[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 36 (Wednesday, March 1, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1530-S1532]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Gun Violence

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, last night, President Trump began his 
speech with an appropriate reference to the anti-Semitic attacks that 
have occurred all over the country. Two bomb threats were called into a 
Jewish community center in the New Haven area in Connecticut. I visited 
that center and the staff and the kids of that center, who are now 
being housed in a nearby synagogue. He also condemned, in strong terms, 
the murder of a young man in Kansas City, the victim of an apparent 
hate crime, targeted for simply being a foreigner or being of a 
different religion. We can't know exactly what the reason was, but it 
was an attack based on hate.
  I want to tell my colleagues a little bit about that young man, to 
begin with, as a means of, once again, coming to the floor of the 
Senate to tell my colleagues about the victims of gun violence in this 
country--the 86 or so

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people every day who are taken by guns, suicides, and murders and 
accidental shootings; the 2,600 people a month whose lives are taken 
through gun violence, and the 31,000 a year. By the way, that number is 
just the number of people who are killed. Those are the lives that are 
eliminated. There are another 75,000 every year who are injured by gun 
fire, whose lives are irrevocably altered by that act of violence.
  Srinivas Kuchibhotla was a 32-year-old engineer. He was working for 
Garmin. He was just hanging out at a bar. It was Austin's Bar and 
Grill, and he was enjoying the company of friends. Witnesses saw a man 
enter the bar. He was agitated, and he was drunk. He was a patron of 
the bar. He had left and he reentered, and he began shooting at 
Srinivas and his friend. Witnesses say that the shooter told Srinivas 
to ``get out of my country'' before killing him and then critically 
injuring his friend and an unbelievably brave bystander who tried to 
stop the shooter.
  Hundreds of grief-stricken family members and friends gathered in his 
hometown in India for this young man's funeral. In accordance with 
Hindu tradition, his body was carried on a carriage and his ashes were 
laid to rest. Friends said that his mother was absolutely wailing as 
the carriage went by.
  His mother had wondered whether America was a safe place for her son. 
Months before the shooting, she asked him to return to India if he was 
feeling insecure, but he told her he was safe, that he was fine. His 
wife also wondered how safe it would be to stay in the United States, 
but she said that Srinivas always assured her that only good things 
could happen to good people.
  He undoubtedly was a good person. His family members remember him as 
the kindest person you would meet. He was, in their words, ``full of 
love, care and compassion for everyone. He never uttered a word of 
hatred, simple gossip, or a careless comment.''
  His friends and family members remember him as ``brilliant, well-
mannered and simply an outstanding human being.''
  He was ``a very sharp, top-of-his-class kind of guy,'' said one of 
his classmates at the University of Texas at El Paso where Srinivas 
earned a master's degree in electrical and electronic engineering. He 
was also an avid cricket player and a big fan of cricket as well.
  He was 32 years old. He was sitting at a bar, enjoying time with his 
friends when a man who was at the bar, who probably saw Srinivas, 
thought that he looked different from him and, filled with hate, walked 
back into the bar and shot and killed him.
  That is only one story from that day. On average, there are 85 other 
stories across the country in which people lose their lives to gunfire. 
What made me so mad last night was that after that moment--that 
appropriate moment in which President Trump talked about this horrible 
shooting--moments later, he referenced the daily slaughter that happens 
in our cities. He spoke in front of the joint session for, it seemed, 
nearly an hour and a half and offered absolutely no solutions to do 
anything about the cascading gun violence that is enveloping our 
Nation.
  Irony of all ironies, the same week that he is lamenting, eulogizing 
Srinivas's death in Kansas City, he is signing a law passed by this 
body that would allow for more people with serious mental illness to 
get their hands on guns.
  We don't know the full story of Adam Purinton yet, but you have to 
imagine that this was someone who was deeply disturbed. Maybe he was 
just drunk, but in order to decide to pull out a gun in a bar and shoot 
someone just because they look different than you do probably means 
that there is something going on--more than a few beers. Mr. Purinton 
probably had some stuff going on. He might have been mentally ill.
