Gun Violence

Floor Speech

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Ms. KELLY of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because this weekend 11 Americans were shot and killed while at a bris at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA.

This synagogue is a staple of the Squirrel Hill community and a place used by Jewish Americans and their neighbors to celebrate life moments, community achievements and their faith in God.

Sadly, one man, with a hate-filled heart and an AR-15, turned this peaceful, loving community into victims of one of America's worst and most shocking mass shootings.

These are the names of the Americans that this Republican-controlled House failed with our failure to pass commonsense, broadly-supported bans of military-style assault weapons, like the AR-15: Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Rose Mallinger, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Joyce Fienberg, Dr. Richard Gottfried, DMD, Irving Younger, and Melvin Wax.

In addition to the 11 fatalities within the synagogue, four Pittsburgh police officers were shot and wounded, two remain in critical condition.

Sadly, this hate crime was not the only hate-related shooting in America in recent days.

Another man, with a hate-filled heart and a gun, shot and killed two Americans at a grocery store in Jeffersontown, KY.

In Jeffersontown, we lost fellow Americans: Maurice E. Stallard and Vickie Lee Jones, to senseless gun violence. Mr. Stallard was at the store with his 12-year old grandson to buy poster board for a school project. Tragically, he witnessed the entire event.

Mr. Speaker, by this Congress' negligence and inaction, we have created a situation where grandparents and grandkids aren't even safe going to the store for school supplies. Where will the madness end?

Before entering the Kroger and beginning his rampage, the shooter had attempted to enter a predominately African American church--we sadly could have seen another Mother Emanuel had he been successful in entering that church.

So, once again, Mr. Speaker, I ask you: ``where does it end?''

Our houses of worship are no longer safe. In fact, in the last three years, our nation has experienced not one, not two but three mass shootings in houses of worship around the country.

Nine were killed at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Twenty-six were killed at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

Now, eleven were killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Where will it end, Mr. Speaker? How many more praying people need to be gunned down before you will have the courage to act and save lives?

Even the Speaker's own Congressional District--Wisconsin's first-- experienced as mass shooting at a Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, which killed six.

Yet, still he did not act to save lives, even though his own constituents were gunned down for the loving and worshipping their God.

At what point did Congress become so beholden to the NRA that we can't find the political courage to save the lives of Americans exercising their First Amendment right to worship as they please?

It's past time for the madness to stop.

It's past time for Congress to act.

It's past time to stop arming hate while only offering half-hearted ``thoughts and prayers'' while places of faith become places of death by gun violence.

Mr. Speaker, will you act? Will you call Congress back into session and pass just one gun violence prevention bill?

Or is campaigning for the mid-term election and those NRA checks too important to you and the Republican Party?

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