[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 96 (Monday, July 8, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5517-S5518]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              GUN VIOLENCE

  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, we are now deep in the heart of summer 
vacation for millions of families and students all across this country. 
It is a wonderful time, something families look forward to--maybe some 
parents more so than others. But it is a very strange summer in 
Newtown, CT. It is the first summer that 20 families are waking up 
every morning without a 6- or 7-year-old they planned on spending days 
at the beach or afternoons at the park with or mornings getting ready 
for what would have been their second-grade year. It is a very 
different summer, this summer in Newtown, CT.
  A lot of people ask me: How is the community recovering? How are they 
coming back? And while there is some rebound happening, it is still 
very much a community in crisis. When students go back to school in the 
fall, they are not going to be going back to Sandy Hook Elementary 
School. That school is going to be knocked down. There is no way 
families, teachers, and administrators can return to that place. So 
once again this fall the students of Sandy Hook Elementary School will 
be bused one town over to a school that was, up until January of this 
last year, a place none of them had seen, and they will once again be 
in a year of transition--once again, for many families, still a year of 
crisis.
  I am not sure any of those families could imagine in the days and 
weeks after the shooting on December 14 of last year that when they 
sent their kids back to school--their surviving brothers and sisters--
in the fall of 2013, that in that intervening time, in response to the 
most vicious mass school shooting in this country's history, the 
response from the Congress would be nothing, zippo, zero.
  This is a summer of crisis in Newtown. It will be another difficult 
fall. But what leaves people in Newtown shaking their heads is that 
this place has done absolutely nothing; that when their kids return 
back to school, the laws of this Nation will be no different, will do 
nothing more to protect their sons and daughters when they and millions 
of other kids across the country return to school in September.
  And it is not as though we have not seen since Newtown more evidence 
for why we need to change our laws. I have come to the floor virtually 
every week since this horrific incident to remind people that the 
tragedy has not ended; that since December 14, 5,893 people have been 
senselessly killed by guns. Since December 14, 5,893 people have been 
killed through gun violence.
  I think we should continue to talk about who these people are; that 
we should give voices to these victims, so that it is not just the 20 
6-year-old and 7-year-old children we have all heard so much about--
about Jack Pinto and Dylan Hockley, and Noah Pozner and Grace 
McDonnell. We know these kids, and I will continue to talk about who 
they were and who they could have been, but every single day we lose 
about 30 more people to gun violence.
  Last June we saw a mass shooting that was eerily similar to the one 
in Newtown--a mass shooting in Santa Monica, CA, in which five people 
were killed; the father and the brother of the gunman, but also three 
completely unrelated and innocent bystanders who just happened to be in 
and around the school when this young man, 23 years old, deeply 
disturbed, started firing, almost indiscriminately and randomly, on his 
way to and at the campus.
  It was eerily similar because, once again, it was an assault weapon, 
an AR-15 model, the weapon of choice for mass assailants in this 
country these days. And once again he had high-capacity magazines. 
Reportedly, 1,300 rounds of ammunition were on his person. Every case 
is unique, but over and over these mass shootings are occurring with 
the same type of weapons and the same type of high-capacity ammunition. 
Yet we do nothing to acknowledge this trend.
  Let me talk a second about who these people were who were killed that 
day in California, because they have stories that are not unlike the 
5,800-plus stories I could tell on the floor, if we had time, with 
respect to the people who have died since December 14.
  Carlos Navarro Franco was 68 years old. He was the groundskeeper at 
the college for 22 years. He was dedicated to two things above all--
that college and his family. That is what the president of the college 
said after his death--everything Carlos did was for the college and for 
his family. He was truly a family man, the president of the college 
said. He was a dedicated husband, a father, and an integral part of 
Santa Monica's college family. He dedicated his work to the campus 
grounds and was enjoyed by students and visitors for two decades.
  He was with his daughter that day. Marcela Franco was 26 years old 
and pursuing a degree in psychology at California State University. She 
had registered to take summer classes at the school where her father 
worked and she was on her way with her father to buy textbooks that 
day. She initially survived the gunfire but she never regained 
consciousness after the attack. She was described by her aunt as smart, 
beautiful, and outgoing. Her aunt said, ``She was daddy's girl.'' So 
the blessing is they went together.
  Margarita Gomez was the same age as Carlos Navarro Franco. She lost 
her life that day. She was fondly referred to on campus as the 
``recycle lady'' because she could be seen almost every weekday walking 
around campus, rolling her cart, picking up used bottles and cans. She 
would plop them in her cart and then take them to get recycled. 
Obviously, most people thought she was homeless and that she was 
collecting these bottles and cans as a means to be able to survive, but 
that wasn't the case. Margarita had actually been diagnosed with 
diabetes, and it was her doctor's recommendation that she exercise 
more. She was also an active member of a senior Latino club that met 
every Thursday at the Virginia Avenue park and she was very interested 
in the St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital cause--a charity the 
senior Latino club happened to give money to. So she put these two 
things