  When I got here, I thought that one of the few things we agreed 
upon--Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives--was that 
if you were seriously mentally ill, you probably shouldn't be able to 
buy a weapon, not because people with a mental illness are inherently 
dangerous--that is not true at all--but because erring on the side of 
caution when it comes to someone who is seriously ill would probably be 
the safe thing to do. That used to be a bipartisan commitment.
  A few weeks ago, this body passed a law to allow tens of thousands of 
people who have serious mental illness, who have been judged by a 
government agency to be so sick that they can't manage their own 
financial affairs, they literally can't cash a check, their Social 
Security check has to be sent to someone else because they can't manage 
their affairs--we passed a law to allow those people to buy guns.
  Spare me your concern for the victims of gun violence if you are not 
willing to do anything about it and, in fact, you are going to take 
steps to make gun violence more likely rather than less likely in this 
country. So 31,000 people a year, 2,600 a month, 86 a day--there is no 
other country in the world in which this happens. There is no other 
country in the world in which these numbers of people are dying from 
guns. It is our fault because week after week, month after month, year 
after year, we do nothing about it, and now we are making it worse.
  In the 4 years after Sandy Hook happened, I went back to tell people 
that we had done nothing. That was embarrassing enough. Now I have to 
go back to the families of Sandy Hook and tell people that when 
Congress thinks about gun violence, we think about making changes in 
the law to make gun violence more likely, to put more guns into the 
hands of dangerous people. We are going backward now.
  Teresa Robertson owned a floral shop in a beauty shop in Fairfax, OK. 
Fairfax is a really small town, a really tight-knit community. It is 
still on edge because about a week ago, Teresa's estranged husband 
walked into the store, started shooting at Teresa, and then barricaded 
himself inside city hall, firing shots at the local police, who 
returned fire, fatally killing Teresa's husband.
  She had filed a protective order against her husband about 2 weeks 
before because she feared for her life. She filed for divorce a week 
later, and a week following that, he shot her.
  Laws can protect against something like that, right? We have the 
power to stop that. In Connecticut, if you file a protective order 
against a spouse who you believe is going to harm you, the police have 
the ability to take those weapons away for the period of time in which 
you were adjudicating that protective order.
  If that law had been in effect in Oklahoma, maybe Teresa Robertson 
would still be alive today and maybe her husband would still be alive 
and maybe their two kids--ages 13 and 16--wouldn't be without both of 
their parents.
  The fact is, every single day, domestic partners--women primarily--
are killed or are shot by boyfriends or estranged husbands. It often 
plays out just like this: protective order, divorce filing, murder. 
That is on us.
  We have the ability to protect women from their estranged husbands. 
There are laws. We can't stop every shooting, but it certainly can cut 
down on these numbers.
  Two days later, emergency responders found 26-year-old Michael 
``Shane'' Watkins bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to the head 
on Berkshire Avenue in Bridgeport, CT. He died shortly after arriving 
at the hospital. The police are still investigating the shooting, but 
they believe that Shane was an innocent victim of a robbery that went 
bad.
  His friends said that Shane was someone who was always laughing, who 
was always smiling, who had a good heart, was a caring person. A 
neighbor said that Shane was ``always upbeat, always joking, always 
smiling.'' This was a good kid.
  He was a dedicated family man. He was a long time employee of the 
local Stop & Shop. He was 26 years old. This was a robbery gone bad. 
Shane Watkins was one of those 86.
  Twelve-year-old Kanari Gentry Bowers was playing basketball with 
friends in Chicago, IL, at Henderson Elementary School. A stray bullet 
hit her on February 11. For 4 awful, agonizing days, Kanari sat lying 
unconscious in the hospital with a bullet lodged in her 12-year-old 
spine before she died on February 15.
  Her family released a statement that said: ``Please keep your 
children close and do whatever it takes to protect them from the 
senseless gun violence in our city.''

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  That doesn't sound exceptional, does it? ``Please keep your children 
close and do whatever it takes to protect them.'' Think about that 
idea. Think about the idea that you can't let your children get far 
away from you in Chicago today because they are not at risk of getting 
lost; they are at risk of being shot.
