Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, as Senator Murray noted, 100 people die from gunshot wounds every single day. We can't go 24 hours without news of another mass shooting somewhere in America. My kids and millions of others hide in corners of their classrooms or in their bathrooms preparing for a mass shooting at their school, and this body does nothing about it.

The good news is, we have a piece of legislation that enjoys 95 percent support in the American public and will undoubtedly make an enormous impact on gun violence rates in this country.

I will give more extensive remarks after I make this unanimous consent request, but my request will be that the Senate immediately take up H.R. 8, the universal background checks bill which was passed in a bipartisan way in the House of Representatives and which has received no action, no debate here in the U.S. Senate since that time.

29, H.R. 8; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I appreciate the good-faith objection from my friend from Mississippi, but the good news that I can convey to her is that my Republican Senate friends who want to have some impact into the consideration of the future of American gun laws have ample opportunity to do that because they are in the majority.

Senate Republicans control the Judiciary Committee. Senator McConnell can decide to bring any measure to the floor. If the concern is that there hasn't been enough Republican input into the question of whether criminals or terrorists or people who are seriously mentally ill get guns, then, convene a discussion on this, bring a debate to the floor, have a process in the Judiciary Committee. Don't just stay silent. It doesn't pass the straight-face test to come down here and say: Well, we can't take up H.R. 8, despite the fact it has 90 percent public approval because we haven't had input on it. You are in the majority. You have the ability to pass legislation that you support and that Democrats can support as well.

The idea that we are just going to sit here and twiddle our thumbs week after week as 100 people are killed by guns through suicides and homicides and accidental shootings is an abdication of our basic responsibility as U.S. Senators. There is nothing that matters more to our constituents than their physical safety.

There are kids who are walking to school in cities in every single State in this Nation who fear for their lives, whose brain chemistry is changed by the trauma they go through because of that fear for their safety, and they can't learn, they can't cope, and they can't build strong relationships.

My kids go through active shooter drills at school because they, in fact, expect that someday someone will walk through their doors and start firing a military-style assault weapon in one of their classrooms.

I get it that there is a difference of opinion on exactly how we should expand background checks. I understand that maybe my Republican colleagues don't want to support H.R. 8. But you are in the majority. You have the ability to lead a conversation that can find that common ground on expanding background checks.

I am not going to accept this argument that we can't bring H.R. 8 to the floor because we have some concerns about it. I can't get a piece of legislation to the floor any other way than to offer this motion.

The American public is not going to accept silence from this body week after week, month after month, in the face of this epidemic carnage that is happening across this country. Parents know their kids aren't safe, and they expect us to act.

The President's Attorney General said the other day that we made some progress on the issue of background checks over the summer, but now we have the impeachment proceedings, and so that stops all of this discussion. That is not true. The impeachment proceedings right now are in the House of Representatives. The discussion on the future of a background checks bill was in the Senate. It was happening between myself and Senator Manchin and Senator Toomey. We are still at the table, ready to negotiate a compromise version of the Background Check Expansion Act. We, frankly, have lots of time on our hands in the Senate because we are not doing anything other than approving an appointee here, a judge there. We have plenty of time. We have plenty of bandwidth in the Senate to negotiate with the White House over a universal background checks bill.

You can't say that we can't take up H.R. 8 because we haven't had input. Republicans are in charge. You have the ability to have as much input as you want. The White House can't say the impeachment is stopping a debate on background checks from happening. I am ready to talk. Senator Toomey is ready to talk. Senator Manchin is ready to talk.

We have evidence from this summer about how important universal background checks are. On the last day of August, a gunman fled from police in Odessa, TX. He hijacked a U.S. Postal Service van. He killed its driver and then randomly fired on people as he drove through the streets. During his shooting spree, the gunman killed seven people and wounded over 20 others--a reign of terror throughout the streets of this Texas town.

The current background checks law worked as it was intended to work. The shooter tried to buy a gun in January 2014, but he was denied. Why? Because he had been found to be so seriously mentally ill when he was committed to an inpatient institution that his name was placed on the list of individuals who were prohibited from buying weapons.

The problem is, Texas doesn't have universal background checks, meaning that it was as easy as pie for the shooter, after he got denied a gun purchase at a brick-and-mortar store, to just go find a private seller who would sell him a military-style weapon without a background check. In this case, it resulted in 20 people getting hurt and seven people being wounded--this easy way to find loopholes through the Nation's background check system. But that happens every single day. Every single day, somebody buys a gun at a gun show or online or through a private sale because that is the way they can get a gun without having to go through a background check.

I am deeply troubled. I am profoundly aggrieved by my body's reluctance to even take up a conversation about the future of gun policy in this country. I wish there wasn't an objection. I wish we had an opportunity to be able to discuss the future of background checks and the future of our gun laws on the Senate floor. Our constituents expect us to have that debate.

This will not be the last time we come down to the floor to try to force a debate, to force a conversation in this body so that we can find bipartisan consensus on an issue that enjoys 95 percent public support, 80 percent support from gun owners, and 70 percent support from NRA members. There is almost nothing else that is less controversial in America today than the issue of universal background checks, and we will continue to press that case on behalf of the American people.

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