Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, it was 2 weeks ago yesterday that the tragic incident in Parkland took place--one of many that have impacted our country over the last decade and beyond. That community in Parkland, FL, and the residents of the State of Florida whom I represent--and, frankly, the entire Nation--have demanded not just action but immediate action.

We know--and anyone who watches this process is well aware--that there are deep differences on how far and how much we should restrict the Second Amendment right of every American. We know there are deep differences about whether some of those proposed restrictions work. I imagine those debates and those differences will not be easily resolved and will continue, but I also know there is widespread support and agreement that we must act now--as soon as possible--to do everything we can to prevent another tragedy like Parkland from happening anywhere else ever again. That is a consensus position. No matter where one falls on this debate, no matter how one feels about how far or how restricted restrictions on gun sales in America should be, no matter what your views are on that, I don't know of anyone who is in favor of school shootings, and I don't know anyone who is in favor of seeing another one happen. There is common ground in that regard.

What I have tried to do, over the last couple of weeks, is undertake efforts to determine what changes in Federal law not only could have prevented this attack but could prevent future ones. In that vein, I have met with State and Federal law enforcement investigators involved not just in this case but in gun laws in general. I have met with students and with teachers from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, including two teachers who were injured in the attack. I have met with school board administrators. I have met with the community at large, including an appearance last week at a nationally televised townhall. I have been in contact with several of the parents of the victims who lost their lives. I have also spoken to experts in firearm sales. I have spoken to a number of federally licensed firearm dealers who talked about some of the frustrations they have with our existing law and their inability to address people who ultimately turn out to be individuals who should not own any gun of any kind.

So based on these meetings, based on all of this input, and based on all of the other research that is out there leading up to now, the first thing I want to say is, I actually believe this attack could have and should have been prevented if current law had been fully enforced.

This killer was a well-known danger to the school district. He was a well-known danger to the Broward Sheriff's office. He was a well-known danger to his neighborhood. He was also the subject of two separate and specific warnings to law enforcement agencies: a call to the Broward Sheriff's office last November, a call to an FBI hotline in January.

In essence, we are always telling people, if you see something, say something. People saw something and people said something and other people saw it as well over a course of time. Yet somehow this deranged and violent individual was able to pass a background check and purchase not 1 but 10 separate firearms, and this deranged and violent individual was ultimately able to walk right into the school a few minutes before dismissal and take the lives of 17 innocent Floridians.

This tragedy is the result of a massive multisystemic failure--a failure involving Federal agencies, State agencies, and local authorities who all failed to both identify the threat he posed and coordinate a response to stop him before he took action. It is this failure I hope we will focus on by addressing the shortcomings and vulnerabilities in our current laws and in our current policies. We may still have a debate on the broader issues of regulating gun sales, but irrespective of that debate, we still must and should do this.

So today I wanted to come here for a few minutes and announce a comprehensive plan--not a simple bill you just vote on and move on but a series of measures I believe could prevent these attacks before they happen and that also help schools protect their students and their teachers. I believe these ideas should all enjoy bipartisan support, and, if passed, could and should help prevent the next potential mass shooting.

These are ideas I outline not just because they work, but because I believe we can get the votes to pass them. Sixty votes in the Senate, a majority in the House, and the signature of a President--that is what it takes to turn an idea into a law, and these ideas I am about to outline both work and, I believe, could enjoy that widespread support.

One of the things we have learned is, our schools are woefully unprepared to prevent an attack before it occurs. Furthermore, during my visits to the site of the attack and my followup meeting with teachers at the school, I learned of various changes to school facilities and practices which could have stopped this attack or improved the response. Therefore, I will be joining later today with Senator Orrin Hatch and others in introducing the STOP School Violence Act.