  The little girl had dreams of becoming a judge. That is not something 
that a lot of 12-year-old girls are thinking about, but Kanari wanted 
to be a judge. She was described as a vivacious young girl.
  I hear President Trump talk about Chicago all the time. He talks 
about Chicago as though he cares, but he doesn't propose anything that 
would reduce the trajectory of gun violence, the horror of living in 
neighborhoods that you can't let your child stray more than a few feet 
from you without fearing for their lives. He has proposed nothing to do 
with making that city safer.
  People say Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the Nation, 
yet it is one of the most violent places. Exactly, exactly: Chicago has 
some of the toughest gun laws in the Nation. New York City has some of 
the toughest gun laws in the Nation. They are still violent places. 
Why? Because the vast majority of guns in those cities, the illegal 
guns that spread throughout the city like poison ivy come from outside 
of Chicago. They come from Indiana. In New York, they come from South 
Carolina. They come from North Carolina. They come from places in which 
it is easy to buy a gun without a background check at a gun show or on 
the internet. They flow into these cities and become used in murder 
after murder.
  If you don't have a Federal requirement that background checks have 
to be conducted wherever you buy a gun, no matter how strong the laws 
of Chicago are, they can't be protected; 12-year-old girls can't be 
protected.
  This was all in February, by the way. This was all in the last 3 
weeks.
  On February 20, some friends got together at a local church in 
Pomona, CA, and all of a sudden, gunshots started firing through the 
windows and the walls of this church--a drive-by shooting.
  You know who was dead at the end of that? An 8-year-old little boy 
named Jonah. He was adopted from an orphanage in Taiwan. He had been in 
the United States for only 3 years. His adoptive parents and his 
friends--you should read what they say about this kid: ``He had an 
infectious smile and loved everyone and everything.''
  He was still learning English, but with his playful demeanor, he had 
adapted almost immediately to life in the United States. He loved 
wrestling with his adoptive dad, running, laughing. He loved 
superheroes. He was always injuring himself jumping off of something. 
He loved living in this country.
  He was a 5-year-old in an orphanage in Taiwan, and then he was in the 
United States with a dad and with superhero action figures, and now he 
is dead because somebody fired bullets randomly into a church in 
Pomona, CA.
  Why don't we do anything about this? We are not so coldhearted as to 
be unable to understand what life is like for a mom and a dad who lose 
an 8-year-old child. We are not so brain-dead as to not be able to 
comprehend the fact that every time someone is shot, there are at least 
20 people whose lives are permanently altered.
  The post-traumatic stress involved in one shooting has enormous 
ripple effects. I have talked at length on this floor about the 
constant grief that envelopes my town of Sandy Hook because of what 
happened there. It will never end.
  Now, instead of defending the status quo, we are talking about making 
it easier for deeply mentally ill people to get guns. A bill was just 
introduced on the floor of the Senate this week that would allow for 
someone to carry a concealed weapon anywhere in the Nation, regardless 
of what that local State jurisdiction wanted. If you had a concealed 
weapon permit in Texas, you would be able to walk into Manhattan 
without any way for the local police to check you out. There is even an 
effort to make silencers legal.
  Mr. President, 31,000 a year, 2,600 a month, 86 a day. I have come 
down to the floor I don't know how many times--certainly not as many as 
Senator Whitehouse but many times to tell the stories of the victims. I 
told a few more this afternoon because if the data doesn't move you--
again, only in this country; in no other country in the world does this 
happen--then maybe the stories of these victims will move you. Maybe 
being able to put yourself in the shoes of a mom who lost a child, of a 
husband who lost a wife way before their time, will move you to action.
  This is only controversial here. Ninety percent of the American 
public wants us to move forward with the universal background checks. 
The majority of Americans think these super-powerful military weapons 
should stay in the hands of the military and law enforcement. Everybody 
out there wants to give law enforcement the tools and the funding 
necessary to carry out the existing law. It is not controversial out in 
the American public; it is only controversial here.
  It is about time that we do something about this epic level of 
carnage that continues to plague our Nation and have some response to 
these voices of victims that seem endless.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted 
to enter into a colloquy with the Senator from Delaware.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.