[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 140 (Thursday, September 15, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5826-S5827]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              GUN VIOLENCE

  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I will start today with some numbers. 
Unfortunately, some of these numbers are all too familiar to Americans 
concerned about the horror of gun violence. There are 3 numbers: 49, 
280, and 99.
  Forty-nine, unfortunately, we know maybe more than the other two 
numbers. That is the number of people killed in Orlando just a couple 
of months ago in the worst act of gun violence we know of. So many 
Americans watched that horror and would have guessed that the Senate 
would have acted with a sense of purpose and urgency and even outrage 
to begin to take steps to reduce gun violence. Unfortunately, that 
didn't happen a couple of months ago. There were 49 killed in Orlando. 
We can recite the other communities in the country over the last not 
just number of years but even the last several years, and 49 is the 
Orlando number.
  I am not sure we hear enough about the other two numbers, which are 
the weekly death toll or the weekly toll of violence in cities and 
communities across the country. Two hundred and eighty is the number 
just in the last week who were shot across the country and 99 is the 
number killed. That is just 1 week.
  For purposes of my remarks, to set aside numbers for a moment and 
consider the human trauma, the human tragedy, the toll of that, it is 
almost incomprehensible, all of the families who have been destroyed by 
gun violence. For many of us, it is a news event that we watch on 
television and read about. We are horrified. We pray for the victims. 
We wish for action to be taken to at least begin--just begin to reduce 
gun violence, but then we move on. Most of us move on if we are not 
directly affected, but those families don't move on. Their lives are 
either destroyed forever or adversely impacted in some way forever, 
mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and 
friends. It is impossible to in any way describe the adverse impact 
this problem is having.
  There are some who would say there is not much we can do about it 
other than enforce the law, and that is their point of view. I don't 
happen to agree with that. I think we need to take the same approach to 
this issue as we have taken to any issue the American people have faced 
over many generations. Most of the time we come together with concerted 
action and begin to tackle a problem. It might take a year, it might 
take 5 years, it might take 25 years, but, as Americans, in most cases 
we come together and begin to address the problem. Only in Washington 
does that not happen anywhere near often enough.
  There are a couple of commonsense steps we can take right now--
meaning

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next week or the week after or in the very near term--commonsense steps 
that have wide support across the country in both parties. One would be 
to finally say: Why not vote in accordance with not just a national 
consensus but actually a consensus here in the Senate on background 
checks? Why would we allow these gaping holes in our system to remain 
wide open so that almost anyone can get a gun? No matter how dangerous, 
no matter how much a threat they are to society, they can get a gun 
because of these gaping holes in our background check system. No one 
disputes that there are these holes. No one disputes that they lead to 
unnecessary death and violence. But we haven't been able to get enough 
Members in the Senate to come together to support background checks. We 
should try to do that again. I don't know why we don't have more votes. 
Let's keep voting until we get enough momentum.
  Second, this idea of terrorists whom we made a judgment about--that 
we either know they are terrorists or we suspect they are terrorists 
based upon all kinds of evidence--and we say: That category of people 
will not be able to get on an airplane. Guess what. When we did that 
after 9/11, that was our policy or part of our larger policy against 
terrorism. We came together and said that those people can't get on 
airplanes. Guess what. We haven't had planes fly into buildings in the 
country since 9/11 because we came together, we made a decision, we 
acted on it, and we stopped at least that part of the practices 
terrorists engage in. But when it comes to this issue of reducing--even 
beginning to reduce gun violence, we haven't had the same consensus.
  So we have a circumstance now where suspected terrorists are deemed 
too dangerous to fly in a plane but not to own a weapon of war. So, 
virtually, under the policy that is in place now, because the Senate 
hasn't acted, because we haven't had an act of Congress, there are 
folks who are either suspected terrorists or terrorists who can't get 
on an airplane but can buy any gun they want or obtain any gun they 
want and there is no legal prohibition. That makes no sense to anyone 
who is serious about this issue of preventing violence and reducing gun 
violence.
  How about individuals who are convicted of violent hate crimes that 
involve the use of force being allowed to get a gun? Why would we wait 
until that individual commits a felony with a use of force that in many 
cases involves the use of force with a firearm? Why would we wait for 
that violent person to go down that pathway, someone who is convicted 
of a hate crime that involves domestic abuse or some other act of 
violence or the use of force?
  So I think a number of these strategies are commonsense steps we can 
take that would have zero impact on the right to bear arms. We are not 
talking about law-abiding citizens; we are talking about people who 
pose a demonstrated threat to people in our community and beyond. But 
so far that hasn't happened. I hope we will schedule some votes. How 
can that be harmful, to keep voting on such an important issue until we 
move forward? So that is something we can work on before we leave here.
  There is no rule that says we have to leave at the end of next week. 
We could work the week after that and the week after that and begin to 
make progress on a whole range of issues, including gun violence. Of 
course, I hope that will include finally getting to a conclusion on 
Zika funding to address this threat to pregnant women and their 
children. We should finally get that done, and maybe we can get that 
done with the spending bill next week. That would be great progress. 
But unless we act, we leave on the table this horror of gun violence 
where there has been virtually no progress for years--not just months 
but for years.

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