[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 88 (Tuesday, May 29, 2018)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E751]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              HOW MANY MORE LIVES? GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. MARCIA L. FUDGE

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, May 29, 2018

  Ms. FUDGE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to appeal to my colleagues once 
again to take a stand against gun violence in this country. We cannot 
continue to refuse to protect our children and our communities and 
seniors. It is time for the Members of this House to come together and 
simply do what is right.
  I believe in the Constitution. I believe in the 2nd Amendment. I have 
taken an oath to protect and defend both. I believe Americans have a 
right to defend themselves.
  But, the Constitution does not guarantee citizens the right to carry 
weapons of war. It doesn't guarantee any of us the right to have and 
use a magazine that will shoot 100 bullets in less than 30 seconds. 
Those who say the 2nd Amendment provides those guarantees are not only 
wrong, but they ignore the rights of our children and communities to be 
free of fear in school, at worship, at concerts and in restaurants.
  The 2nd Amendment doesn't give anyone the right to make our children 
afraid to leave the house. I have the right to walk out of my house 
without fear that I might be shot. The 17 students, teachers and staff 
who lost their lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 
Parkland, Florida had the right to go to school and work that fateful 
morning and not expect to be shot.
  The parents and families of the 8 students and 2 teachers killed at 
Santa Fe High School had the right to expect their sons, daughters, and 
mothers to come home the night of May 18th. And, let me remind you of 
the Waffle House Shooting near Nashville last month, the Las Vegas 
shooting, Orlando Pulse Night Club shooting, and the Sutherland Springs 
church shooting, all within the last two years. We cannot keep offering 
people our thoughts and prayers without doing something. ``Faith by 
itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.'' (James 2:17)
  Let us show the White House, the National Rifle Association and 
anyone else who wants to put guns before the safety of our people, 
especially our children, that we still have a backbone. Democrats and 
Republicans can still stand with the hundreds of thousands of students 
who took to the streets of America in March. They demanded 
accountability from legislators for the lives lost and gun reform 
policies to save lives in the future. Now let's stand for them.
  This is not a mental health issue as the White House and NRA 
suggests. This is, without question, a safety issue. I stood before the 
House of Representatives in February of this year and I will repeat 
what I said then. Republicans cannot claim that mental illness is to 
blame, while simultaneously cutting funding for mental health 
treatment, undermining Americans' health insurance, and stripping 
schools of the resources needed to employ a guidance counselor, social 
worker or more teachers to reduce class sizes and give children more 
individual attention.
  What will it take for us to get angry? How many more have to die 
before we act? Martin Luther King said, ``There comes a time when 
silence is betrayal.'' Let us not turn our backs on our young people, 
families and communities across this nation looking to us to pass 
common sense legislation.

                          ____________________