[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 30 (Thursday, February 15, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1136-S1138]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MOMENT OF SILENCE FOR THE VICTIMS OF THE FLORIDA SCHOOL SHOOTING
Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
observe a moment of silence for the victims of the school shooting in
Florida.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senate will now observe a moment of silence for the victims of
the Florida school shooting.
(Moment of silence.)
The Senator from Florida.
Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, those were all our children. Those of us
who are parents, you can imagine the parents of those children
wondering what else can be done because yesterday a former student at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Northern Broward County,
Parkland, FL, walked onto the campus with a gas mask, smoke grenades,
carrying an AR-15 assault rifle. He pulled a fire alarm, waited for
students to come out into the hallway, and he opened fire. As a result,
17 families are grieving. Their worst fears have become reality. More
than a dozen other students who were injured are in the hospital, and
some of them are in critical condition.
At some point, we have to say enough is enough. At some point, we as
a society have to come together and put a stop to this. This Senator
grew up on a ranch. I have hunted all my life. I have had guns all my
life. I still hunt with my son, but an AR-15 is not for hunting; it is
for killing. Despite these horrific events that are occurring over and
over, these tragedies have led so many of us to come to the floor and
beg our colleagues to take commonsense actions that we all know will
help protect our children and our fellow citizens from these kinds of
tragedies, and we get nowhere.
When is enough going to be enough? Sandy Hook Elementary, 20 students
killed--that wasn't enough. The Pulse nightclub in Orlando, 49 people
killed by a terrorist--that wasn't enough. Las Vegas, 58 people
killed--that wasn't enough. Just a year ago in the same county as the
Parkland murders, Broward County's Fort Lauderdale airport, five people
killed--that wasn't enough. Now this high school, 17 were killed. Some
were as young as 14 years old.
When is enough going to be enough? This Senator has spoken to local
officials on the ground. I have spoken to the superintendent of the
school, who, in his own way, is going through the grieving process; I
have spoken to the FBI; and I have spoken to the sheriff's department
to make sure they have everything they need. When we are finished with
the Dreamer legislation today, I am headed there. When I go to the
hospital and see the families and the hospital victims, all I can think
is, How many more times are we going to have to go through this? And
those families are going to ask me: When is enough enough?
To those who say now is not the time to talk about gun violence
because it is too soon, we don't want to politicize right after a
tragedy--that is what is said over and over--I would ask: When is the
time? If now is not the right time, when is the right time--after the
next shooting or after the one that is going to come after that?
Because these are not going to stop unless we change ourselves as a
culture. How many more times do we have to do this? How many more folks
have to die? When is enough going to be enough? Let's not hide from it.
Let's have a conversation about this right now, not just about mental
illness--that is part of it--and not just about protection in our
schools, and that is part of it. Let's get to the root cause. Let's
come together and help end this violence. Let's talk about that 19-
year-old carrying an AR-15. Let's do what needs to be done. Let's get
these assault weapons off our streets. Let's accomplish something on
background checks.
My State passed a constitutional amendment--Florida, 1998--background
checks have to be done in the purchase of a gun. It has never been
implemented totally, and it has never been enforced--a simple
background check. The terrorist who killed 49 people in Orlando at the
Pulse Nightclub had been on the terrorist watch list. If we had a
background check there--he wasn't on it, but maybe in a background
check we ought to include those who have been on the terrorist watch
list. Let's have a conversation about this.
Do you remember a couple of years ago there was a proposal on the
floor that if you are on the terrorist watch list, you can't buy a gun?
That is pretty common sense. We will not let them get on an airplane
because we don't want them taking down a commercial airliner, but they
don't have a restriction on buying a gun.
Let's get at the root cause of this issue. Let's do what we all know
needs to be done. Let's do it now, not later. Let's not just talk about
it, let's do something about it. Let's make what happened at Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School a pivotal moment in this country's
history, not because it was one of the largest mass shootings but,
hopefully, because it was the last.
It is with a heavy heart I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Fischer). The Senator from Florida.
Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, I join my colleague, the senior Senator
from Florida, with a broken heart, as does most of the Nation due to
the events of yesterday.
