Domestic Violence

Floor Speech

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, Mr. President.

I hope the Presiding Officer had a great Mother's Day. I hope Senator Klobuchar had a great Mother's Day and got a phone call from her daughter in Connecticut.

I am here to tell the story of three pretty heroic mothers who are representative of far too many with similar stories across the country. I wish to tell you very quickly this afternoon about Gwen Cox Salley, Lori Gellatly, and Marianne O'Shields. All three of them are no longer with us. They are amongst the 31,672 victims of gun violence every year, 2,639 deaths a month, and 86 people a day who are killed by guns all across this country. I wish to try to lend a voice to a few of these victims tonight, mothers who were killed by their intimate partners, by their spouses, in an act of domestic violence that frankly could have been prevented if not for the law of this land.

First, the story of Gwen Cox Salley. Gwen was killed 2 days after she finally took out a restraining order against her husband. She had a long history of abuse with her husband Michael Scott Salley. Most recently he had come to her house the day before she took out this restraining order and threatened to kill her and their 7-year-old daughter. He tried to get access to his gun that was on the property, but she was able to hide it and then very quietly texted a couple of her friends that she was in trouble. The police came, and before violence erupted they were able to arrest him. She took out a restraining order, but the next day he came back with a gun, went to the local daycare parking lot where Gwen was picking up her 7-year-old daughter, took control of the car, sped off to apparently kill them both, but luckily Gwen was able to push her 7-year-old daughter out of the car so her daughter could be rescued and taken in by the daycare center's employees, but an hour or so later Gwen Salley was dead.

She did everything she was supposed to do. She finally left this man who had been so abusive over the years. After he threatened to kill them both, the cops were called and she took out a restraining order, but because the law of Louisiana at the time didn't allow for police to come and take his gun--in fact, the law allowed him, as the Federal law allows now, to go out and even purchase a gun during that time, and 1 day later Gwen Cox Salley was dead.

The gun industry wants to make us believe that our greatest fear comes from gun-wielding strangers who are going to break into our house at night and murder us, but the fact is women across this country are three times more likely to be killed by a gun by their husbands or their intimate partner than they are to be killed by anybody else with any other kind of weapon. That is the reality. For women who live in homes with a firearm, they are 500 percent more likely to be the victim of homicide through domestic violence than in houses without firearms. The statistics don't look good for women across this country and in part because our laws are so weak, even in a State such as Connecticut.

This is the story of Lori Gellatly, who was killed just a few days ago in Oxford, CT. She had taken out a restraining order against her husband Scott. They had twins, but things had gone wrong. She wrote in the application about one incident that ``Scott had yelled in my face ..... and got very angry. I felt threatened. He then told me I wasn't going anywhere and grabbed my right thumb and twisted my wrist .....'' while the two children were in her arms. ``He acts out very violently and I am afraid for my kids and myself.''

She took out that restraining order and again, almost within moments, he was at the house. She called 911, but when police got there they found Lori Gellatly and her mother Merry Jackson with gunshot wounds. Lori was pronounced dead at Waterbury Hospital. Again, a restraining order taken out but with no ability to take the guns away from her husband or to stop him from buying a gun, she was found dead.

The reality is we can do something about it. In fact, some of these States I am talking about are doing something about it themselves. Louisiana, which has a reputation as a State with a pretty strong history of gun ownership, has done something about it. The State legislature has passed a law allowing for a process that someone convicted of a domestic violence crime can have their guns taken away. Wisconsin has done the same, a State with a similar, pretty robust history of gun ownership.

It just makes sense that if someone has been convicted of a domestic violence crime, if they have a restraining order taken out against them because they got violent with their spouse, that is the exact time at which society needs to step in, law enforcement needs to step in and separate those guns from that individual. The statistics back that up. In States, for instance, that have just basic background check protections, women are 38 percent less likely to be killed by guns. These laws matter when it comes to keeping women alive at the hands of abusive spouses.

Mariann O'Shields died just a couple weeks ago in Spartanburg, SC. Not only had she taken out a restraining order against her husband Robert O'Shields, but she had gone the extra step to bring her and her kids--her daughter to a domestic violence shelter. She was staying in a shelter, but her husband tracked her down at the shelter, and just after she had dropped off her child at a bus stop she was killed. The staff at the safe home, if you can imagine, were paralyzed by this crime. The director said:

My staff and I are totally devastated. It is your worst nightmare when you work with a shelter. I don't think that there is anything we could have done to protect her.

That is right. There wasn't anything more that domestic violence shelter could have done to protect Mariann O'Shields, but there is something we can do. We have all sorts of disagreements about the future of gun laws in this country, and I understand in the foreseeable future we are not likely going to get a bill that expands the sales that are subject to background checks, even though 80 percent of the American public thinks we should require people to show they are not a criminal before they can buy a gun.

I wish we could get the assault weapons off the street that did the kind of damage we saw in Newtown, CT, but in the absence of getting an agreement on commonsense alternatives to current law such as bans on assault weapons and a greater scope of background checks, at least maybe we can take this specific issue, which is spouses, in particular, women who have taken out restraining orders against their husbands or spouses or boyfriends, maybe we can limit the change we can agree on to at least those situations in which women are most vulnerable, after an episode of violence, after a threat, when they have taken out a court-ordered restraining order, maybe at that moment their spouse shouldn't be able to possess a gun. Maybe at least during those few moments the spouse shouldn't be able to go out and buy a gun. Maybe the week after Mother's Day, in the face of the heroism that women such as Gwen and Lori and Mariann showed in removing their families and themselves from violent situations, maybe we can at least listen to the voices of these handful of victims of domestic violence crimes and do something in a targeted, limited way that could in the end prevent hundreds of unnecessary deaths across this country. I have to believe that in a body of good will we can at least agree on that.

That is the reason virtually every week I try to come down to the floor and share with my colleagues some of the voices of the victims, these 31,000 a year, 2,600 a month, 86 a day who are lost to gun violence all across this country. We can do better.

I yield the floor.

I note the absence of a quorum.

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