
due to something like people accidentally carrying a gun into a
restricted area like an airport. You can go to Web sites for
the Department of Public Safety with Texas, or the Secretary of
State in Florida, they have very detailed data on their Web
sites on how many citizens have been given permits, and the
rate at which they have lost them for different types of
reasons.
For example in Florida, you are talking about over 800,000
people have been granted permits since permits started being
granted in October 1987, and over that period of time you have
had something like 152 have lost their permits for any type of
firearms related violation, and virtually all of those have
been for one type of violation, and that is carrying a gun
accidentally into a restricted area like an airport or a
school. Not that those people are causing any harm or
representing any threat, when you have that many people over a
long 20 year period of time you are going to have some hundreds
of 1 percent which are going to forget every once in awhile
when they are in a hurry that they have the gun with them. That
is basically the type of case that you have there.
Ms. Watson. My time is up. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Davis. Thank you, Ms. Watson. I want to thank the
panel.
Let me ask Mr. Lott just one last question. From your
observation, if anybody else wants to answer also, when you had
conceal and carry laws in States, has there been a rise in gun
violence?
Mr. Lott. No. It has gone down. In fact, you have seen an
even bigger drop in gun violence than you have seen drops in
violent crime generally. Each additional year that these laws
existed.
Chairman Davis. How do you explain that?
Mr. Lott. Well I think what you see happening is that
criminals, if they come across somebody who has a gun, their
desire is to leave the area; go and live another day and try to
get another victim.
But I think what is happening here is criminals do not know
until they actually go and attack somebody whether that person
is going to be able to defend themselves or not, and that goes
to protect individuals who would never even think of carrying a
concealed handgun. You have also seen drops in deaths of police
officers after these types of laws have been done, in part I
think it is because you see fewer criminals carrying guns. They
realize the types of examples that the chief was giving earlier
about what happens if you run into a situation where a criminal
has a gun and the victim has a gun.
There is a big difference when the criminal starts to use a
gun, OK? He would rather not have to get into a gun fight
because that is a murder held to you or something like that.
You look at the clearance rates, he was mentioning the
clearance rates in D.C. for murder would be about 50 percent,
that is much lower than the clearance rates for other types of
crime. So criminals respond to the fact that they not only face
a higher probability of getting caught once they go and commit
a crime like murder, but also the penalties that they face are
also much greater.
Chairman Davis. Thank you very much.
Let me thank all of our witnesses. It has been a very
useful discussion. I think we have been able to get all the
perspectives out here as Congress considers this. This has been
very, very helpful to us. I just want to thank everybody. We
have differences of opinion, I respect all and I understand
where everybody is coming from on this, and it has certainly
crystallized it for me. Thank you very much.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 7:03 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
[The prepared statements of Hon. Jon C. Porter, Hon. Diane
E. Watson and additional information submitted for the hearing
record follows:]
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