There, indeed, was a time in the history of our country where after
an event such as this there was a mourning period that followed with a
policy debate, but today, that time is interrelated and intermixed. I
don't blame it. I am not upset about it. In fact, I think there have
been too many of
[[Page S1137]]
these events now. That is why we continue to face it.
I think it is legitimate to say that even as we mourn, we have an
obligation to ask ourselves, Is there something we could have done or
should do to ensure that we don't see these things happening?
It is cliche to say, but I think it is important to say: I am the
father of two young ladies who happen to be in high school. I cannot
imagine, but I can only envision, what it would be like if one day
walking through the Capitol I get a text or one of those news alerts
that says there has been a shooting in the high school they attend. I
can only imagine how fearful it would be when suddenly those texts are
not being answered, and those calls are not being returned. I thought
about that last night and what it must feel like to be one of those
parents at the hotel waiting for word because you hadn't heard from
your children in hours or how painful it must have been for those whose
job it was to go to these parents and inform them that their child's
life--whom they had sent off to school in the morning, perhaps just
weeks away from graduation--had ended senselessly in an event such as
this. Because of what happened yesterday and because it is happening so
often, people from across the political spectrum are arguing, there has
to be something we can do; you have to be able to do something.
I agree with that sentiment. I understand it. I would add, though,
that if we do something, it should be something that works. The
struggle up to this point has been that most of the proposals that have
been offered would not have prevented not just yesterday's tragedy but
any of those in recent history.
I am going to say now what I am going to really emphasize at the end.
Just because these proposals would not have prevented these events does
not mean we raise our hands and say, therefore, there is nothing we can
do. It is a tough issue. Part of the reason it is so hard to prevent
these events is because if someone decides they are going to take it
upon themselves to kill people, whether it is a political assassination
of one person or the mass killing of many, if one person decides to do
it, and they are committed to that task, it is a very difficult thing
to stop. Again, that does not mean we should not try to prevent as many
of them as we can.
Perhaps the answer to how to prevent them begins by asking ourselves,
What do these things have in common? They have two things in common.
The first is that every single one of them was premeditated and
planned. None of these shootings were an act of passion, where someone
got up in the morning, was upset, and decided to do something out of
rage. They all involved careful planning and premeditation. They
deliberately took steps to get the guns, the weapons, the ammunition
they needed. In many cases, they carefully studied the outline of the
target they were going to go after. They specifically planned soft
targets. There is evidence of that in this case. They planned to
maximize the loss of life. They acquired the weapon they needed, and
they used tactics they needed to kill as many people as they could.
By the way, that premeditation and planning is one of the reasons why
these laws that have been proposed wouldn't have prevented it. When
someone is planning and premeditating an attack, they will figure out a
way to evade those laws or, quite frankly, to comply with them in order
to get around them.
That may be an argument for new laws of a different kind, but it is
what makes it hard, though not impossible.
The second thing they have in common is, almost all of these attacks
were preceded by clear signs of what was to come. A cursory review this
morning of just a handful of the recent cases points that out.
We are all familiar with the loss of life of over 20 people at a
Texas church not long ago. This was a case of a killer whose wife had
said he had tried to kill her. He was an individual who had been
arrested and convicted for domestic violence, which had, unfortunately,
never been reported to the background check system. He was an
individual who had escaped a mental health facility, who had been
caught sneaking guns onto an Air Force base while on Active Duty, who
had been discharged from the military for bad conduct, who had had
social media posts that had bragged about buying dogs so as to shoot
them, and who had actually expressed admiration for the South Carolina
killer in that church killing a few years ago. He was an individual who
had actually been charged with animal mistreatment just a few years
earlier.
At Sandy Hook, we know the killer had a spreadsheet with details of
the previous school shootings. He was also an individual whose mental
state had rapidly deteriorated to the point at which he had spoken to
no one but his mother, whom he ultimately had killed before having
carried out the horrific massacre. He had been someone who had been
isolated in a room all day, who had largely played video games.
