[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 24 (Tuesday, March 7, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Page S1229]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           CHILD SAFETY LOCKS

  Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, I rise to applaud this morning's bipartisan 
``firearm summit'' at the White House. A commitment to find an 
agreeable compromise on the Juvenile Justice Bill could not be more 
timely.
  A week ago today, Mr. President, a six-year old living in a drug-
infested flophouse in Mount Morris Township, Michigan found a gun under 
a quilt. The six-year old who found that gun wanted to settle a 
playground quarrel he had the previous day with his classmate, Kayla 
Rolland.
  He was able to grab the gun from under the quilt because blankets are 
not trigger locks; they are not a sufficient deterrent to curious 
children who find guns lying around unlocked. He took the gun and hid 
it in his pants and brought it to school the next day. No one and 
nothing prevented him from doing so.
  When he arrived at Buell Elementary School, the boy announced to 
Kayla that she was not his friend. He waited for an opportunity to get 
back at her. He later said he wanted to scare her.
  As his classmates were filing out and heading toward the school 
library, he had his chance. He did not call her names; he did not pull 
her hair; he did not hit her. Instead, he pulled the gun from his pants 
and waved it at two other classmates. He then accurately set his sights 
on Kayla, pulled the trigger, and killed her. She was all of six years 
old. He shot her dead in their first grade classroom.
  He had access to the gun because it was not safely stored, and he was 
able to fire it because the gun did not have a safety lock. Either 
would have saved Kayla's life.
  I have heard skeptics say that our child safety lock proposal, which 
78 Senators supported last year, would not have mattered in this case 
because this gun was stolen. That is only half-true. Had the legal 
owner of this gun safely locked it with one of the devices mandated 
under our bill, then the thief might not have stolen it. Had the legal 
owner of this gun safely locked it with one of the devices mandated 
under our bill, the child's uncle might not have been able to leave it 
loaded within the boy's reach. Had the legal owner of this gun safely 
locked it with one of the devices mandated under our bill, the first 
grader could not have picked it up and used it with deadly accuracy.
  How do we respond to this tragedy? How do we respond to others like 
it? There is no simple answer. But without a doubt, enacting our modest 
legislation to mandate that a child safety lock be sold with every 
handgun would be a good first step.
  The distinguished Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Henry 
Hyde, said over the weekend about the stalled gun provisions of the 
Juvenile Justice bill, ``If you can't get dinner, at least get a 
sandwich.'' I agree.
  Chairman Hyde, who has always been committed to reasonable firearms 
control, would prefer dinner. And I would too: we ought to pass the 
whole Juvenile Justice bill. We ought to do it soon. Time is of the 
essence because while the Congressional attention span is short, 
children die even when Congress isn't watching. We need to do more to 
protect children from guns and we need to do it now.
  It is a regrettable truth that progress in the Juvenile Justice 
debate lurches forward only in reaction to unspeakable tragedy. A year 
ago next month, the massacre at Columbine and the shooting in Conyers, 
Georgia shocked this Senate into passing common sense proposals to get 
tough on thugs and violent juveniles. Some of those very same measures, 
including child safety locks, failed to pass the Senate by wide margins 
just the previous year.
  But the overwhelming approval of the child safety lock proposal 
demonstrates that the Senate ``gets it:'' kids and guns do not mix. The 
House needs to ``get it'' too. The Center for Disease Control estimates 
that nearly 1.2 million ``latch-key'' children have access to loaded 
and unlocked firearms. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that 
children and teenagers cause over 10,000 unintentional shootings each 
year in which at least 800 people die. In addition, over 1,900 children 
and teenagers attempt suicide with a firearm each year. Tragically, 
over three-fourths of them are successful.
  If preventable suicides and accidents are not enough to convince you 
that guns must be kept out of the hands of children, consider the 
following: within the next five years, firearms will overtake motor 
vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death among American 
children. The rate of firearm death of children under 15 years old is 
16 times higher in the U.S. than in the 25 other industrialized nations 
combined. And the firearm injury ``epidemic,'' due largely to handgun 
injuries, is ten times larger than the polio epidemic of the first half 
of the 20th century.
  The very same day that young Kayla Rolland was tragically killed in 
Michigan, a 12 year old middle school student in the Milwaukee area 
carried a loaded gun to school. A disagreement the previous day led him 
to seek revenge by scaring his classmates. Thankfully, he never used 
the gun and school officials safely confiscated it. This scenario is 
replicated across the country every day.
  Requiring child safety locks will drive the number of juvenile gun 
deaths down--something everyone approves of.
  Mr. President, we have the opportunity to reduce what will soon be 
the number one cause of death among American children. How can we sit 
idly by when preventing it is so attainable?
  We cannot.
  So we ought to pass the Kohl-Chafee-Hatch Child Safety Lock Act. 
Alone or, better yet, as part of a package, it will help prevent the 
tragic accidents associated with unauthorized, unlocked, unattended 
firearms. I am pleased that the President called today's summit to try 
to move on these urgent matters. I am distressed that it seems, at 
least today, unproductive. And I pledge to work with the President and 
the bipartisan Leadership to act now so that we do not have to mourn 
more preventable innocent deaths.

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