[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 163 (Tuesday, December 18, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8100-S8103]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NEWTOWN, CONNECTICUT TRAGEDY
Mr. LIEBERMANN. Mr. President, Senator Blumenthal and I come to the
floor to thank our colleagues for adopting by unanimous consent S.R.
621, which is exactly mirrored in the words of H.R. 833, condemning the
attacks that occurred in Newtown, CT, last Friday and expressing sorrow
to all those affected by those attacks. We are still in shock in
Connecticut. All of us who know this little town, as America has come
to know it, which includes 27,000, 28,000 people, known it is a
beautiful town with hard-working people who worked their way to get
there. These are tight families, very religious, very much involved in
the life of the community, and peaceful. Out of nowhere--and this
tragically is the point and the warning--comes this one deranged
individual with guns and slaughters 26 innocents, breaking our hearts,
and 20 of those being young children.
I am sure everybody now feels as if they are part of the family of
those who were killed. We look at the faces of those children, pure and
innocent, and I think of the words of one of the clergymen at the
interfaith service the other night: These are angels and they are
really with the angels in Heaven now.
With the work and response of the first responders and the trauma
they have gone through to face what they had to face and the carnage
they witnessed there, as we talk to some of them they feel guilty they
didn't get there earlier and couldn't have stopped it somehow. Of
course, they did more than we could ask of anybody. They ran to the
danger. The principal, the teachers--I mean the stories that come out
about the heroism.
I remember long ago I heard someone speak who said the definition of
courage is grace under pressure. ``Pressure'' is not even the right
word here; it is grace in a moment of terror, the single-mindedness and
the grace of the principal, the teachers who acted in a way that put
their own lives on the line to protect the lives of the children. Let
us speak the truth. There were hundreds more children in that building
that could have been targets of this madman.
We are wounded, but I will tell my colleagues America is wounded and
the world is wounded. A priest said to me the other night at the
service he was so touched that he had received a bundle of letters from
schoolchildren in Russia. It reminded me there was an incident in
Russia years ago where a gunman went into a schoolhouse and wantonly
killed children, and monsignor was so touched by it, but that is the
way this event has touched the world.
I will tell my colleagues this is a strong town and we can feel the
people of this community pulling together to support the survivors and
thinking about how they can rebuild the town and its spirit. One woman
said so poignantly the other night at the interfaith service that we
will not allow this event to define Newtown, CT--and they will not--but
the families of those who have been lost have been changed forever.
It is in that regard I particularly want to thank my colleagues for
this resolution of condolence and support. I wish to thank my colleague
Senator Reid for the moment of silence yesterday in this Chamber. In my
faith tradition, when a person visits a house of mourning, one of the
customs is for the visitor to sit silently with the mourners. It is
very awkward. It is actually not the natural thing we want to do, but
this tradition has come about as an act of respect to the mourners
because they may be in their own mourning internally, and we want to
allow them to speak first if they want to speak. The other is that in
the face of death, and particularly in the senseless, brutal deaths of
these 26 in Newtown, sometimes the best response is silence and all
that the silence contains. So I thank my colleague Senator Reid for
that moment of silence.
Senator Blumenthal and I and our Connecticut congressional delegation
convened a vigil last night at which we all spoke, and Father Conroy,
the Chaplain of the House, offered prayer. Chaplain Black could not be
there because he was at Senator Inouye's bedside with his family. We
thank all our colleagues who came last night. Their presence meant a
lot to us and it meant a lot to the people back home in Newtown.
The question is, Can we do anything to stop this from happening
again, even once, but hopefully more often. What can we do? As the
President said--incidentally, the President's visit to Newtown was so
comforting to the families and all the town, all the people of
Connecticut. He brought comfort, and I will say he brought resolve,
which was very moving and inspiring to everyone there. As he said,
these situations are always complicated. We can always say, as we look
at all the possible causes of such a tragedy, that even if we did
something about that, even if we banned all guns, there would still be
violence or even if we provided better mental health treatment, there
would still be people who would break through and commit acts of
violence, and even if we removed all the stimuli to violence in our
entertainment culture, still people would commit these acts. Of course,
that is true, but do we not have the capacity to intervene at the
different points in the story of this young man to stop this from
happening, at least once, again, and probably many more times? Of
course we have that capacity.
