[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 143 (Monday, September 9, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5350-S5352]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              August Recap

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I came to the floor, and I heard the 
Democratic leader talking, obviously, about some terrible incidents 
that occurred in El Paso, Dayton, and in Odessa.
  Since we were last in session, we have had two shootings in Texas, 
one in El Paso and one in Odessa. I confess that these are terrible 
tragedies that cause us to first ask the question ``Why'' and then 
cause us to ask the question ``What'': What can and what should we do 
to try to stop incidents like these in the future?
  I will remind the Democratic leader that we actually have a great 
template for bipartisan support for gun safety legislation, which is 
the bill we sent to the President last year called Fix NICS--NICS being 
the National Instant Criminal Background Check System that the FBI 
operates.
  For example, if you were convicted of a felony or dishonorably 
discharged from the military or you were subject to a protective order 
or you had been committed as a result of a mental health crisis, under 
existing law, all of these prohibit you from purchasing or possessing a 
firearm. But if the background check system doesn't work, it doesn't 
really count for much.
  I am proud of the fact that we came together on a bipartisan basis 
and

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passed this Fix NICS legislation by overwhelming margins. Anybody who 
is suggesting that we simply haven't done anything has a faulty memory, 
at the very minimum.
  I would also add that we have passed legislation that would enhance 
school safety. One of the problems is that these cowards who commit 
these terrible acts don't go shoot up police stations; they go to the 
soft targets, like the schools. No parent should send their child to 
school wondering whether they are going to be safe from attacks like 
those we have seen occur in places like the Santa Fe school district in 
Texas, so we passed bipartisan legislation to deal with that as best we 
could.
  We also recognize that many of the people who commit these acts are a 
danger to themselves and others because of a mental health crisis. In 
the 21st Century Cures Act--a broad, bipartisan bill--we passed 
legislation that provides for piloting of assisted outpatient 
treatment. The reason that is so important is, if you are dealing with 
an adult--an adult child, an adult spouse, obviously, or a parent--
there is very little you can do to make them follow their doctors' 
orders or get the kind of treatment they need to take their medication. 
But as a result of assisted outpatient treatment orders, a family 
member or law enforcement or mental health professional can petition 
the court for a court order requiring people to comply with their 
doctors' orders to show up for their appointments and to take their 
medication. They have reaped tremendous benefits around the country, 
protecting people from themselves when they are in a mental health 
crisis and protecting other people from potential acts of violence that 
they might commit. It is not true that people who are mentally ill are 
somehow more prone to violence, but, certainly, when they lose control 
of themselves--and when they are in a mental health crisis, they do--
they can be a danger to themselves and others. So this assisted 
outpatient treatment pilot program that we pioneered in the 21st 
Century Cures Act, I think, provides another tool.
  Then we provided law enforcement with additional training. That is 
where the active shooter training came from. It was actually pioneered 
in San Marcos, TX, at Texas State University, where they train law 
enforcement not to sit on the perimeter while the shooting goes on 
inside a building but to attack the shooters where they are.
  Also, we went one step further to make sure not only that we can stop 
the shooter but also that we can actually save lives and keep people 
from bleeding to death by training emergency medical personnel to 
follow the police into an active shooting scene to save lives.
  Part of the problem with discussing this topic is that there is a lot 
of mythology out there. I heard my friend the Democratic leader say: If 
we had just passed another background check system, maybe Dayton or El 
Paso would not have happened. Well, both of those shooters passed a 
background check. Is he suggesting we ought to pass a law just to 
pretend that we are doing something, but it would actually not have a 
positive impact on saving lives?
  That is not what we did in the Fix NICS bill. As you may recall, the 
particular shooter there was disqualified from purchasing firearms, but 
the Air Force had not uploaded his felony conviction for domestic 
violence into the background check system. So when he went in to buy a 
firearm, it didn't catch him. He was able to lie and then buy.
  I am proud to say that as a result of this bipartisan legislation we 
passed, there has been a 400-percent increase in the Federal Government 
providing additional background check information for the National 
Instant Criminal Background Check--the NICS--System.