If passed, this law would provide Federal grants to do some important things that would have been really helpful in this case: strengthen school security infrastructure of the school, provide school training for everyone--administrators, teachers, even students--to be able to identify threats and to report them. Something that really would be helpful is the creation of a school threat assessment and crisis intervention team. There is a successful program in Los Angeles that does this. That is a team that is a coordination between law enforcement, other State agencies, school districts and the like where they are all talking to each other about students and former students who may pose a threat of violence and intervene before they act.

A second issue we identified is that even if law enforcement, school administrators, or family members believe an individual poses the risk of committing an act of violence, they have very few options to prevent them from purchasing any gun or taking away the guns they already have.

Therefore, I intend to present a new law--perhaps in coordination with others who are working on it now--that will lead to the creation of gun violence restraining orders, something that will give law enforcement and close family members the option of obtaining a court order to prevent gun sales or remove guns from individuals who pose a threat. To be clear, the due process in such a situation would be on the front end, not on the back end.

The third issue we uncovered is, Federal law appears to discourage school systems from reporting dangerous students to law enforcement. I don't support criminalizing all school misconduct, but a student who has threatened violence, who has exhibited violent behavior needs to be reported to law enforcement. A student who has committed a crime by issuing a threat of death using social media--a crime under Florida law--that needs to be reported, but under Broward County school policies, pursuant to something called the PROMISE Program, reporting a student, a dangerous one, to law enforcement is the sixth step--step 6--in their plan. Therefore, I intend to propose changes to the Federal Youth PROMISE Program so a school district plan under this program does not delay and does not discourage law enforcement from being alerted to dangerous and violent or hazardous behavior.

Fourth, we need to strengthen background checks. That is why I have joined with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle pushing for the immediate passage of Fix NICS--something that will require all Federal agencies and incentivize every State to fully report relevant information to the national background check database--because a background check is only as good as the information that is on it. This deranged killer was able to buy guns on 10 separate occasions because he would have passed any background check because none of this stuff that was known about him was reported to that system.

Fifth, we must begin to prosecute the purchase of guns by people prohibited from doing so. Next week, I hope to be joining a bipartisan group, led by Senators Toomey and Coons, in filing the ``Lie and Try'' bill, which will require the FBI to notify States when someone who is not allowed to buy a gun, tries to buy a gun and fails the background check, so they can be investigated, so they can be prosecuted.

In addition, we will be presenting a new law to provide more prosecutors to go after straw purchases, which is where someone buys a gun on behalf of someone else because that someone else could not pass the background check.

Now, there are some additional reforms that I am open to: the possibility of looking at age limits on semiautomatic rifles, the notion of looking at what could be done with high-capacity magazines. We will continue to explore and look at those. These reforms do not enjoy the sort of widespread support in Congress that the other measures I have announced do, and, in order to successfully pass, these ideas will have to be crafted in a way that actually contributes to greater public safety but also do not unnecessarily or unfairly infringe on the Second Amendment right of all law-abiding adults to protect themselves and their families, to hunt, or to participate in recreational shooting.

Ultimately, there are things we can do that have widespread, bipartisan support that we can act on, that we can get passed, that will actually make a difference. These are impactful things.

I urge the Senate and the House, all of my colleagues here, do not hold hostage a piece of legislation that would work and that we all support because it doesn't have everything you want. There are things we can act on and do, and there are things we can continue to argue over, debate, and perhaps do in the future, but on the things we agree on--and they happen to be things that could have prevented this attack and will prevent future attacks--let's get those done. I have outlined those here today. There may be others, but we owe it not just to the victims and the families of Parkland but to all Americans everywhere; for this attack may have happened in Southern Florida, but there is no reason it can't happen somewhere else and, I fear, will happen somewhere else if we do not fix the deficiencies and the flaws in our policies, in our laws, and in the way they are enforced.

We have learned from this incident what is wrong with our system. Let us fix it. We have an opportunity to do so while we continue to debate and work on the issues we do not agree on. That is what I hope we will do, and that is what I commit to doing everything I can to achieve.

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