madam chairman , i spent 22 years as a judge in texas trying criminal cases , felonies ; 22 , 000 felony cases came through my court . 
they dealt with everything from major theft to capital murder cases . 
and a lot of those cases were gang cases . 
and the people in this country who believe and think that gangs are not a problem are sorely mistaken . 
it was the action operative of the gangs in the houston area to use juveniles to commit serious crimes , violent crimes , because those very juveniles and these gang leaders knew that juveniles would be treated differently , as they were . 
these gangs would almost laugh at the criminal justice system because the juveniles would not face the same type of punishment as adults . 
this portion of the bill that treats juveniles in some cases the same as adults is a good idea , because , in our country , victims continue to be discriminated against based on the age of offenders . 
those days need to end , especially with gang members . 
this is an important issue . 
i , too , like the previous speakers are concerned about whether this is a states ' rights issue or not . 
but gangs cross state lines . 
no longer are they just a local terrorist community . 
and they are terrorists , madam chairman . 
we , at this time , are engaged in a war against international terrorists . 
we need to be concerned about the street terrorists who roam our neighborhoods and commit violent crimes in the name of some type of gang . 
a specific powerful enemy to the united states is the ms-13 gang . 
we need to be concerned about them because they are a terrorist group . 
they are gang members . 
so the first duty of government is to protect its citizens . 
we do that abroad . 
we need to do it against those street terrorists that live among us . 
i support this bill . 
