[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 45 (Wednesday, March 14, 2018)]
[House]
[Page H1550]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  WE NEED RESPONSIBLE GUN SAFETY LAWS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Florida (Mrs. Demings) for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. DEMINGS. Mr. Speaker, 1 month ago today, a man brutally murdered 
17 children and educators in Parkland, Florida. He killed these 
innocent people using a semiautomatic, assault-style weapon. These 
weapons, designed for the battlefield, are easily available across this 
country.
  It has been 19 years since the Columbine school shooting. That 
massacre shocked America. Our country debated that shooting and the 
causes for months, for years. But in what has become an all-too-
familiar pattern, Congress did nothing to address the factor that makes 
these massacres so deadly, the easy access to guns.
  You see, after Columbine, the gun lobby knew that they were in 
trouble, so they put a whole lot of time and a whole lot of money into 
confusing the issue. They said: ``It's not guns. It's bullying. It's 
not guns. It's the lack of school security. It's not guns. It's our 
violent culture, music, and video games.''
  Well, other countries have all of these things, but other countries 
do not have mass shootings like ours because other countries have 
responsible gun safety laws.
  Today, 1 month after the Parkland shooting, we are, once again, 
discussing guns. Today, as after Columbine, the gun lobby knows that 
they are in trouble because this time these children who survived the 
Parkland shooting are not trying to return to the way life was before 
the shooting. They are taking a stand. And, yes, we do stand with them.
  See, these children believe that they can change the world. They 
should, and they are. I mean, after all, isn't that what we taught 
them: that when they see something wrong, they do something about it?
  So the gun lobby is going back to their same old tactics: It is not 
guns; it is the fact that the teachers don't have guns.

                              {time}  1045

  How surprising that the gun lobby solution to school shootings is to 
buy more guns. But as a former law enforcement officer who has been 
trained in active shooter situations, I can tell you that arming 
teachers is a dangerous and disturbing idea. We should prevent mass 
shootings and not complicate them.
  I can tell you that having multiple armed individuals present in an 
active shooter situation only complicates the response. Arming teachers 
would lead to taxpayer-sponsored shootouts, endangering outscaled and 
outgunned teachers, putting our children at risk.
  We already ask our overworked and underpaid teachers to do too much. 
A national survey of teachers found that, if offered the choice to 
carry a firearm, most would refuse. Many have said they would quit.
  The solution to gun violence is not shootouts between teachers and 
school shooters. Instead, we can finally take serious but real measures 
addressing gun safety.
  We should stop this absurd idea before it becomes reality. Congress 
should move swiftly to prevent the administration from shifting tax 
dollars meant for antiterrorism programs to buying guns for teachers. I 
had hoped to incorporate this commonsense idea in a bill scheduled to 
come before the Homeland Security Committee last week, but I was 
blocked for doing so, and that is why, last night, I introduced a new 
bill to put the idea into law. Money for fighting terrorism should stay 
where it is, and our teachers should be allowed to teach.
  We saw that in my own congressional district in Orlando, Florida, the 
result of lack of action where 49 people were killed and 58 still 
suffer life-changing injuries when they were gunned down in a 
nightclub. See, everybody, living in a country that we say is the 
greatest country in the world should have the right to go to church, to 
go to school, to go to a mall, to go to a movie theater without being 
gunned down.
  Mr. Speaker, we should take action after this shooting and do our 
jobs to protect our children and serve our communities.

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