The Pulse attack was precipitated and inspired by an adherence to the
jihadist ideology. As Senator Nelson has already pointed out, this
individual not once but twice had been on the FBI's radar screen and
both times had been cleared. They had interviewed him, and they had
asked him questions. He hadn't met the standard for staying on the
list, and he had gone off.
We are still learning facts about yesterday's killer. Unlike these
others, we may learn more because he was apprehended alive. Authorities
have had an opportunity to question him, and that will continue. Here
is what we know:
We know he was expelled from school for behavior the administrators
often thought was dangerous. We know now from press accounts that both
teachers and students did not act surprised that he was the assailant.
In fact, many of them said there was a running joke--obviously not a
joke anymore--that, one day, he would do something like this. We know
the media and others have discovered social media posts that are, in
hindsight, deeply disturbing, as they point to the glorification of gun
violence and murder and even animal cruelty, apparently. We saw reports
this morning of a post on YouTube a year ago on which he posted that he
wanted to be a school shooter. The FBI was alerted to this and had
followed up, by the way, in an interview with the person who had
alerted them.
They all have this premeditation in common, and we sit here in
hindsight, in seeing all of these little points and say, taken
together, those are warning signs. The problem is, they are not taken
together because the people who might have known about his being
expelled may not have known about the social media posts, and the
people who knew about the social media posts may not have known what he
wrote on YouTube, and the people who knew about the YouTube may not
have known about the fact that the police had been called several times
for different reasons and so forth--hence, the challenge in finding
something that works.
There are a lot of proposals, and I will share them because I have
heard them before, and I hear them today. I am not diminishing them. I
don't want this to be taken as ``because it will not work, I don't even
want to hear your argument.'' I understand. I really do. You read in
the newspaper that they used certain kinds of guns; therefore, let's
make it harder to get those kinds of guns. I don't have some sort of de
facto religious objection to that or some ideological commitment to
that per se. There are all kinds of guns that are outlawed and weaponry
that is outlawed and/or a special category. The problem is, we did that
once, and it didn't work for a lot of reasons. One of them is that
there are already millions of them on the streets, and those things
last 100 years.
You could pass a law that makes it hard to get this kind of gun in a
new condition, but you are going to struggle to keep it out of the
hands of someone who has decided that is what he wants to use because
there are so many of them out there already that would be grandfathered
in.
You could do a background check. The truth is, in almost all of these
cases I have cited, the individuals either erroneously passed
background checks or would have passed them or did. Even if they
couldn't pass the background checks, they could buy the guns the way
MS-13 does and other gangs and other street elements do--from the black
market.
Again, it is not that we shouldn't have the background check. I am
just
[[Page S1138]]
trying to be clear and honest here. If someone has decided ``I am going
to commit this crime,'' he will find a way to get the gun to do it.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't have a law that makes it harder. It
just means, to be honest, that it is not going to stop this from
happening. You could still pass the law per se, but you are still going
to have these horrible attacks.
That is why I do think that in some circles, it is not fair or right
to create this impression that somehow this attack happened yesterday
because there is some law out there that we could have passed to have
prevented it. If there had been such a law that could have prevented
what happened yesterday, I think a lot of people would have supported
it, but I also want to be honest with the people who share my point of
view on these issues.
I think it is also wrong to say there is nothing we can do. I would
admit that, perhaps, even I in the past, in the way I have addressed
this issue or have spoken about it, may have come off as dismissive in
the argument that since none of these laws would have worked, there is
just nothing we can do, and we will just have to deal with it. Just
because I don't have a quick or an easy answer for how to prevent these
doesn't mean we don't have an obligation to try and find one, and by
finding one, I don't mean a quick and easy answer. I mean an answer
that would work.
When I took office here, I swore to uphold the Constitution of the
United States--every element of it. I didn't write the Constitution,
but I agree with it, and I support it. The Second Amendment is in the
Constitution, and you can debate what the outlines of the Second
Amendment are or how far it goes, but it is in there, and I happen to
support it. Oftentimes, I happen to point to the Second Amendment and
say it is the Second Amendment that is right after free speech, which
tells you how important it was to those who wrote those words. I still
believe every bit of that.
