[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 60 (Tuesday, May 16, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H3051-H3052]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              GUN VIOLENCE

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, amidst the sometimes incendiary rhetoric 
surrounding the efforts to reduce gun violence, there are times when it 
is easy for people to overlook a basic fact: the victims of gun 
violence are real people; they are not statistics. They are not 
debating points.
  The grounds of our Nation's Capitol are filled with memorials to the 
dead. Our visitors and tourists here are visiting them as I speak, the 
Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the 
Korean Memorial, soon we may have a memorial to the soldiers who died 
in World War II.
  Mr. Speaker, if we take all of those memorials to all the soldiers 
who have been killed since the Civil War, it would be fewer than the 
number of Americans who have been lost to gun violence in the last 
third of a century.
  It is not enough to simply have another memorial here in our Nation's 
Capitol; although, something the size of 16 Vietnam memorials would be 
impressive, because that is what it would take to list all of these 
victims.
  Last Sunday, in Portland, we had thousands of people standing and 
crowding into our little Pioneer Courthouse Square for our Mother's Day 
March against gun violence. They were standing on 70,000 bricks that 
had peoples' names inscribed who contributed to building that public 
square. It would take 10 acres of bricks with peoples' names to deal 
with the million victims.
  Our job must be to make sure that these victims are not anonymous; 
that we put a face next to the names, to provide details of the life 
that would go along with that picture.
  It is important to let people know that these victims had parents, 
relatives and friends. They had jobs. They had hopes. We need to know 
how it happened and we need to think of what we could do to prevent it. 
That the United States has the worst record of gun violence of any 
developed Nation in the world ought to be a concern to every citizen, a 
sense of shame.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not think that it is we are less smart than the 
rest of the world. It is hard to believe that we are somehow worse 
people. I cannot believe that we care less about our children more than 
others, and I would hope that we as a people are not somehow more 
reckless.
  I hope that in focusing our attention on the loss, how it occurred, 
what it means, we will be able to renew our commitment.
  Tomorrow, I am going to speak on the floor of this House about one 
face, a young man named Darrell English. I will talk about the 
circumstance of his death, and I will be posting that information on my 
website and dealing with it in public meetings so that others may know 
the name, the face, the hopes and the dreams.
  Every month, as long as I am in Congress, I will continue the 
discussion on the floor, on the Web, the conversation with the 
community, as a small gesture that these people not have died in vain.
  This hope that we can all do our part to reduce the danger of gun 
violence. I hope the House of Representatives will act on that, 
finally, acting on a juvenile crime bill that has been locked in 
conference committee that has not met for 295 days because of 
unwillingness to pass the simple common sense steps that have already 
been approved by the Senate.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that citizens back home will take steps to 
promote their own initiatives and legislation that politicians can use 
to make their communities safer in the political process, at the ballot 
box, in the legislature. I hope that every citizen will do

[[Page H3052]]

their part as individuals, that no parent allows a child to go into a 
home without inquiring as to whether or not there is a gun there, if it 
is locked, if it is loaded.
  If Americans can somehow cut in half the rate of automobile deaths in 
the last 30 years, I know that we can do our part to protect our 
families. There is no single magic solution, but together we can find 
hundreds of ways everyday to make America safer, to make our 
communities more livable, because the most important face is going to 
be the face that does not appear on a poster like this, a picture that 
does not appear of one of our loved ones whose life was not lost to gun 
violence.

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