Thank you Mr. Chairman. We are engaged here in part of a strategy of stall. The leadership in this House is stalling to allow the NRA to mount another campaign to turn this Congress away from the broad national consensus on the necessity of tough, common-sense gun laws. And make no mistake. It doesn’t take the NRA long to reload.

Lewis Carroll once wrote in "Through the Looking Glass" a poem called "Jabberwocky." It was a poem of half words and half made-up words. It led to Alice, from Alice in Wonderland, to declare that it is "brilliant nonsense." And, frankly, so much of what we have heard today and so much of what we have heard in the past weeks in this House are just that.

We have heard that the leadership of this House supports the Senate legislation on gun control. Yet, days and days go by, weeks go by, and we do nothing to act upon it.

Today, as we speak here, the House of Representatives is out of session. Many of our colleagues are on planes home for the Memorial Day recess. No action has been taken.

We have heard, even just a moment ago, that there are not enough prosecutions for gun crimes. Well, in the last year of the Bush administration, 1992, there were 20,681 prosecutions for gun crimes. That number in 1997 had risen by 25 percent. 25 percent more prosecutions than there were just five years ago.

And most recently, we heard a statement saying we need more punishment, more punishment. Well, I would point out to my colleagues that the juvenile justice bill, one that has broad bi-partisan support on this committee, one that the chairman deserves great credit for crafting and the minority leader deserves great credit for as week, has been sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting for us to act upon it.

And what is this stall over? This stall is over common-sense, moderate, thoughtful, broadly supported regulations: closing the gun show loophole, limits on gun-running so you can only buy one handgun a month, raising the age for gun ownership, examining the smart technologies that allow only a gun owner to fire that gun, and making it more difficult for young people or anyone to get ahold of explosives.

So let’s not stall while Charlton Heston tells us that no new gun laws are necessary. Let’s not stall while we listen to flat-earth types like we may hear from today tell us that more guns in schools is actually good and will create safer classrooms. And let’s not stall while the radical right tells us that we are trying to abrogate the Constitution in some way. Because while we stall, all the American people hear is "Jabberwocky:" "brilliant nonsense."

We need Hollywood to help. We need parents to help. But we also need the men and women in the Congress to stop stalling and to help us do our job for the American people.

Congressman Anthony D. Weiner