Rep. Raul Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, used a Thursday morning hearing on environmental protections along the Mexican border to criticize Republicans for refusing to address gun violence in the U.S. and instead stoking fears over illegal immigration and foreign gangs.
“There is an irony today, we are at the dawning of another senseless mass murder,” while the GOP looks to stock public lands with silencers and armored piercing bullets, the Arizona Democrat said, noting the shootings at a Florida high school Wednesday, leaving at least 17 dead.
“No doubt the House will pause today, and we should, to give our condolences and prayers to the victims and the families. And there will be a lot of talk about mental health, and then we’re going to ask people to be more vigilant. But nothing else,” he added. There will be no legislative efforts to reduce gun violence, no prohibition of “bump stocks,” no universal background checks, “nothing,” Grijalva said.
Instead, the Republican majority on the House Natural Resources Committee will continue to push bills to “allow silencers on public land, to allow armor piercing ammunition, to allow lead contamination, once again, to kill wildlife,” he said.
“And then today, discussing another set of rights: the agenda that the Department of Homeland Security wants to have ultimate power to waive laws, ignore the public’s right to know, and within the hundred-mile zone … handcuff due process and basic rights and constitutional guarantees that all Americans have,” Grijalva said.
He was referring, in part, to the department’s consistent waiving of endangered species and environmental regulations to build President Trump’s proposed border wall.
“The question today is, simply, does Homeland Security and Border Patrol need more power, beyond the unprecedented authority” that the GOP has pushed for more than a decade, he said.
It is a “tactical response” driven by “some level of political hysteria” like fears of the “mass invasion” of gangs such as MS-13 pouring over the border, which is “not true,” Grijalva said.
