Mr. McCaul of Texas- Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this bill. I also rise as a former Federal prosecutor who prosecuted, under the Federal firearms statute, gun cases.

   I want to commend Chairman Dingell, Congresswoman McCarthy, and the National Rifle Association for reaching what I consider to be a good result on a bill that, in my view, is necessary.

   It has been illegal for various individuals to purchase firearms for many years, illegal aliens, mentally defective individuals, those using illegal drugs, and people convicted of crimes of domestic violence. But for too long, in my experience and many of my colleagues whom I worked with in the Justice Department, the system, the background check system was not accurate. The information was not fully put into the system. In my view, if we are going to have a background check system, we ought to do it right. So let's get the system right.

   I think that is what this bill does. It gets the system right. It provides the Federal funding necessary to get theright. And at the same time, it protects law-abiding citizens, those who are law abiding who want to purchase firearms. It protects their second amendment rights, and it keeps guns out of the hands of the bad guys.
  
   I prosecuted cases under the Exile Program, which was a program sponsored by the National Rifle Association, and what we found was that it was bad guys that possessed firearms that caused the crime in this country. And we found when we locked up the bad guys who possessed these firearms that the crime rate actually went down.

   So with that, I, again, give my support to this bill.