[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 18 (Thursday, January 30, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Page S650]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REMEMBRANCE AND RESOLVE
Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, every January brings hope that the New
Year will be a happy and safe one. But, sadly, 2014 has already been
marred by gun violence.
To cite just a few examples, on January 9, a 16-year-old student at
Liberty Technology Magnet High School shot a classmate in the thigh
with a pistol. On January 14, a 12-year-old in New Mexico walked into
his middle school's gym and opened fire with a shotgun, injuring two of
his classmates as they waited to go to class. And on the evening of
January 15, a man used a semi-automatic handgun to murder two people at
an Indiana grocery store. He was about to kill another person just
before police officers shot and killed him.
Sadly, our Nation's epidemic of gun violence continues. The National
Center for Injury Prevention and Control has estimated that around
30,000 people in the United States die from gunshot wounds every year,
and more than 60,000 people are injured by guns every year. A study
also has shown that the firearm homicide rate in our Nation is 20 times
higher than the combined rate of 22 other countries comparable in
population.
We live in a country where almost every week a community is wracked
by a mass shooting, defined as an incident that claims at least four
lives. In 2013, our Nation witnessed at least 25 such shootings. These
occur all over our Nation, in places like Oklahoma City, where last
August a man who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia stopped taking
his medication and shot his mother, sister, niece, and nephew; in
Ottawa, KS, where last April a man who had served prison time for
attempted second-degree murder shot and killed 4 people; in Washington,
DC, where a mentally deranged individual killed 12 and injured 8 at
Washington's Navy Yard.
Last December, just one day before the anniversary of the tragic
Newtown school shooting which stole the lives of 27 people, 20 of them
children, another school shooting occurred in Arapahoe, CO. This time,
the perpetrator was an 18-year-old high school senior who entered his
high school near Denver armed with 125 rounds of ammunition, a pump-
action shotgun, a machete, and three incendiary devices. He critically
injured a classmate, who has since tragically passed away, before
taking his own life. While this may not qualify as a mass shooting, it
is no less troubling. It is a testament to how disturbingly numb to gun
violence our society has become that the sentiment ``it could have been
worse'' is some form of relief.
Today, America is a nation where parents are nervous to send their
children to schools, shopping malls, and movie theaters because they
are genuinely afraid that their kids might not come back. We live in a
nation where toddlers find unsecured handguns in their family's homes
and accidentally take lives. We live in a society where arguments and
disputes turn into tragedies, all with one ill-considered pull of a
trigger. Is this the kind of environment we want to live in? Is this
what we want to leave for the next generation?
Mr. President, it is my hope that this year, the procession of gun
tragedies will begin to end. It is my hope that we will not be
submerged this year in the horror of a mass shooting. But this hope
will only be realized if Congress takes action to stop the gun violence
plaguing our country.
I urge my colleagues not to accept the status quo, where convicted
felons, domestic abusers, and the mentally ill can get their hands on a
deadly weapon at any time. I urge my colleagues to take steps toward
ending this violence by passing commonsense legislation, supported by
90 percent of the American people, that would enact background checks
on all gun sales. I urge my colleagues to work to ensure that our
homes, our families, and our neighborhoods become safer.
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