I keep being taken back, as people say that human nature is violent--
of course, there is violence that goes back to the beginning of
recorded history. We remember the two children of Adam and Eve. Cain
killed Abel in a terribly violent act. But I think we also have to be
instructed by what happened after that when God speaks to Cain and
says: Where is your brother?
Cain feigns ignorance and asks the question that echoes through the
millennia since then: Am I my brother's keeper?
God says to Cain, in Genesis: What have you done? We can hear in our
minds' ears the voice of God in anger: What have you done? You have
killed your brother. You have killed my creation.
Then God says: Your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground.
I think in that the Bible instructs us--the words of God instruct
us--that we are our brothers' keepers, we are our sisters' keepers and,
of course, we are, most of all, our children's keepers. We can never
say, oh, people are violent and turn away. We have the capacity--
particularly we here, honored and privileged to serve in the Senate,
serve in the House, serve in the White House--to do something about
this.
Somebody said to me, as the President said the other night, if we
save just one child's life by what we will do, it will have been worth
it.
We can save a lot more than one child if we work together. I have
talked to people since Friday who said to me:
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Why will this be any different? Nothing happened after Columbine or
Aurora or Virginia Tech or any of the other acts of mass violence in
our society. I do not blame people for being skeptical. That is the
truth. We should have acted earlier, and we have not.
I went back. I proposed, with Senator McCain, Senator Byrd, Senator
Jack Reed, and a bunch of others, the creation of a national commission
on violence 3 weeks after Columbine in 1999. It passed the Senate, but
it did not make it through the House in conference committee.
So I understand why people are skeptical, but that does not mean we
should not hear the cries of those children as the guns of that madman
turned on them and actually see their blood on the ground on the floor
of that schoolhouse until we get something done. We can prevent this
from happening to people again. We can certainly prevent it from
happening to some people.
I see signs of hope around us; people, colleagues, who have been
protectors of gun rights saying, in the last few days: This has to
change. We have to come together and reason together and act together,
and everything has to be on the table, including our gun laws.
There was a poll in the Washington Post today. It was very striking
to note that for the first time, when people have been asked this
question--and they have been asked it after a series of acts of mass
violence: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, et cetera--do you think
this was an isolated act or does it say something about more troubling
conditions in our society--I am paraphrasing--for the first time--every
other time people said it was an isolated act of a madman or mad
people--this time they said it reflects a deeper problem in our
society.
I believe what causes that change is that 20 of the victims in
Newtown, CT, were young children, and there is not only a heartbreak
across our country about this, not only anger, but I think there is
guilt, and we all ought to feel guilty because, as a society, what the
attacks in Newtown say to us is that we have failed to fulfill what
would seem to be our most natural--natural law, if you will--
responsibility, which is to protect the safety and lives of our
children.
So I hope we will act. There will be no better tribute, no better
source of consolation to the families who have lost loved ones. I have
proposed a commission, as I did in 1999, because these are complicated
questions. In almost every one of these acts of mass violence, we have
a young man who is troubled. Clearly, in hindsight, family, friends,
schoolmates say something was wrong with him. Very often--I have heard
rumors about this being the case with Adam Lanza in Newtown; I do not
know for sure, so I am not saying it is any more than a rumor--very
often, these young men have had an almost hypnotic involvement in some
form of violence in our entertainment culture, particularly violent
video games, and then they obtain guns and they go out and become not
just troubled young men but mass murderers.
We need to try to intervene, particularly at the beginning with the
troubled young man and get him--or if it is a woman her--help quickly,
and to make sure our mental health system is there to protect and offer
that help, and perhaps in our health system, insurance is there to
guarantee payment will be made for that. It is complicated.
The impact of the entertainment culture is complicated as well.
Obviously, not every young person who plays a violent video game
becomes a killer. I know because I have spent a lot of time looking at
the social science--and it goes back decades--that there is a very
clear pattern where young people who are involved in violence in the
entertainment culture are more aggressive. Thank God, of course, almost
none of them become murderers. But some of them do, and we have to ask
why.
