We Need Commonsense Gun Safety Legislation

Floor Speech

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Ms. DeGETTE. Mr. Speaker, Columbine is in my district, and I was in Congress when the terrible shooting in Columbine happened.

Who will forget that day, all those students marching out of the school with their hands held up so they could show the police that they weren't those terrible shooters.

Who can forget the terrible tragedy reflected in the mothers' faces when they saw that their children weren't those children that were bused to safety?

Who can forget the lingering aspects that Columbine has shown us, year after year, tragedy after tragedy?

I can't tell you the number of times I have repeated that horror in my own life, watching on TV when the Aurora shooting, just a few miles from my house, occurred. A masked man came in and, with an assault rifle and high-capacity magazine clips, shot so many people in just a few minutes.

Just a few weeks ago, when we saw, in Florida, one lone gunman with an assault rifle and high-capacity magazines just mowing down so many people who were having fun, who can forget the reflection in those mothers' faces?

But for every terrible tragedy that we have like that, we have thousands of more people who are killed on our streets, in our urban areas, and around our country, and who are killed in terrible domestic violence cases.

Just last week, when I was at home in Denver, just a few blocks from my husband's law office, a man walked into an office and shot a woman, and then turned the gun on himself. I can't tell you how I felt that day, when my husband sent me an email, seemingly out of the blue, that said: ``Don't worry. I'm on lockdown. I'm okay.''

This has become just routine in Americans' lives, and it is wrong. It is wrong. We can't continue like this as a country. We can't continue to have a moment of silence every time there is a mass murder, and to tut-tut every time we hear of someone like that woman who was shot in my district, and then do nothing.

This is why we had our sit-in before the July Fourth recess. And I will tell you what, those actions woke up my constituents. My office here in Washington, D.C., and my office in Denver, Colorado, were inundated with phone calls from people saying: ``What can we do? We so desperately want something to happen.''

This is what I said then, and this is what I say now: We cannot stop until we pass commonsense gun safety legislation.

What does this mean? Well, for starters, you would think Congress, both sides of the aisle, both sides of the Capitol, could say, if you are on a terrorist watch list, you should not be able to buy a gun. Surely we can stipulate to that.

You would think that we would agree with the vast majority of American people, Democrats and Republicans, people all around the country, that people should have thorough and sufficient background checks before they can obtain a weapon.

You would surely think that we would allow the Federal Government to conduct research on gun safety so that we would know, as a matter of public health, what we need to do to keep our children safe in their schools, our children safe on their street corners, and in their school yards.

You would think, beyond that, that we could have a rational discussion, not marred by the very powerful gun lobbyists, saying: What can we do to make sure that somebody, for whatever reason they might have, doesn't get an assault weapon and walk into a theater and kill scores of people with a high-capacity magazine in just a few minutes? You would think we could do that, and I am hoping that we will do that. I am hoping that the tide has turned.

Today, we will take up mental health legislation that was developed in my committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee. It is a bipartisan bill. I worked hard with Chairman Murphy and Chairman Upton on this bill, and also with the Democrats on our side of the aisle, Congressman Pallone and Congressman Green and others. It is a good bill, but it is just a first step.

We need to do a lot more with mental health in this country and, beyond that, we need to do a lot more on gun safety. Nobody should assume that this bill we are voting on today is a substitute for a rational, thorough, bipartisan conversation on gun safety.

I look forward to taking the terrible tragedies that we have seen the 20 years I have been in Congress and to dedicating commonsense gun safety legislation to all those lives that were lost.

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