If it is fair to say the Second Amendment is so important--and I
reiterate it because of how high up it is in the ranking from first to
second, its being the second one--then I have to recognize there is a
part of the Constitution that was written even before the Second
Amendment. It is the preamble. That preamble lays out why we have a
Constitution and, ultimately, why we have a government. In it, it reads
that two of the reasons we have a government and, therefore, two of the
reasons we have a Senate is to ensure domestic tranquility and to
promote the general welfare.
These school shootings and mass shootings and murders we are seeing
now at an accelerated pace are, by definition, a threat to our domestic
tranquility and a threat to our general welfare--the murder of children
in schools, the murder of moviegoers, the murder of people at a church,
the murder of people at a dance club on a Saturday night. These are all
places at which we should be enjoying the general welfare and domestic
tranquility.
Even as we recognize that the Second Amendment gives Americans the
right to bear arms and protect themselves--a right I strongly support
and will continue to support--we must also recognize that same
Constitution places upon this government an obligation to ensure
domestic tranquility and promote the general welfare.
We must confront the fact that, over the last 20 years, these attacks
have accelerated. We must recognize the evidence that they are not
isolated from one another and are building upon one another. We must
recognize the scary reality that even as the Nation mourns and the
parents grieve, there is a high probability, if not a certainty, that
somewhere in America right now, some equally troubled, deranged, and
violent individual is reading and watching coverage of this attack and
gaining from it not sorrow but inspiration. Even as we speak here now,
even as we stand here in mourning, and even as the days go by, there
are probably some people out there who are going to try to do this
because of what happened yesterday. That is a frightening thought, but
it is a reality. It challenges us to find an answer to a very difficult
issue of all of these bits and pieces of information out there.
How do we in this society confront those who do things about which in
another era we would just say, ``Well, they are just strange people.
They are just weird. They are just going through a phase''?
We cannot do it anymore. There is no longer such a thing as just
innocent postings online that you just look at and say, ``Well, that is
just them. They are just strange. They don't mean anything by it'' or
``they are harmless.'' We cannot assume that anymore--none of us.
How do we create a system in which all of these disconnected pieces
and bits of data could somehow be tied together so whenever it was that
this killer got ahold of these weapons and before conducting this
attack, someone would say, ``Hold on a second. This person is the
person who got expelled from school, who had these social media posts,
who said he wanted to be a school shooter, who had his adopted mother
pass away in November and who is now living, isolated, whose fellow
students had all suspected him of being a person who could, one day, be
violent''?
How do you take these bits and pieces of information and turn them
into a usable source of data that perhaps either prevents the
acquisition of a weapon or, preferably, intervenes in that person's
life before he carries this out? If anyone here tells you he has that
one figured out, he is not being honest.
This is hard, but we need to do it. We need to somehow figure it out
because it goes to the very core of why we exist. There is no greater
obligation of our government than to keep our people safe from threats,
both foreign and domestic, and we must acknowledge that this is a
threat. For whatever reason, we now live in a society in which someone,
at 19 years of age, in the freest and the most prosperous Nation in all
of human history, has decided to take it upon himself to take the lives
of 17 individuals and severely injure 14 others--and to actually,
probably, try to kill even more.
What is happening in our country, in our culture, in our society?
If there is something to be done with our laws, we should do that
too. I am not saying don't focus on the gun part, but we also have to
focus on the violence part, for to talk about gun violence requires you
to talk about both, and the violence part is the one that goes well
beyond an easy government solution and entails all kinds of different
aspects of modern life that we are still grappling with.
I hope we can start to figure it out. I haven't had the time,
frankly, in less than 18 hours, to bring to the floor a proposal for
how we will move forward or what the forum will be for this
conversation to even begin. I know we can no longer just chalk it up to
just isolated incidents because it has happened too often. Sadly, I
believe it will happen again until we confront it and try to solve it.
I hope we will, and I believe we can. I believe we must, for, as I said
at the outset and will say in conclusion, it goes to the core of why we
even exist to begin with--to keep our people safe no matter how new,
how different, or how unique the threat may be.
I yield the floor.
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