Account describes Darrell Scott's statement before a House subcommittee on crime.
On 27 May 1999 - a month after the shocking massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in which two students shot 12 other students and a teacher to death and wounded another 25 people - the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on crime held hearings on 'Pending Firearms Legislation and the Administration's Enforcement of Current Gun Laws.' Among those who made or presented statements to the subcommittee that day were Eric H. Holder, Jr., a Deputy Attorney General with the Department of Justice; James E. Johnson, an UnderSecretary for Enforcement with the Department of the Treasury; Darrell Scott, the father of two victims of the Columbine High School shootings (one of whom, his daughter Rachel Joy Scott, was killed); David Grossmann, a retired Ohio juvenile court judge; Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., a law and economics professor at the University of Chicago's School of Law; Wayne LaPierre, an Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association; James E. Chambers, an Executive Director of the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute; David M. Kennedy, a Senior Researcher with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; Gerald Flynn, a National Vice President of the International Brotherhood of Police; and Bryl Phillips-Taylor from Virginians Against Handgun Violence.As transcripts of the proceedings demonstrate, Darrell Scott did make the statement attributed to him in theaccount reproduced above, but virtually everything framing his statement in that account is false. Mr. Scott wasn't speaking to national leaders present at a 'special session of Congress,' people who were 'not prepared for what he was to say' and 'did not receive it well.' He was simply one of eight people who presented statements to a small House subcommittee meeting in an office building; his statement wasn't received differently than any of the others and didn't prompt outrage from an unreceptive audience. Moreover, unlike the other persons who testified before the Congressional subcommittee that day, Mr. Scott presented no facts or statistics relating to the issues of gun control and gun law enforcement; he merely gave his opinion that gun control laws wouldn't have stopped the Columbine High School shootings and that those shootings were somehow related to a lack of religion in schools (repeating along the way the mistaken claim that prayer has been 'outlawed' in schools). Another parent who lost a child to a school-related shooting, Byrl Phillips-Taylor, testified after Darrell Scott and offered the opposite opinion: a lack of controls on the sale of assault weapons, Ms. Phillips-Taylor maintained, had led to the shooting death of her son.Finally, contrary to the coda of the e-mailed account, the 'media' did not prevent anyone from hearing Darrell Scott's words. The subcommittee hearing at which he spoke was covered by the Associated Press and reported in several big-city newspapers; in fact, due to intense media interest regarding everything related to the then-recent Columbine shootings, the event actually received much more general media coverage than a House subcommittee hearing typically would have.
nan