[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 84 (Monday, June 2, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3329-S3330]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              GUN CONTROL

  Mr. MURPHY. Thirty-one thousand people a year die across this country 
from gun violence. That is 2,639 a month or 86 a day. I have tried to 
come down to the floor every week--a couple times a month at the very 
least--and talk about the voices of those victims because if the 
statistics aren't actually moving this place to action, then maybe we 
can talk about who these people were. Of course, we have a fresh set of 
stories from Santa Barbara, CA.
  I don't need to tell the story of young Mr. Rodger. He was a deeply 
troubled young man who went on a shooting spree, killing six people and 
wounding many more.
  Katherine Breann Cooper was 22 years old when she was gunned down by 
Elliot Rodger. She was a painter, and she was known as Katie by her 
friends. She had a really outgoing side. She was going to get a degree 
in art history, and she had a smile that ``lit up the room,'' according 
to her friends.
  What her childhood friends from Chino Hills remember is that she was 
absolutely unbeatable at foot races. She was the fastest kid in the 
whole neighborhood. You couldn't beat her at foot races, hide and go 
seek, and you certainly couldn't beat her when the ice cream truck went 
through the neighborhood.
  Her seventh grade teacher said:

       She was one of 2,500 students I've taught over the years, 
     but Katie was a standout.

  Veronika Weiss was 3 years younger--she was 19 years old--but her 
father Bob said she was wise beyond her years. He said he would 
actually go to his 19-year-old daughter for advice when he was having a 
problem with one of her brothers, Cooper and Jackson, or maybe when he 
was having an argument with his wife.
  She played four sports in high school: cross country, baseball, 
swimming, and water polo. She earned straight A's. Her strength was 
math. She really excelled at sports, and she didn't let barriers get in 
her way. She didn't want to play softball; she wanted to play baseball. 
There was a baseball league for kids in her hometown of Westlake, and 
there were 500 players in that league--499 boys and 1 girl, and that 1 
girl was Veronika Weiss.
  When she got to UC Santa Barbara, she didn't have a lot of friends 
until she joined the Tri-Delta Sorority. They became a built-in circle 
of friends for her.
  Her former coach said:

       We're really shocked. She touched a lot of people. And for 
     someone who's 19 years old to have that many people showing 
     up [at her service], that's a lot to say. There's been kids 
     who say, ``Oh, I was a new kid in school and she came up to 
     me and just started talking to me. I didn't even know her.'' 
     So she was that type of person.

  Christopher Michaels-Martinez's father has had some strong things to 
say about the inaction of Congress, but he also had a lot of wonderful 
things to say about his son.
  His son Christopher was a studious kid. He was an avid reader. He was 
an athlete from a young age, first beginning with soccer and going on 
to play football and basketball. He served as residential adviser at 
his dorm and was the kind of guy who would welcome strangers into his 
home and into his room.
  His father talks a lot about his resilience. He remembers that at 8 
years old Christopher decided he wanted to play football. He remembers 
at a practice watching his son being knocked down by a much larger 
teammate, and his father said he remembers thinking:

       My god, he must be hurt. But he was on the ground no more 
     than two seconds. He hopped back up, stomped one foot on the 
     ground and walked determinedly back into the line.

  That's the kind of kid Chris was.
  Richard Martinez urged the 20,000 people at the memorial for the 
victims to follow his son's example from the football field. He said:

       Like Christopher on that day, we've been knocked down. And 
     like Christopher on that day, I want you to get back up and 
     walk determinedly forward.

