Gun Violence

Floor Speech

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the continuing toll of gun violence on our Nation and on my home State of Illinois.

This past week we lost too many Americans, and too many Illinoisans, to gunfire. Last Monday, 18-year-old April McDaniel was sitting on her porch in Chicago when a masked gunman in a car opened fire, killing April and wounding four of her friends. Last Tuesday, four members of the Andrus family in Darien, Illinois--including the family's two daughters, ages 16 and 22--were shot to death in an apparent murder-suicide. On Thursday, 19-year-old Robert Allen was killed in a drive-by shooting on the South Side of Chicago. And over the weekend, at least 6 were killed and dozens more were wounded in shootings across the Chicago area.

This senseless violence is devastating personally to the families involved, and to all of us. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and with their families. The sad reality is that gun violence continues to be an epidemic in America. Over 11,000 Americans are murdered with guns each year. If you count suicides and accidental shootings, the death toll from guns rises to more than 31,000 Americans each year. We have become almost used to this, haven't we? We hear about it every night on the news and we begin to think this is normal. But it isn't normal in any country on Earth for so many people to die from the use of firearms.

You can get a sense of this grim toll by reading the daily ``Gun Report'' by New York Times columnist Joe Nocera. The report compiles news stories about shootings across the nation. For example, yesterday's Gun Report describes shootings that took place over the weekend. It mentions: a 3-year-old in Columbus, Ohio and a 4-year-old in Wichita, Kansas who were hit on Friday by stray bullets; an 18-year-old girl in Ankeny, Iowa, who was accidentally shot and killed by her father on Friday; a 30-minute shooting spree in Omaha, Nebraska on Saturday that left two dead and two critically injured; a 76-year-old man who shot and killed his 75-year-old wife on Saturday in Cortlandt, New York after an argument; and a man who walked into a Catholic church in Ogden, Utah and shot his father-in-law in the head during Sunday mass. These are just a few of the shootings mentioned in one Gun Report. And each new day brings another long list of shootings in communities across America. It is appalling.

Last Friday marked 6 months since the tragedy in Newtown when a gunman murdered 20 small children and 6 educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School. In the 6 months since that awful day, over 5,000 more Americans have been killed by gunfire.

I commend my colleagues from Connecticut, Senator CHRIS MURPHY and Senator RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, who have come to this floor repeatedly to call for reforms that will spare other families the tragedy that the Newtown families have suffered.

We need to heed those calls. We cannot simply shrug our shoulders and write off this epidemic of gun violence as the cost of living in America.

There is some progress to report when it comes to reducing gun violence. Officials at the local and state level are taking proactive steps that are showing promising results.

In Chicago, for example, targeted policing strategies and community-based violence-prevention efforts have contributed to a 31 percent reported decrease in homicides compared to last year. The violence of this past week shows that more needs to be done, but this decline in killings is positive news. I commend the local officials, including mayor Rahm Emanuel, who are doing everything they can to reduce gun violence.

The General Assembly in Illinois just passed important legislation that would mandate background checks for private gun sales and require reporting of lost and stolen guns to law enforcement, something we failed to do. It should be a national law.

These are steps that will help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. They will help reduce crime and save lives.

Other States are stepping up as well, with significant reforms passed in States like Colorado, New York, Maryland and Connecticut.

But State action alone is not sufficient. We need to do our part in Washington. Too often these guns cross State lines. Too often States have weak gun laws next to States with strong gun laws. That is why Congress needs to plug the gaping loopholes in our Federal background check system by passing legislation by Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, and Senator PATRICK TOOMEY, a conservative Senator from Pennsylvania.

Congress also needs to pass a bill with real teeth to crack down on straw purchasing and gun trafficking, a bill that I worked on with Senators LEAHY, COLLINS, GILLIBRAND, and my colleague from Illinois, Mark Kirk.