[[Page S5518]]

together--a recommendation she should exercise more and an interest in 
helping this club and the charity it was affiliated with--and decided 
she would take this cart around town for exercise, pick up cans and 
bottles, recycle them, and then donate the money to charity.
  The ``recycle lady,'' Margarita Gomez, was walking around campus that 
day picking up cans and bottles so she could donate the money to help 
sick kids, and she was gunned down by an assailant using an assault 
weapon with high-capacity ammunition clips. It is a pretty unbelievable 
story. These three special individuals, along with the father and the 
son, are among the 5,893.
  But it is not just the mass shootings that we are talking about. 
Frankly, the vast majority of these killings are one-off deals over 
some of the most petty arguments or disputes one could imagine. But 
because guns are so easily found, so readily accessible in our 
neighborhoods, these silly arguments end up in deaths, such as one that 
happened in my State of Connecticut just a couple weeks ago on June 16.
  Isaac Smith was a couple days away from graduating from New Britain 
High School. He was a great athlete, played football and baseball, and 
he was hoping to continue playing those sports after high school when 
he went to college. He apparently talked to his friends a lot about how 
proud he was going to be to graduate.
  On the night of June 16, police received a call around midnight about 
gunshots. They arrived at the scene and found Isaac Smith--a couple 
days away from graduation--in his driveway with a gunshot wound to the 
back of his head. Police are still trying to figure out what happened. 
Apparently, he was involved in a transaction for a pair of high-end 
sneakers when something went wrong and the other guy he was either 
selling the sneakers to or buying the sneakers from, 26-year-old 
Jonathan Gibbs of Meriden, shot him--over a pair of sneakers.
  These are who these 5,893 people are: They are victims of mass 
violence, they are victims of senseless gunfire, and they all share 
something in common. They deserve a response from the Senate and the 
House of Representatives. They deserve us doing something more than 
nothing.
  At least the Senate brought up a bill on the floor earlier this year. 
We got 55 votes for a bill that wasn't perfect, but it at least said 
criminals shouldn't have guns and that we should have a system that 
makes sure that is the case; that gun trafficking--when someone buys a 
messload of guns legally and then sells them illegally on the streets 
of our cities--should probably be a Federal crime; that we should have 
more resources in our mental health system to take care of people who 
want and need help. We got 55 votes for that, which is pretty 
unbelievable given the fact that 90 percent of the American public 
support all of those things. One would think we could have gotten more 
than 55 votes.
  The House of Representatives has done nothing. It hasn't even had a 
debate.
  These numbers will continue to mount. Next week I will be down here, 
and the number will probably be north of 6,000. Then, after the August 
recess, it will be creeping up to 7,000. We can't get rid of every 
single one of these deaths.
  I will admit to you that Jonathan Gibbs who shot Isaac Smith was a 
legal gun owner. He didn't even actually have a criminal history. The 
fact is, while not every single one of these deaths is preventable, 
many of them are.
  So I will continue to come down and talk about these victims with the 
hope that someday--perhaps this fall, perhaps next year, perhaps the 
year after--we can take action in the Senate that will maybe not stop 
the growth of this number but will at least slow its acceleration.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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