Then, of course, we need to strengthen our gun laws. I hope either by
executive action or legislative action we will convene such a
commission, but I want to make very clear I am not offering this idea
as a substitute for any action we can take now, any action that the
President can take now, for instance, with regard to the existing laws
that are aimed at preventing people who should not have guns from
having them, keeping guns that really are military and are not part of
hunting or sports shooting off the market--anything the President could
do, anything Congress could do.
I would support a restoration of the assault ban today.
These are weapons developed by our military originally, not by
private industry for hunting or sports shooting purposes. They should
not be sold. We have the background checks in the Brady bill if you
attempt to buy a gun from a licensed Federal firearms dealer. Why
shouldn't that exist for people who buy a gun at a gun show, where,
incidentally, terrorists we know have bought guns?
So anything we can do quickly, we ought to do, but I also think a
commission will make sure that we will not let the anger, the hurt, the
guilt that we feel now dissipate with time or as a result of
legislative gridlock--yes, legislative gridlock again.
Remember Lincoln's words at Gettysburg, that these dead shall not
have died in vain. I think that should be our animating emotion and
sense of purpose here, as reflected and I think led by the President's
very powerful words in Newtown on Sunday night.
I remember after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 all the work we did in
Washington to create the Department of Homeland Security, the 9/11
Commission, the legislation, passing the legislation, implementing the
9/11 Commission. A lot of work, bipartisan work, was done in Congress
and in the executive branch to make those laws and to keep us a lot
safer, to prevent another 9/11 from happening. But I will tell you
this, Mr. President, my belief--and I was at the center of all of
this--those laws would not have been passed and enacted, and we would
not be safer today if it were not for the extraordinary commitment of
the families of people who were killed on 9/11 to get involved. They
talked truth to power, and when Members of Congress and members of the
executive branch were reluctant to act and were falling back in all
political ways, self-defensive ways, those families faced them, face to
face, and some in power turned their faces away because they could not
take it. But, ultimately, those families brought about action.
These families in Newtown who have lost people--loved ones,
children--will never be the same. I hope and pray they can come back to
some semblance of normalcy. I hope that some of them will have the
courage and the strength--which will take an enormous amount--to get
involved in forcing our country to do whatever it can to stop anything
like this from happening again. But in the larger sense, we are all
members of the family. This is the American family. Those 26 people--
those 20 children--were our children, our family members, and it is
incumbent upon us now to summon not just the remorse and the guilt but
the will to act to stop this from happening again and to save the lives
of our family members.
I thank the Acting President pro tempore and yield the floor for my
colleague and friend from Connecticut.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Connecticut
for those very moving and important comments on the Senate floor at
this profoundly significant time in the history of our State and our
Nation.
Remembering Daniel K. Inouye
I want to join my colleagues who have expressed their admiration for
Senator Inouye and our sense of loss at his passing. I admired him
deeply as a patriot, a warfighter, a public servant, who was unstinting
and unwavering in his commitment to our Constitution, the principles of
equality and justice, and our national defense.
His loss is a loss for the country, but, particularly, personally,
for all of us who serve in this body. I knew him less well than
colleagues who have spoken eloquently, such as Senators Reid and Durbin
and Boxer and Lieberman, and one of my regrets, as I stand here, is
that I did not have the time to know him better because he was such an
extraordinary human being.
Perhaps one of the lessons for me personally is that time is short,
as we all know, and we should make a greater effort in this body and
among us in this profession to know our colleagues and to treasure
their friendship.
[[Page S8102]]
I want to also thank my colleague from Connecticut for his very
perceptive and powerful words on the tragedy in Newtown, CT, which
brings me to the floor today with such a heavy heart. I thank my
colleagues who have reached out to me, including the Senator from
Vermont, a great friend, Senators Klobuchar and Durbin and Bennet and
so many others seeking to help Connecticut. The collegiality of this
body has been brought home to me in these days when others have sought
to provide not only consolation but also suggestions for action.
One of my reasons for being on the floor today is to talk about
action we can take. I want the families who are grieving now to know
that my standing here to talk about policy and action in no way means
any disrespect or effort to intrude on their grieving and emotional
rebuilding. But we know on Friday a tragedy befell the community of
Newtown, CT, and that tragedy is expressed in S. Res. 621 and H. Res.
