Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5
minutes to the gentleman from Texas
(Mr. PAUL).
(Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission
to revise and extend his remarks.)
1999 Ron Paul 106:1 Mr. PAUL.
I thank the gentleman
from Virginia for yielding me the time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to
this bill. If ever there were a bill unnecessary,
this is one. It is an example
of us here in the Congress looking for
dragons to slay. This is absolutely unnecessary.
There is no real purpose in
passing this legislation. As has been
said, all 50 States have laws against violence
and cruelty to animals. That
should be adequate. But the way this
bill is written really opens up a Pandora’s
box. It is a can of worms.
1999 Ron Paul 106:2 Take, for instance, it says, “whoever
knowingly possesses a depiction of animal
cruelty with the intention of placing
that depiction in interstate commerce.”
That, you can get 5 years for.
How do you prove intention? This is
subjective, purely subjective. This is
not narrowly written, this is very
broadly written. This is a first amendment
concern to many, but it is also so
unnecessary.
1999 Ron Paul 106:3 Chief Justice Rehnquist, along with
Ed Meese, has stated recently, there is
just no need for more Federal laws. We
do not need more Federal laws. We cannot
even enforce the ones that we have.
And besides, this is strictly a State
matter.
1999 Ron Paul 106:4 Now, if they want to use the interstate
commerce clause, they should be
reminded, up until this century at
least, the interstate commerce clause
was used in its original intent to open
up trade between the States. It was
never the excuse to regulate everything
between the States. That is a
20th century distortion of the interstate
commerce clause. So that is not
even a real good excuse for this.
1999 Ron Paul 106:5 Now, cruelty to animals, nobody is
going to come and defend cruelty to
animals. But quite frankly there will
be times it will be difficult to define.
The motivation for most cruelty to
animals is because people are sick.
This is a mental illness. We are dealing
with mental illness here and we are
going to write a Federal law against it.
So if somebody, and it was even mentioned
by the proponents of this bill,
that people like Ted Bundy delight in
this. Yes. These people are psychopaths.
They are nuts. It is an illness.
We cannot pass a law to deal with mental
illness. I strongly object to this approach.
We should be thinking not only
about the process but of the unintended
consequences of passing legislation
like this.
1999 Ron Paul 106:6 I have seen some pretty violent ads
on television of killing cockroaches. I
know that is not their intention. I
went fishing one time and it was rather
ghastly. I am not a very good fisherman
nor a hunter. I cannot see the killing
of animals. But to see the hook
pulled up on a kingfish and have the
fish thrown on the deck and the fish
suffocate, we make movies of this. This
is on television. They say this will not
be affected. How do we know? There
are hunting films on television. Animals
are shot. Maybe people are delighting
in looking at the cruelty or
the killing of animals on television
even though they are sporting or fishing
shows.
1999 Ron Paul 106:7 Yes, I agree that is not what is intended,
but so often our legislation
gets carried away and is misinterpreted.
I would ask my colleagues not
to pass this legislation. This legislation
does not have any redeeming value
whatsoever. It is well-intended in the
sense that people object to cruelty to
animals but quite frankly I have not
had one single request from my 595,000
constituents in my district for this
bill, and I would like to see how many
others who would honestly get up here
and say, oh, I have had dozens or hundreds
or thousands of people.
1999 Ron Paul 106:8 The only people that I have heard
that have requested this piece of legislation
are law enforcement officials,
not the judges who have to deal with
this, not the people in the country, not
the State legislative bodies, not the
governors, but people who may want to
have a lot more activity to do things
they are not doing well enough anyway.
Federal law enforcement is lagging.
So to put another law on the
books which is not well written, and it
is subjective in that we have to decide
whether or not the person who possesses
this material is intending to sell
it to somebody.
1999 Ron Paul 106:9 This bill really is something that we
need to just reject, vote down. We do
not need it. The States will take care
of this. We do not need to be bashful
and say that if we do not vote for this
bill for some reason that we endorse
the idea of animal cruelty. That is not
the case. Nobody endorses this. I just
think that the qualifications in here to
exempt certain people like journalistic
and historical and artistic, these categories,
quite frankly, who will be the
judge? It will be very difficult to do.
Notes:
1999 Ron Paul 106:1
I thank the gentleman from Virginia for yielding me the time. Here, Ron Paul thanks The Honorable Robert C. Scott.
1999 Ron Paul 106:2
first amendment probably should be capitalized: First Amendment.
1999 Ron Paul 106:4
the interstate commerce clause probably should be capitalized in both iterations: the Interstate Commerce Clause.