Members of Congress need to take a stand on the issue of gun safety and gun violence. There should be no more hiding behind these empty, sham reform proposals written by the gun lobby to accomplish nothing. And no more claims that all we need to do is just enforce the laws on the books because we know the gun lobby has put loopholes in those laws that you can drive a truck through.

I want to mention a few things Congress should do to help reduce gun violence beyond the two items I mentioned. First, I will introduce legislation to encourage more crime gun tracing by State and local law enforcement. Crime gun tracing is a valuable tool for criminal investigations. When a gun is recovered in a crime, a police department can ask the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, known as the ATF, to trace the crime gun back to its first retail sale. This information can help identify criminal suspects and potential gun traffickers. When all the crime guns in an area are traced, law enforcement can start to define and identify trafficking patterns.

ATF's crime gun tracing system is easy for law enforcement and it is free. Several years ago I reached out and challenged all of the law enforcement agencies in Illinois to submit the guns they had seized in crimes for tracing through the ATF. I am pleased to report that 388 Illinois agencies are now using the system called eTRACE but there are still thousands and thousands of law enforcement agencies across America that are not tracing their crime guns.

The legislation I am introducing is called the Crime Gun Tracing Act. It will require law enforcement agencies that apply for Federal COPS grants to report how many crime guns they recovered in the last year and how many they submitted for tracing. It will then give a preference in COPS grant awards to agencies that traced all the crime guns they recovered.

To be clear, law enforcement agencies should not just sit around and wait for a bill to pass before they start tracing crime guns. Tracing brings enormous benefits at virtually no cost. Agencies should not wait for this bill; they ought to start tracing today if they have not done so already. But the reality is many police departments, sheriffs' offices, have not been doing this. My bill will create an incentive for them to start.

Let me say something else. The Senate needs to confirm a Director to head the ATF. For the record, ATF has never had a Senate-confirmed Director. The Senate refused to confirm a Director under President George W. Bush and refused the second proposed Director under President Obama. Now a third candidate is being considered.

Since the Director position began requiring Senate confirmation in 2006, ATF has only had short-term Acting Directors, temporary leaders.

Whether it is a Republican President or a Democratic President, the gun lobby and their friends in the Senate have objected to every nominee. It looks as if they are preparing to mount an effort to stop the most recent nominee by President Obama, Todd Jones of Minnesota.

To be effective and accountable, Federal law enforcement agencies need Senate-confirmed leadership. But the gun lobby has done everything it can to keep this agency leaderless and weak. This is beyond hypocritical.

After the tragedy in Newtown, Mr. Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association appeared before our Senate Judiciary Committee and said he opposed efforts to close gun loopholes because ``we need to enforce the thousands of gun laws that are currently on the books.'' Well, the agency that enforces Federal gun laws and refers gun cases for Federal prosecution is the ATF. In fact, for the past 15 years there has been a provision written in an appropriations bill, a gun lobby rider, that prohibits any of ATF's enforcement functions from being moved to another agency. So the NRA is making sure that the ATF is the only game in town when it comes to enforcing gun laws, and then they are making sure it never has a permanent Director.

I want to put the gun lobby on notice. If we can't get a Senate-confirmed Director for the ATF, then I am going to move to repeal the rider and bring in other Federal agencies with Senate-confirmed leadership--such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation--to make sure gun laws are enforced effectively in this country. The National Rifle Association and the gun lobby cannot have it both ways. They cannot complain that the gun laws are not being enforced and then stop any effort to put a permanent leader in place at this agency. The gun lobby has to make that choice. If they want to enforce gun laws on the books, they can work with us to confirm a Director at the ATF. If they want to keep blocking the ATF from having a Director, we will have to get other agencies involved to make sure laws are enforced. It is that simple.

In closing, I again extend my sympathy and prayers to the victims and families of gun violence. We have to do our part in Washington to put an end to this. We haven't had the votes we needed yet, but we should not give up. The American people are counting on us to make America safer.

Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that my last statement be placed in a separate part of the Record.

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