833.
I thank my colleagues in both Houses for condemning the attack and
offering their condolences to the people of Connecticut and, more
importantly, the people and families who suffered these losses most
directly. I have spent the last 4 days--or a better part of them--in
Connecticut. Those 4 days are a time that I do not want to relive,
ever.
I first learned about this incident on Friday morning in the midst of
a normal day. I had events scheduled. I heard there was something wrong
in the Danbury area.
As the details mounted, I left Hartford to go to Newtown and to the
firehouse in Sandy Hook. I arrived there as a public official, but what
I saw was through the eyes of a parent.
The firehouse in Sandy Hook was where parents went to find out if
their children were okay. The way they found out was that their
children appeared, or they did not. After a while, some of the children
came. Some were reunited with their parents there or at the school, and
their parents took them home, and others did not.
I will live forever with the sights and sounds of those parents as
they emerged--the cries and sobbing, the cries of grief and anguish,
the look on those faces.
The murderer blasted his way into the elementary school in Sandy Hook
armed with a Bushmaster AR-15, an assault rifle; a 10mm Glock pistol; a
9mm Sig Sauer; and with multiple magazines filled with hundreds of
rounds, that he used in an execution-style massacre.
Wayne Carver, who is the State medical examiner for Connecticut, has
been in that job for more than 30 years. He has seen it all. But he has
said he has seen nothing like this ever. There were 20 small bodies
ripped apart, executed en masse.
There is no question evil came to Newtown, as Governor Malloy said
that day. Evil came in its starkest, most inhumane terms. But heroism
also came to Newtown.
The SWAT teams that went into that building actually saved lives.
They saved hundreds of lives of students and staff in the school
because the murderer took his own life when he knew they were entering.
There is the heroism, of course, of the principal, teachers, and
others who ran toward the sound of gunfire. They ran toward danger to
protect their children, children who were 6 and 7, their faces now on
the front pages of newspapers with their stories inside.
There is the heroism of the State troopers who had to confirm the
identities of the victims for their families and stayed with those
families throughout the weekend.
There is the heroism of the community itself. Newtown is, indeed, a
quintessential New England town. Everybody knows everybody else, which
is a good thing but in a way also a bad thing because everyone's
children knew the other children.
At the vigil Sunday night, two of the children who attend that school
came up to me to show me some of the necklaces they had made with blue
beads, 20 of them. There were 20 blue beads, each one for a child
victim, and 6 stars for the adults. This community is not only
quintessentially New England, it is quintessentially American in its
strength, its resoluteness, its resiliency, its caring and courage.
Part of what has also inspired Newtown is the outpouring of support
they have received from all across America and all across the world.
Never doubt the messages you have sent, the thoughts and prayers made a
difference to them. They truly have.
Newtown is a call for national reflection and for coming together.
This tragedy hit Connecticut, but the town of Newtown is supported by
the grief shared by all Americans, but it is also a call for action. It
is the right time to ask what we can do to stop this sort of tragedy.
In recent years, there have been horrific shootings at Virginia Tech,
in Aurora, in Oak Ridge, on university campuses, movie theaters, and in
places of worship. There were many other places where unsuspecting
Americans, going about their everyday lives, had those lives cut short
in a few minutes of slaughter.
In Newtown, a lone gunman was able to kill 20 elementary
schoolchildren ranging from 6 to 7 years old. He killed the school's
principal, the school psychologist, and four teachers.
Sadly, there have always been and there always will be mentally ill
people, mentally deranged or hateful people who want to lash out
violently at the world. We will never be able to stop all of them from
doing harm. But even if we cannot prevent all these tragedies, we must
not surrender and say we will do nothing to prevent any more of them.
In the last few days, everywhere I have gone in Newtown, people have
come up to me and said the same words over and over. ``We have to do
something.'' People in law enforcement, families of victims, members of
the clergy again and again have said those words, ``We have to do
something.''
That is my commitment today, to do something; in fact, to do
everything I can as a Senator to press and prevent the next tragedy. As
a former law enforcement official, and as a father, I cannot do less.
There is no single law, no simple solution that will be a cure-all.
