Chicago's Gun Violence

Floor Speech

Ms. KELLY of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, April was a particularly violent month in the city of Chicago. Thirty-two people were shot and killed in the city, 19 of them under the age of 25.

You have heard me talk before about the epidemic of gun violence, about how urban violence in cities like Chicago is robbing us of a generation. But nothing illustrates how our gun violence permeates everyday life in Chicago more than the stories of the deaths of those 19 young people.

They, like scores of teens and young adults across the city, were stalked by gun violence. It followed them home from school, creeping up on their porches or tapping on their car windows; and, in an instant, an everyday activity became an unspeakable tragedy.

Jordan Harris, 24, was shot during a house party.

Michael Flournoy, 17, was shot in front of a neighborhood church.

Adrian Soto, 17, shot on a sidewalk.

Gakirah Barnes, 17, shot in the street.

Andres Cervantes, 22, shot while sitting in a car.

Joshua Martinez, 20, shot on a front porch.

Keno Glass, 16, shot in a drive-by shooting while on spring break.

Trevolus Pickett, 20, shot in a gangway.

Nicholas Ramirez, 19, chased and shot while he was driving.

Anthony Bankhead, 18, and Jordan Means, 16, shot in an apartment during an argument.

Timmy Bermudez, 19, shot while driving in an ambush on Easter Sunday.

Quinton Jackson, 22, shot in a building hallway.

Darius Kelly, 22, shot in a drive-by.

Demario Collins, 19, shot while sitting in a car.

Martavarian Emery, 21, shot from outside while standing in a kitchen.

Jaquez Williams, 17, shot on a sidewalk.

Cindy Bahena, 21, shot while riding in the backseat of a car.

And then there is Endia Martin, a 14-year-old girl who was shot and killed last week by another 14-year-old girl in a dispute over a boy.

Endia, a high school freshman and an honor student, and the 14-year-old suspect, an honor student, friends since elementary school, had been feuding on Facebook. After school last week, the teen suspect confronted Endia with a gun. That gun, a .38 caliber revolver, went from a local gun shop popular with straw purchasers to a man who resold the gun illegally and falsely reported it as stolen. From there, it made its way to a 25-year-old man who gave the gun to his niece, the 14-year-old suspect.

The girl, standing in a crowd of onlookers and instigators, drew the gun from her waistband and pulled the trigger. The gun actually malfunctioned. She handed it to someone in the crowd who fixed it and handed it back to her before she fired again, hitting Endia in the back and another teen in the arm.

This shooting painfully underscores the need for commonsense gun reforms, like cracking down on straw purchasers and better tracking gun sales to curtail illegal trafficking. There were many opportunities along the journey of that .38 caliber revolver to save Endia's life.

The shooting also spotlights the need for better social supports, greater accountability within our families and communities, and increased responsibility for the welfare of our children.

Losing a bright light like Endia is a tragedy, but so is the baby-faced accused killer sitting in juvenile lockup right now, the product of a community of accomplices who encouraged one child to kill another. As a society, we failed both girls. We have failed to provide Endia with a safe community she deserved, and we failed to teach her killer to value her own life, much less anyone else's.

Preventing senseless killings like this requires a combination of legislative initiatives and community action. We in Congress must do our part to stop the bloodshed by passing commonsense gun legislation. We must also do more to support programs on the ground that provide our young people with alternatives to violence. It is a moral imperative we can no longer ignore.

Before I go, I would like to pay tribute to Leonore Draper, a beloved and dedicated gun violence prevention advocate in Chicago who herself was killed last week in a possible drive-by shooting. Leonore was headed home from an antiviolence charity fundraiser she helped organize when she was shot and killed. What a horrible irony.

Leonore devoted her life to ending the violence on Chicago's streets. Her killing rattled the city and her fellow antiviolence advocates who are determined to continue to work to stop the shootings that claimed her and young Endia. Both Leonore and Endia were buried on Monday. Please do not let their deaths be in vain.

To my colleagues, it is past time that we took action.

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