[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 160 (Thursday, October 5, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6345-S6346]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Las Vegas Mass Shooting

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I would like to begin by talking about 
the recent tragedy in Las Vegas, the largest mass shooting in U.S. 
history, with at least 59 dead and more than 500 injured, including one 
Minnesotan who was injured and another who lost his life. So I join my 
colleagues in mourning for the victims and their families. They are and 
should be our focus at this time, as well as making sure those who were 
hurt get the best medical care this country can give.
  As we look ahead, these events underscore the urgency to continue 
fighting for funding to better treat mental illness but also for 
sensible gun safety legislation, and I joined with some of my 
colleagues the day after the tragedy in Las Vegas to call for those 
changes. No one policy will prevent every tragedy, but we need to come 
together on commonsense legislation to save lives.
  One place we discussed this week where we could come together--
because we have in the past--is on background checks. My colleagues 
Senator Manchin and Senator Toomey, who are two A-rated NRA Senators, 
have already demonstrated that we can find bipartisan agreement on 
something as straightforward as background checks. I was very pleased 
they came together on this legislation, but the fact remains, the 
Senate's failure to pass that bipartisan compromise was disheartening--
one of my more disheartening days in the Senate because I began my day 
that day with the families of the Sandy Hook tragedy, with the parents 
who had lost their little kids, with the parents who had come to this 
building to advocate for a bill, the background check bill, that they 
knew wouldn't have saved their child's life, but they knew it would 
have saved others. What we have seen with expanded background checks is 
they reduce suicides and they reduce domestic homicides by a fairly 
large number.
  Our constituents agree that we should be able to find some agreement 
here, as the numbers have consistently shown that Americans across the 
political spectrum, including gun owners, support proposals to require 
background checks by wide margins. I have

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a State, like the Presiding Officer's, where there are a lot of 
hunters. It is a proud tradition in Minnesota so I look at all these 
proposals and I say to myself: Does this hurt my Uncle Dick and his 
deer stand? For many of the ones I have looked at, the answer is 
clearly no, including the background check bill.
  When I talk to law enforcement in my State, they stress the need to 
have effective background checks to stop felons, people with severe 
mental illnesses, and others prohibited under current law from 
accessing guns. These efforts do not have to infringe in any way on 
Americans' lawful right to own guns.
  Another sensible measure is Senator Feinstein's legislation to close 
a loophole that allows bump stop devices to convert semiautomatic 
firearms into weapons that work like fully automatic guns. Law 
enforcement officers have now recovered 12 of these devices from the 
Las Vegas shooter's room. I am a cosponsor of that bill, and I am 
encouraged that some of my Republican colleagues have agreed to look at 
this.

  I hope we can find a path forward in the weeks ahead, not only with 
regard to this particular focus, the bump stock device legislation, but 
also on some of the other bills like the background check bill.