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Floor Speech

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Peters.) Without objection, it is so ordered. Gun Violence

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, our collective heart as a nation is breaking for your State. At Oxford High School today, reports suggest that a 15-year-old turned a semiautomatic weapon on his classmates. Three are dead. Eight are injured.

Our hearts are breaking a little bit harder in Connecticut because we know the pain that ravages a community when a shooting happens at a school. Newtown, CT, will never be the same after what happened there now almost a decade ago.

Reports are that at Oxford High School nearly 100 911 messages came into police during the time of the shooting. It gives you a vision into the terror that happens inside a school when a classmate opens fire. I think about this, first and foremost, as a parent of a seventh grader and a fourth grader who are part of a generation that accepts as part of their childhood the risk of not leaving school at the end of the day because of a violent attack. That is the reality of being a kid in school today. I am angry about it as an American, but I am angry about it as a parent, that my children have to go through active shooter drills because this has become a regular facet of being a child in America--exposure to gun violence.

It sickens me to think that my fourth grader has to worry about this when he goes to school every day.

I understand that my Republican colleagues have very strong views on issues related to abortion, but I listened to my Republican colleagues come down here one after another today and talk about the sanctity of life at the very moment that moms and dads in Michigan were being told that their kids weren't coming home because they were shot at school due to a country that has accepted gun violence due to Republicans' fealty to the gun lobby.

Do not lecture us about the sanctity, the importance of life, when 100 people every single day are losing their lives to guns, when kids go to school fearful that they won't return home because a classmate will turn a gun on them, when it is in our control whether this happens.

You care about life? Then get these dangerous military-style weapons off the streets, out of our schools.

You care about life? Make sure that criminals don't get guns by making sure that everybody goes through a background check in this country.

This only happens in the United States of America. There is no other nation in the high-income world in which kids worry about being shot when they go to school. It happens here in America because we choose to let it happen.

We are not unlucky. This is purposeful. This is a choice made by the U.S. Senate to sit on our hands and do nothing while kids die.

It doesn't even involve any political risk. The changes we are talking about in order to make our schools safe places, they are supported by the vast majority of Americans, Republicans and Democrats. And yet the gun lobby and the gun industry is more important to half of the Members of the Senate than is the safety of our kids, and that is infuriating.

Make no mistake about it, there is a silent message of endorsement sent to would-be killers, sent to individuals whose brains are spiraling out of control when the highest levels of the U.S. Government does nothing, shooting after shooting. Somewhere in these broken brains, they have convinced themselves that they can right perceived wrongs by firing a gun into a crowd. And when Congress--when the highest, most important, most powerful leaders in the land do nothing, shooting after shooting, you can understand why those broken brains imply that as endorsement. We have become part of the problem. Our silence has become complicity.

And I am here to tell you that there is a very low likelihood that your child will die in a school shooting. It is still a very, very infrequent occurrence in this country, given the number of kids who walk into a school every day. But the very fact that every child fears for their life, the very fact that every parent thinks about this when they send their kid to school, that is both a moral and practical stain on this country because kids' brains can't learn when they fear for their lives. No parent should have to sit down and talk to their kid about why, even though you see this happen in Newtown and you see this happen in Parkland and you see this happen in Michigan and you see this happen in California, it won't happen to you, dear. Because when these kids see it on TV every single day, you can't blame them for coming to the conclusion that it may happen to them.

I remember watching on TV once a young woman in the aftermath of a school shooting. There are so many of them now that I can't even remember which one this was. And she said to the TV reporter who was interviewing her: I just assumed that it would happen at my school eventually.

What a sad state of affairs that this is what it has come to.

I am beyond my tipping point, but I needed to come to the floor today because having sat in that chair listening to my colleagues tell me how much they care about human life--well, you have an opportunity to do something about it. You have an opportunity to save lives right now. Kids that are walking into schools tomorrow need you--need you--to step up and pass laws that are going to make sure that only responsible people own guns. And the guns that are used in these school shootings-- the semiautomatic rifles, the AR-15 variants--they stay in the hands of law enforcement.

And even if you don't believe that those laws will have the practical consequence of stopping every school shooting, please acknowledge that there is a moral impact of the actions that we take. By signaling to everyone in this country--but in particular these individuals who are contemplating these evil actions--that we don't accept this level of carnage, there will be an impact. And I tell you that because I know history.

There are two massive declines in the murder rate in this country in the last 100 years. It is not coincidental to the 10-year period after the two most significant antigun violence measures passed by Congress.

The first big decline is in the late 1930s and 1940s, right after Congress passes its first bill regulating the possession of firearms in this country. The second big decline is in the 1990s and early 2000s right after Congress passes the universal background checks law and the ban on assault-style weapons.

That is not coincidental. It is because those laws had a practical effect on crime but also a moral effect as well. The proof is right there in front of you of what can happen, of how many lives can be saved if we stand up and act.

So, please, I beg my colleagues, if you are going to come down here and talk about the sanctity of life, explain to the American people why the gun lobby matters more than the safety of our children who are walking into school every day fearing for their life.

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