madam chairman , i want to thank the gentleman from wisconsin ( chairman sensenbrenner ) for his leadership in this area and for bringing this bill to the floor . 
i rise today in support of this bipartisan bill , h.r. 1279 , the gang deterrence and community protection act of 2005 . 
and in the limited time that i have , i just want to raise three points . 
the first point is that throughout the debate today , you will hear two different worlds described about gangs . 
one world they will describe in gangs will be talking about antisocial behavior and fist fights . 
if you think that is what we are concerned about with gangs , then we should not be here today at all talking about this bill . 
but the true world , when you talk about gangs , are that you are having a rise in gangs in the united states where today , as we debate this bill , there are between 750 , 000 and 850 , 000 gang members within our borders . 
if it was a foreign army , it would be the sixth largest army in the world . 
and these are the acts in the real gang world : machete attacks , witness intimidation , extortion , murder of federal agents , rape , cutting off arms , fingers and individuals ' heads . 
so the second point is , why can we not just deal with these acts with current state laws ? 
well , this chart shows just one member of one gang and all of the activities that he had in traveling around the united states . 
today , these gangs have become national and international in scope ; and if we want to truly deal with gangs , there is only one way to do it : you have got to bring down the gang networks and the gang leaders . 
and this bill will do that . 
now , our friends who are opposed to this bill say let us just deal with it crime by crime and individual by individual . 
and that works if it is just an individual committing a crime , because once you get that person and put them in jail , the crime stops . 
but when you are talking about gangs , when you deal with just one crime from a lower-tier person in that gang and you get that person and prosecute him , 20 different acts were never caught . 
and when you get that one person from a gang and it is an organized effort , 20 more spring up in their place . 
we need a system to bring together teams of federal , state , and local law enforcement so that we can go after that network and bring them down . 
and i would just ask you to look at a single situation where local or state law enforcement has been able to reach up to these national and international gangs and bring down the gang network . 
the other thing that i want to say that you will see today , and we heard it earlier , and i was absolutely shocked when i heard it , but the opponents of this bill literally said on the floor earlier this morning that giving arts and crafts to criminal gang members who committed violent crimes would do more than the provisions of this bill , which is to lock them up and to empower law enforcement to go after them . 
and i want to just say , because you hear a lot of talk about people who met with a group of students here , or maybe a group of people over here , this is a list that the chairman read out earlier of virtually every major law enforcement organization in the united states who supports the provisions of this bill and realizes if we do not pass this bill and bring down the gang networks , you might as well put a big billboard out that says , `` coming soon to a neighborhood near you , '' because that is what is going to happen with the rapid rise of these gangs . 
and i hope that this house will stand up today , will vote to give law enforcement the tools they need , and that we will go after these networks and bring them down . 
