FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER SERVICE WEAPON PURCHASE ACT OF 2025

On 2025-05-15, Representative Russell Fry (R-SC-7) delivered a floor speech titled "FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER SERVICE WEAPON PURCHASE ACT OF 2025" in the House.

FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER SERVICE WEAPON PURCHASE ACT OF 2025

Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 82 (Thursday, May 15, 2025) [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 82 (Thursday, May 15, 2025)] [House] [Pages H2067-H2071] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER SERVICE WEAPON PURCHASE ACT OF 2025 Mr. FRY. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 405, I call up the bill (H.R. 2255) to allow Federal law enforcement officers to purchase retired service weapons, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 405, the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on the Judiciary, printed in the bill, is adopted and the bill, as amended, is considered read. The text of the bill, as amended, is as follows: H.R. 2255 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ``Federal Law Enforcement Officer Service Weapon Purchase Act of 2025''. SEC. 2. PURCHASE OF RETIRED FIREARMS BY FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS. (a) In General.--Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator of General Services shall establish a program under which a Federal law enforcement officer may purchase a retired firearm from the Federal agency that issued the firearm to such officer. (b) Limitations.--A Federal law enforcement officer may purchase a retired firearm under subsection (a) if-- (1) the purchase is made during the six-month period beginning on the date the firearm was so retired; and (2) with respect to such purchase, the officer is in good standing with the Federal agency that employs or employed such officer. (c) Cost.--A firearm purchased under this section shall be sold at the salvage value for such firearm taking into account the age and condition of the firearm. (d) Definitions.--In this section-- (1) the term ``Federal law enforcement officer'' has the meaning given that term in section 115(c)(1) of title 18, United States Code, and includes a retired Federal law enforcement officer; (2) the term ``firearm'' has the meaning given that term in section 921(a) of title 18, United States Code, excluding any machinegun (as defined in section 921(a)(24) of such title) not lawfully possessed before section 922(o) of such title took effect; (3) the term ``retired firearm'' means any firearm that has been declared surplus by the applicable agency; and (4) the term ``salvage value'' means the value of an asset after it has become useless to the owner or the amount expected to be obtained when a fixed asset is disposed of at the end of its useful life. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The bill, as amended, shall be debatable for 1 hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary or their respective designees. The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Fry) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) each will control 30 minutes. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina. {time} 1230 General Leave Mr. FRY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 2255. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from South Carolina? There was no objection. Mr. FRY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2255, the Federal Law Enforcement Officer Service Weapon Purchase Act, will allow current or former Federal law enforcement officers in good standing to purchase a retired service weapon at salvage value from the Federal agency that issued the service weapon to the officer. Under the bill, the administrator of general services would be required to establish a program to provide these purchases. To be eligible to participate in the program, the officer must be in good standing with the agency and any firearm sold through the program must be sold within 6 months of the date when the firearm was retired. Current Federal regulations require all Federal law enforcement agencies to destroy their firearms after they are retired from official use. This regulation costs the American taxpayers millions of dollars every year. For example, in 2022, the Fraternal Order of Police notified Congress that multiple Federal law enforcement agencies were in the process of replacing their service weapons. The replacement of these service weapons accounted for the destruction of approximately 20,000 firearms, costing the taxpayers roughly $8 million. Not only would this legislation cause agencies and the taxpayers to avoid that cost, but it would also recoup some of the taxpayers' dollars for the initial purchase of the firearm. American taxpayers should not be forced to pay for a service weapon twice, once at the initial purchase when it was acquired by the agency and then again when it is needlessly destroyed at the end of its life. Law enforcement officers should have the opportunity to purchase the service weapon they used while serving in law enforcement. By allowing officers to purchase their retired service weapons, this provides a starting point to keeping them safe so that they may protect their communities as well as themselves and their families. This legislation is supported by 10 law enforcement organizations, the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the National Fraternal Order of Police, Major Cities Chiefs Association, the Major County Sheriffs of America, the National Association of Police Organizations, the National Narcotics Officers' Associations' Coalition, the National Sheriffs' Association, the Sergeants Benevolent Association NYPD, and the National Treasury Employees Union. I hope my colleagues across the aisle recognize this bill not as a partisan measure but, much like it was last year, in fact, bipartisan when it was voted on in the House. This is a commonsense, cost-saving initiative that supports law enforcement and the American taxpayers. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition. I thank my colleague from South Carolina for his excellent presentation, but this bill is a case study in a legislative majority that is in search of not common ground and common sense but rather extreme measures that divide and polarize the Congress and the people. Once upon a time this was a sensible, bipartisan bill led by our Democratic colleague, Val Demings from Orlando, Florida, who had been a police chief. Her bill allowed Federal agencies to sell handguns that they were no longer using to the active-duty officers, who previously carried those handguns, for fair market value as long as they completed a background check like everybody else in America. Mr. Speaker, last Congress, Republicans weakened that bipartisan bill, which I think commanded unanimous support in Congress, by stripping the background check requirement while still restricting the bill to handgun sales to current law enforcement officers only. So we were willing to go along with that compromise. We accepted that in the last Congress. When the bill came to the floor for a vote, however, Republicans filled the bill with a menagerie of more outlandish and extreme provisions, and [[Page H2068]] that is the version that they started with in this Congress which is before us today. When we marked up this legislation, we offered an amendment that would allow them to go back to the compromise version of the bill, a version of the bill that they themselves had introduced and that we support, but they refused to do it. So today, in place of a reasonable, commonsense, and common-ground bill, Republicans are dug in on another extreme proposal that riddles our gun laws with loopholes and politicizes what should have been a simple, bipartisan measure. The bill before us today would allow surplus firearms to be sold not only to active Federal law enforcement officers in good standing, but also to retired law enforcement officers. Because the bill now has no background check requirement, it could create a situation in which it would be possible for an officer to retire and commit a crime, such as domestic violence or assault, that would ordinarily render him or her ineligible to purchase and possess firearms but then still be able to buy a firearm from the Federal Government without any background check at all. While the bill includes a good standing requirement, as they remind us, this is plainly meaningless as applied to retired officers who may have left the department in perfectly good standing but could not pass a background check today. Agencies can certify that an officer is in good standing when they retire, but they have no way to track the behavior of their former officers after that if they cannot do a background check. So an agency could unknowingly sell a surplus firearm to someone who cannot lawfully buy a gun, and all of this would occur under the statute without any background check at all. The bill also allows for the sale of any firearm except machine guns. That includes not just handguns, but also assault weapons, destructive devices like hand grenades, and even firearms that are subject to heightened restrictions under the National Firearms Act. Moreover, it allows them to be sold at salvage value, effectively making it so that the Federal Government and the taxpayers would actually be subsidizing gun sales. They replaced fair market value with salvage value. My colleagues have claimed that the bill would not really allow for the sale of all of these types of firearms because it only applies, they say, 

Referenced legislation: HRES405, HRES405, HR2255