  I think it is safe to say, as a result of the bipartisan legislation 
we passed, working together, that lives will be saved. That is what we 
ought to be about, not about show boats or political posturing. We 
ought to be about solving the problem.
  Let's get our facts right first. The Democratic leader mentioned 
Odessa. It is true that the shooter in Odessa did have a mental health 
commitment, and he tried to buy a gun through traditional means. He 
failed a background check, so he wasn't successful. While the details 
are still being investigated, it looks as though he purchased the 
firearm from an unlicensed firearm dealer, which is a crime. If the 
dealer sold the firearm to the shooter knowing that he was disqualified 
from purchasing or buying a firearm, that would be another crime. So 
trying to suggest that some sort of additional background check would 
have solved that problem when what the dealer did and what the 
purchaser did were already illegal, I just don't think holds up.
  I look forward to continued discussion and debate on this topic. It 
was on the minds of an awful lot of people as I traveled across my 
State of Texas this August--as we all did during the August work 
period.
  I always benefit from going back home and getting refreshed by the 
thoughts, the ideas, and the aspirations of real people instead of 
living here inside this fantasyland known as Washington, DC. I always 
tell people that Washington is a fascinating place to visit. It is like 
Disneyland, but just remember one thing: It is not real.
  What is real are the people we represent back home and what the 
laboratories of democracy produce, which are the States, including the 
great State of Texas.
  As I travel back home, I also enjoy sharing updates about what we 
have been working on here in Washington and seeing how legislation we 
have passed can actually make a difference back home.
  One example is a program authorized by a bill that I introduced 
called Project Safe Neighborhoods, which is now the law of the land. It 
is a bill I introduced, which is now the law.
  I invited Attorney General Barr to come to Dallas, TX, to hear how 
this initiative has already begun driving down crime rates in a couple 
of our communities in Dallas. This program partners with local, State, 
and Federal law enforcement officials, together with Federal 
prosecutors, to target violent offenders--people who have no legal 
right to possess a firearm and who use firearms routinely--and engage 
with the community and, thus, help create safer neighborhoods.
  It is already having a positive impact in communities across my 
State, and I am eager to see the long-term benefits of this incredible 
program.
  In Austin, I visited the University of Texas during the month of 
August and met with some student veterans who are reaping the benefits 
of a bill we passed this last summer. It is called the Veteran STEM 
Scholarship Improvement Act. STEM stands for science, technology, 
engineering, math. The Veteran STEM Scholarship Improvement Act made a 
seemingly small change to an existing program, which provides extended 
GI bill eligibility for student veterans pursuing STEM degrees.
  Because we made a technical but important change, more students are 
able to continue their education with significantly less financial 
stress.
  President Fenves of the University of Texas system said that instead 
of just three courses that veterans could qualify for using their GI 
bill, they can now qualify for, I think he said, 25. It may have been 
28. There are multiples of what they can qualify for under existing 
law.
  So this small change will make a big difference. I enjoyed hearing 
about their career goals from the students who are using these GI bill 
benefits, and I look forward to seeing all they will accomplish.
  In addition to those meetings and those visits, I attended a ribbon-
cutting at a brandnew VA clinic in San Angelo, TX. I spoke to survivors 
of sexual assault in Grapevine about the need to pass the Debbie Smith 
Act to reauthorize the money we appropriate to help test backlog rape 
kits. I was able to join my friend Congressman Henry Cuellar from 
Laredo, TX, to discuss the future of the USMCA, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada 
Trade Agreement, the successor to NAFTA.
  So while it was a busy and productive work period, sadly, it was also 
marked by a number of heartbreaking moments that I alluded to a moment 
ago. On the morning of August 3, a gunman stormed into a Walmart in El 
Paso, TX, killing 22 innocent people and wounding two dozen others. It 
became

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the deadliest mass shooting in the United States this year.
  In a community as tight-knit as El Paso, the devastation was 
immeasurable, and I would note that the shooter traveled from another 
part of the State to El Paso. He was not from El Paso. The 
heartbreaking confusion quickly turned into rage when we learned that 
the shooter was a White supremacist whose crime could only be described 
as domestic terrorism.
