Cloture Motion
Floor Speech
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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, last Wednesday, the uniquely American tragedy of gun violence struck Colorado yet again. At Evergreen High School in Jefferson County, a 16-year-old shot and injured two students and an administrator. Tonight, these three victims are still recovering, and their classmates and teachers and families are still reeling. Every elementary and middle school in the State is wondering whether they might be next.
It has been 26 years since the Columbine tragedy; 26 years since 2 gunmen murdered 13 students and a teacher and left many others physically and mentally wounded for life. Since that day, Jefferson County, CO, has done what no community should ever have to do: They have built some of the strongest systems in the Nation to prepare for and respond to mass shootings at their schools.
At Evergreen, teachers acted so quickly that when the shooter tried door after door, looking for students and teachers, he couldn't reach a single classroom. Law enforcement arrived on the scene in under 2 minutes and located the shooter in fewer than 5. Every single one of us should be grateful to every teacher, administrator, first responder, and student who acted with courage at Evergreen High School. Their bravery saved countless lives, and they now stand as a national example of how to respond to one of these terrible situations.
Mr. President, it should never have to be this way. I remember Columbine as if it were yesterday. I was in the Houston Airport coming home from a work trip when I saw our Colorado high school flashing on the screens of every single television set in the terminal. It filled me, as it did all Americans, with horror. How could something like this happen in America?
My wife Susan was 6 months pregnant with our oldest daughter Caroline, and all I could think about was getting home to my family. But Caroline and her two sisters, Halina and Anne, like millions of other American kids, have grown up in the shadow of Columbine. They have borne witness to an endless onslaught of mass shootings. Each tragedy is piled on top of the last one during their young lives.
In the summer of 2012, a gunman walked into a crowded theater in Aurora, CO, and killed 12 innocent people and wounded 58 more. We lost sons and daughters and friends and neighbors, all full of life and full of aspiration, loved by family and loved by friends.
A few months later, Sandy Hook shook the entire Nation to its knees. Twenty first graders--twenty first graders--and six teachers were killed in mere moments.
We hoped then that Congress would finally act. I can remember that balcony in the Chamber being filled with parents and children of people who had been massacred in their elementary school, hoping against all hope that this body would do something to respond; that Congress would finally pass background checks--something that 90 percent of the American people support. As everybody knows, to our everlasting shame, we didn't. We failed to act.
And somewhere along the Nation, we became numb to these tragedies. I will never forget in 2017, after a gunman slaughtered 58 people in Las Vegas who were across the street from his hotel, I sat through 5 or 6 meetings the next day before anybody mentioned that 58 people had been killed in that mass shooting. Ultimately, 60 lives were stolen as we carried on with business as usual here in Washington. We have become numb.
But, Mr. President, for the sake of our children, we cannot be numb. We need to understand that our children never can become numb. They won't become numb. They can't move on because this is their one chance to be an elementary school student; this is their one chance to be a middle school student; this is their one chance to be a high school student. When they witness, even at a distance, even from another town or another State, children being destroyed or wounded by something like the Aurora movie theater shooting or like Columbine or like the Evergreen shooting, the fear that enters their young lives is whether they might be next. That is what they carry to school day after day after day throughout their young lives.
The result of that and the result of our inaction is that America's children carry a burden unlike any generation before them or any other country in the industrialized world. They are the generation of school metal detectors, active shooter drills, and bulletproof backpacks. They live with the constant terror that they could be next.
Colorado's children have grown up in the shadow of Columbine, and 25 years later, we are still losing this fight. And they have the right to be terrified. Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for America's kids. Think about that, Mr. President. Think about that. Gun violence is the leading cause of death of America's kids. Twenty-five years ago when Columbine happened, it was car accidents. Now it is gun violence.
When I heard that statistic, I assumed that most of those gun deaths must be accidents, but only 5 percent were--only 5 percent were. The rest were homicides and suicides and mass shootings. In other words, the leading cause of death in America, in the richest country in the world, in the greatest country in the world, is violent shootings of our own children. There is no other country in the industrialized world where that is even close.
The indifference in this body is staggering. The claim that this is somehow the price of freedom is staggering or that this is what the Constitution of the United States requires for us, to fully embrace the rights enunciated by the Founders of this country. That is incomprehensible--the price of freedom.
What about the freedom of our children, the right of our children to be able to go to school with the freedom that they are not going to be gunned down, the freedom of the knowledge to know that their classmates are not going to be gunned down or that they could go there and be next on the list? What about that freedom? That seems as fundamental as any other freedom that is articulated in the Constitution of the United States, which, after all, guarantees us our rights as citizens in this Nation, including our children.
We may have become numb, Mr. President, but our children never will because they are as evergreen as Evergreen High School. This is the first time and the last time that they will be elementary school students and middle school students and high school students. I think we need to find a way to channel their raw emotion, their confusion, their anger, their fear, and their terror and summon the will to overcome our failures--this generation's failures.
My home State of Colorado has tried to do that, and we have made progress. After the massacre at Columbine, we closed the gun show loophole, which 90 percent of the American people support. After the tragedy in Aurora, we strengthened background checks in my State. In the wake of the shooting at Club Q, we raised the age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21. This year, Governor Polis signed three commonsense gun violence prevention laws restricting the sale of certain semiautomatic firearms, requiring retailers to keep ammunition locked, and setting age limits for gun shows.
Colorado is making progress, but States can't do it alone. We can't do it alone in Colorado--a Western State that has a majority of unaffiliated voters in our purple State; that takes pride in our hunters and our anglers and our ranchers. If we can find the will to act, so can the U.S. Congress, and for the sake of our children, we must.
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