[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 69 (Thursday, May 8, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H3947-H3948]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         CHICAGO'S GUN VIOLENCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Illinois (Ms. Kelly) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KELLY of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, April was a particularly violent 
month in the city of Chicago. Thirty-two people were shot and killed in 
the city, 19 of them under the age of 25.
  You have heard me talk before about the epidemic of gun violence, 
about how urban violence in cities like Chicago is robbing us of a 
generation. But nothing illustrates how our gun violence permeates 
everyday life in Chicago more than the stories of the deaths of those 
19 young people.
  They, like scores of teens and young adults across the city, were 
stalked by gun violence. It followed them home from school, creeping up 
on their porches or tapping on their car windows; and, in an instant, 
an everyday activity became an unspeakable tragedy.
  Jordan Harris, 24, was shot during a house party.
  Michael Flournoy, 17, was shot in front of a neighborhood church.
  Adrian Soto, 17, shot on a sidewalk.
  Gakirah Barnes, 17, shot in the street.
  Andres Cervantes, 22, shot while sitting in a car.
  Joshua Martinez, 20, shot on a front porch.
  Keno Glass, 16, shot in a drive-by shooting while on spring break.
  Trevolus Pickett, 20, shot in a gangway.
  Nicholas Ramirez, 19, chased and shot while he was driving.
  Anthony Bankhead, 18, and Jordan Means, 16, shot in an apartment 
during an argument.
  Timmy Bermudez, 19, shot while driving in an ambush on Easter Sunday.
  Quinton Jackson, 22, shot in a building hallway.
  Darius Kelly, 22, shot in a drive-by.
  Demario Collins, 19, shot while sitting in a car.
  Martavarian Emery, 21, shot from outside while standing in a kitchen.
  Jaquez Williams, 17, shot on a sidewalk.
  Cindy Bahena, 21, shot while riding in the backseat of a car.
  And then there is Endia Martin, a 14-year-old girl who was shot and 
killed last week by another 14-year-old girl in a dispute over a boy.
  Endia, a high school freshman and an honor student, and the 14-year-
old suspect, an honor student, friends since elementary school, had 
been feuding on Facebook. After school last week, the teen suspect 
confronted Endia with a gun. That gun, a .38 caliber revolver, went 
from a local gun shop popular with straw purchasers to a man who resold 
the gun illegally and falsely reported it as stolen. From there, it 
made its way to a 25-year-old man who gave the gun to his niece, the 
14-year-old suspect.
  The girl, standing in a crowd of onlookers and instigators, drew the 
gun from her waistband and pulled the trigger. The gun actually 
malfunctioned. She handed it to someone in the crowd who fixed it and 
handed it back to her before she fired again, hitting Endia in the back 
and another teen in the arm.
  This shooting painfully underscores the need for commonsense gun 
reforms, like cracking down on straw purchasers and better tracking gun 
sales to curtail illegal trafficking. There were many opportunities 
along the journey of that .38 caliber revolver to save Endia's life.
  The shooting also spotlights the need for better social supports, 
greater accountability within our families and communities, and 
increased responsibility for the welfare of our children.
  Losing a bright light like Endia is a tragedy, but so is the baby-
faced accused killer sitting in juvenile lockup right now, the product 
of a community of accomplices who encouraged one child to kill another. 
As a society, we failed both girls. We have failed to provide Endia 
with a safe community she deserved, and we failed to teach her killer 
to value her own life, much less anyone else's.
  Preventing senseless killings like this requires a combination of 
legislative initiatives and community action. We in Congress must do 
our part to stop the bloodshed by passing commonsense gun legislation. 
We must also do more to support programs on the ground that provide our 
young people with alternatives to violence. It is a moral imperative we 
can no longer ignore.
  Before I go, I would like to pay tribute to Leonore Draper, a beloved 
and dedicated gun violence prevention advocate in Chicago who herself 
was

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killed last week in a possible drive-by shooting. Leonore was headed 
home from an antiviolence charity fundraiser she helped organize when 
she was shot and killed. What a horrible irony.
  Leonore devoted her life to ending the violence on Chicago's streets. 
Her killing rattled the city and her fellow antiviolence advocates who 
are determined to continue to work to stop the shootings that claimed 
her and young Endia. Both Leonore and Endia were buried on Monday. 
Please do not let their deaths be in vain.
  To my colleagues, it is past time that we took action.

                          ____________________