But there are sound, sensible steps we can take, some involving new
laws, some involving better enforcement of existing laws. Our local and
State police, for example, and Federal agencies need more resources and
support.
We need to do something to effectively ban assault weapons. I am
talking about weapons that are not designed for self-defense or hunting
but, rather, for killing and maiming human beings, often as many as
possible, as fast as possible. These are weapons that are civilian
versions of military weapons. There is no reason any such weapon should
be for sale today in America.
We need to do something also to ban high-capacity magazines, also
involved in this mass murder. What real hunter uses or needs 30-round
clips? What self-defense situation is served by them?
We need to do something to prevent mentally ill people and criminals
from having firearms. I don't know whether better laws could have
prevented the shooter in Newtown from getting his hands on the weapons
he used, but we must look at what we can do to identify such people
with serious mental problems before it is too late and provide
intervention and treatment to take those weapons out of their hands.
Today, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System has
prevented nearly 1.8 million attempted purchases of firearms by
mentally ill people or criminals. Clearly, that alone was not enough to
prevent a number of tragic shootings. But I think we can all agree it
is good those sales were not completed, and right now only 60 percent
of gun sales involve a background check. We should ensure that all
firearms sales involve a background check, including guns that are not
sold by licensed dealers, and that those checks, wherever they are
done, are thorough and comprehensive.
Nothing here means we should trample on the second amendment. The
Supreme Court has spoken clearly in the Heller case that law-abiding
Americans have constitutional rights to own firearms, whether for self-
protection, hunting, competitive shooting or any other proper purpose.
That is the law.
But the Supreme Court has also made clear the government can
appropriately impose sensible regulations, as it can in many other
areas of constitutional rights, on how firearms are used and purchased.
Everyone would agree criminals and deranged people should not be able
to get their hands on firearms.
[[Page S8103]]
On all these issues, we have to look for sensible common ground,
rooted in common sense, and I believe there is room for people of good
will to work together to find it.
Even as I say that, I am mindful that issues involving the second
amendment rights and violence in the past fueled deep passions.
Suspicion and passions have run deep and wide on both sides of this
debate, including in this Chamber, and there is a lot of distrust to
overcome.
I am here to keep faith with the people of Newtown who have grabbed
my arm and said, ``We have to do something.'' That is my commitment. I
will work with the President and my colleagues in the Senate regardless
of party or geography. I will work with any organization that is
willing to engage in a thoughtful, constructive discussion about what
steps to take to avoid tragedy such as the Newtown shootings in the
future.
I will work to find a solution to this crisis, because it is a
crisis, and I will not be deterred by any organization or campaign that
uses scare tactics or intimidation. Because there was nothing more
frightening, nothing more horrifying, than looking into the eyes of the
parents who came out of that firehouse in Sandy Hook who lost their
babies last Friday. That is any parent's worst nightmare.
I know there are some who say we can never do anything about the
problem of gun violence; that we are entrenched as a nation and so
polarized as a political body that we will continue to wring our hands
at every massacre and never take action. Yet sometimes events happen
that so horrify our country and our fellow citizens that they change
the nature of the discussion. They change the political ground under
us. They are a tectonic shift, and I believe the massacre of the
innocent children and their loving teachers in Newtown is exactly such
an event.
Yesterday, some of my Senate colleagues had the courage to join this
call for action and say publicly we cannot go on as before. I wish to
thank, particularly, Senator Manchin and Senator Warner. Their heroic
stance is an invitation, indeed a challenge, to every other Member of
the Senate to join in this common effort to find common ground and at
long last do something to stop the killing.
I also wish to thank, particularly, Senator Reid, our majority
leader, for his leadership in calling for a meaningful and thoughtful
debate on gun violence.
``We have to do something. We have to do something. We have to do
something.'' That is what people in Newtown have beseeched me over and
over. I believe the American people agree. This is our moment, and we
are the people to do it. We can. I ask each of my colleagues to listen
to those voices and to hear their own hearts.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, first, I wish to join my thoughts on those
of the two Senators from Connecticut and the Senator who just spoke,
Senator Blumenthal. He and I talked this weekend during these terrible
times, and I told him the Judiciary Committee and the Department of
Justice, on behalf of all the victims, were standing by to help them in
any way they can.
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