The House Maloney AR-15 Gun Hearing Today Is Big News

The House committee hearing rosy, chaired by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, on AR-15 makers, is big news. She chairs the House Oversight Committee, the House’s most powerful investigative body. Two of three ARAR
-15. CEOs accepted. That is a so-called semiautomatic. A murderer pulls the trigger and it fires on schoolchildren or whoever.

Maloney’s investigative hearings are not just exchanges of prepared speeches. The Members of Congress and their staff are tough and experienced. It will look like a trial of the gun industry. The AR-15 makers will answer for Buffalo and Uvalde

Often the AR-15 CEOs will likely answer the questions by “we don’t know.” 40,000 people die as gun deaths each year. Here is a hypothetical exchange between Committee Members and the CEOs. Committee: “Can you gunmakers give us an accounting.” Answer: “we don’t know.” Committee: “How many of your guns circulate illegally?” “We don’t know.” Q: How many young people see the horrendous advertising of your guns? “We don’t know.” Q: What percentage of your AR-15s are used for hunting and fishing. Answer: “we don’t know.”

This is a hypothetical exchange only. But it is based on many, many hearings where I have either stood behind the Chair, or even testified myself. There is a lot to ask. Estimates vary as to how many of the rifles are owned in the United States. The National Shooting Sports Foundation has estimated that approximately 5 million to 10 million AR-15 style rifles exist in the U.S. within the broader total of the 300 million firearms owned by Americans. It is said there could be 500 AR-15 style manufacturers out there, to what is shamelessly called, “meet the demand.”

The Committee has made document demands on the AR-15 CEOs. That committee can follow up with strong demands for more details.about the AR-15 manufacturers. Hypothetical Questions: “You make them and you sell them, so, shouldn’t we hold you more responsible?” Q: “Do you dispute the estimate there are approximately 5 million to 10 million AR-15-style rifles out there?” Q: “We have more guns than people in this country, isn’t that true?” This is a Committee that knows how to get and to use documents to go further and deeper than the AR-15 CEOs want.

I was General Counsel of the House of Representatives. I worked constantly with the Oversight Committee. I even went to depositions and to court for them; I was the champion in court of their work.

The Oversight Committee had subpoenas and knew how to use them, and together we could produce highest-impact subpoenas. They swore in witnesses under oath. They could catch high-level witnesses in misrepresentations and decide on criminal prosecution referrals for perjury.

One AR-15 CEO has not accepted the need to come, but is dodging the Committee and not responding to the Committee demands for testimony and its requests for documents. He has painted a bullseye on his back for a House subpoena. Writing one for a no-show like that is classic.

Their oversight jurisdiction was the broadest in the House. They could reach not only to any government agency, but to the private sector as well. A number of committees have large jurisdictions like, say, the House Natural Resources Committee, but they have only the jurisdiction of their own Committee’s defined function, not government-wide reach like the Oversight Committee. The House allows the Oversight Committee this breadth of jurisdiction precisely for instances like this: the Committee can go after AR-15 manufacturers even if other committees do not have the Oversight Committees’ powerful resources, deep experience, and very tough hearings.

They create the strong foundation for bills that may go to the House floor and pass. The ban on these semiautomatic weapons Congress enacted, and President Clinton signed, in 1994 and lasted ten years, and was carried out and never repealed, just came to its sunset.

A new House bill banning assault weapons will likely go forward. It is believed that it has the votes to pass the House. That in itself is a powerful statement. It will hold the makers of assault weapons accountable. It will reach and awaken, to what can be done, the alarmed but ready parents of children of America.