Saint Valentine's Day Massacres

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASTEN. Madam Speaker, this has been a bloody week in America. It seems like every day we have woken up to news of another mass shooting, starting with the one 5 days ago when a gunman, armed with an assault pistol and high-capacity magazine, killed 11 Californians as they celebrated Lunar New Year.

Three weeks from now, Valentine's Day will be the 15th anniversary of a mass shooting on the Northern Illinois University campus in DeKalb. The shooter started firing at 3:06 p.m. By 3:11 p.m.--just 5 minutes later--he had taken his own life. But not before firing off 55 rounds of ammunition, killing 6 people and injuring another 21.

In Parkland, Florida, on Valentine's Day they don't memorialize Northern Illinois University, they memorialize the anniversary of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. That shooting lasted for 6 minutes, 139 rounds were fired, 17 people were killed, and 17 were injured.

Six months from now, on Independence Day, folks in Highland Park, Illinois, will be memorializing the first anniversary of a mass shooting when 83 rounds were fired, 7 people were killed, and 48 were injured before the police--who were present at the scene--could even identify the location of the shooter.

We do not get our holidays back unless we act.

Too often, this body has responded to these shootings with thoughts and prayers. Prayers that the American people won't notice that some of my colleagues are putting the economic interests of gun manufacturers ahead of people's lives. But every once in a while, we do act. I want to talk about what we are capable of when we are touched by the better angels of our nature.

To do that, let's flash back to another Valentine's Day not that long ago. Two Chicago gangs were fighting over narcotics turf. One of them surprised the other, and in a flash of bullets, seven people were dead. Chicagoans and Illinoisans--Americans--were outraged. Yes, these were gang members, but they didn't deserve to die.

The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre was in 1929. It was when Al Capone's Italian gang killed seven members of Bugs Moran's Irish gang as whiskey bootleggers fought over drug turf. And we acted. That shooting led to the passage of the National Firearms Act that banned civilian access to fully automatic Tommy guns and any rifle with a barrel longer than 18 inches.

That law is still on the books today. It saves lives, and no one has ever claimed it was unconstitutional.

By the way, Madam Speaker, if you weren't expecting that a story about Chicago gangs was going to be about White people, I would like to thank you for attending today's class in critical race theory. As that poet Ice Cube says: You better check yourself.

But I digress.

Seven people died in 1929, and we acted. Eleven people died on Lunar New Year 5 days ago. There have been 40 mass shootings in the first 26 days of this year, over 1,300 gun homicides in the United States this year, and another 1,700 gun suicides. I am proud that my State of Illinois has just passed an assault weapons ban. It is time for this body to do the same.

I know I speak for all Americans when I say that I want to enjoy my next holiday without fear of getting shot, and that inaction in the wake of way too many avoidable deaths is completely unacceptable.

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