  His father Richard has challenged Congress not to let one more person 
die because of our inaction.
  In a lot of ways, the story of Elliot Rodger is a word of caution 
about the limits of what policy can do, but it is also an invitation 
for us to look at some of the things we can do.
  Elliot was an incredibly troubled kid, but he was not a kid who lived 
outside of the mental health system, nor was Adam Lanza, the young man 
who killed 20 6- and 7-year-olds in Newtown. We can go back with 20/20 
hindsight and pick apart the decisions--sometimes a very legitimate 
critique--that Rodgers' parents or Adam Lanza's parents made, but the 
reality is that Elliot Rodger was in and out of the mental health 
system and in and out of a number of different schools trying to find 
the appropriate placement. Adam Lanza had been identified with a severe 
mental illness, and his mother was trying to find treatment for him.
  We need to do something to improve our mental health system. We have 
closed down 4,000 mental health inpatient beds in the last 6 years 
alone, while the needs of those with mental illness are skyrocketing. 
We know the waiting time for especially young adolescents to see a 
psychiatrist or psychologist just for an introductory visit is far too 
long. So we need to make massive investments in our mental health 
system. But the law can help as well when it comes to guns. The fact is 
Adam Lanza should never have been able to possess the high-powered 
weapon that he did, and had he walked into Newtown with a different 
weapon instead of a semiautomatic rifle, there would still be children 
alive today, in the minds of many of those parents.

  It is not clear the law could have changed anything in California, 
but what we know is that in States that give law enforcement the 
ability to take guns away from people who pose a danger to the 
community or deny them to those individuals in the first place, fewer 
murders happen.
  Police showed up at the door of Elliot Rodger's house and, had they 
walked in, they would have found a draft copy of his manifesto and a 
whole bunch of guns and a whole bunch of ammunition. He likely would 
have been taken into involuntary custody. His guns would have likely 
been taken away. The police didn't make that decision, but in 
California they have the ability to do that whereas, in many other 
States they do not.
  In Missouri, for instance, they used to have a law on the books that 
allowed for local law enforcement to deny gun permits to individuals 
whom those local law enforcement personnel knew to be a potential 
danger to society. Well, Missouri repealed that law, and a recent study 
by Johns-Hopkins University shows that controlling for all other 
possible factors that could explain the dramatic increase in gun 
violence since the repeal of Missouri's background check legislation, 
the repeal itself accounts for 60 to 80 additional gun murders in 
Missouri every single year.
  We know that laws that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous 
people, allow law enforcement to take guns away from dangerous people, 
laws that prevent military assault weapons from being in the community 
in the first place, save lives. It is not a coincidence. During the 
period of time after which the government instituted an assault weapons 
ban, we saw a reduction in the number of mass murders in this country. 
After it was repealed, we started to see an increase in those mass 
murders. Assault weapons bans don't have a lot to do with average, 
everyday gun violence, but they can have something to do with mass 
shootings.
  Edmund Burke said: ``The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil 
is that good men do nothing.'' I believe every single Senator here has 
heard that.
  I will end with this thought: I think we can pass laws that will 
reduce these

[[Page S3330]]

numbers. It won't eliminate these numbers, but we can pass laws, 
whether it is improving our mental health system or changing our gun 
laws, that reduce the number of people who die and to perhaps lessen 
the weekly stories we hear of mass violence across the whole country.
  What is the real risk of doing nothing, not even trying? I submit it 
is like pulling teeth to get any Republican Senators or Congressmen to 
even cosponsor a bill addressing any of these issues, and the real risk 
of doing nothing is that we start to look complicit in these mass 
murders. I know that is a strong thing to say, but it is not enough for 
the community itself to rally after these mass murders to shame the 
action when the most important legislative body in the world has 
nothing to say about this dramatic increase in mass gun violence. When 
we allow these numbers to fester without a single piece of legislation 
to address this trendline passing the Senate and the House, we have 
become accomplices because we send a message that we don't think the 
murders in Aurora, in Tucson, in Newtown, in Santa Barbara, are serious 
enough for us to do anything. That is a real shame.
  Hopefully, at some point over the time the Presiding Officer and I 
have the honor of serving in the Senate, if the numbers don't move this 
place to action, the voices of the victims will.
  I yield the floor, and note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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