  The day after the shooting, I visited El Paso and met with several of 
the victims, as well as the law enforcement officers responding to the 
tragedy. Members of the community created a memorial to honor those who 
lost their lives, and on that first day, it was relatively small, about 
4 feet wide.
  By the time I returned to El Paso with President Trump and the First 
Lady, 3 days later, this 4-foot-wide memorial had grown to hundreds of 
feet wide. The outpouring by the community was overwhelming.
  In the face of tragedy and unthinkable grief, the strength and 
support of the entire community from that memorial to the long line of 
folks waiting to donate blood, to the donations to help the victims was 
truly remarkable.
  As I also indicated at the beginning of my remarks, less than a month 
later, we experienced another shooting. A man went on a shooting 
rampage between Midland and Odessa, killing 7 people and wounding 25 
others. When I visited Odessa this last week, I met Odessa police 
officer James Santana, who was injured in the shooting but fortunately 
is expected to make a full recovery.
  When I asked the police chief in Ector County, which is where Odessa 
is located: What do you think we might be able to do in Washington that 
would help, he said: Well, we just don't have adequate resources to 
deal with people suffering from a mental health crisis. That might be 
one area where you could help.
  I had the pleasure of thanking the men and women in blue, our law 
enforcement officers, for their quick response in Odessa and thanked 
them for the work they do every day.
  By the way, I also had the opportunity to travel to the White House 
this morning. President Trump gave an award to the police officers in 
Dayton, OH, who were able to stop the shooter there. He offered 
certificates of commendation to some of the employees of Walmart who 
helped save lives in the shooting episode there.
  While major events like these are ones that grab the headlines, Texas 
law enforcement officials and officials all over the country are on the 
streets each and every day doing everything they can possibly do to 
keep our communities safe. I think it would just be negligence on our 
part not to continue to thank these men and women and especially those 
who responded to tragedies like El Paso, Midland, and Odessa.
  As our State continues to grieve from this senseless loss of life, 
the questions are, of course, How did this happen? How can we prevent 
it from happening again? Well, I know we are going to try, just as we 
have done in the past, to identify gaps and problems with the law and 
fill those gaps and save lives in the process.
  If I knew how we could pass a law that would prevent people from 
committing crimes, we would pass it unanimously, but, unfortunately, 
that is not the human condition. I have been speaking with my 
constituents as well as colleagues in the Senate over the last few 
weeks about what a legislative solution might look like, and I do 
expect us to have a wide range of debate on the subject in the coming 
days.
  I just spoke to a representative at the White House. They say they 
are putting together a set of proposals to provide the President later 
this week, and we look forward to hearing what the President believes 
these proposals should consist of.
  Again, I think the model we used after the Sutherland Springs 
shooting in 2017 was a pretty good one, where we introduced a bill to 
improve the background check system and to prevent people who should 
not be able to purchase a firearm from doing so. We passed that 
legislation on a broad bipartisan basis. Had that legislation passed 
sooner, it could have prevented the Sutherland Springs gunman from 
acquiring his weapon in the first place. By lying on his background 
check application, knowing, perhaps, that the United States Air Force 
had not uploaded his conviction for domestic violence into the 
background check system, he was able to get away with it.
  These are the kind of reforms I believe we should be looking at--real 
solutions to real problems. We owe it to the American people to focus 
on making changes that will actually work, not show votes and not 
talking points. We ought to be about trying to solve this problem.
  The American people are smart. They can see what is happening up here 
when we resort to the same old tired talking points and are not really 
engaged in trying to find solutions. They see through it, and we owe it 
to them and owe it to ourselves and owe it to people who might 
otherwise become future victims to do everything we can to provide the 
tools to law enforcement to try to prevent as many of these deaths as 
we can.
  In the case of the Fix NICS Act, it was able to become law because it 
had broad support from Republicans and Democrats as well as the 
President. This will guide my approach. Again, I am not interested in 
scoring political points or introducing bills so we can pat ourselves 
on the back and run our next campaign on it. I am actually interested 
in trying to solve the problem and saving lives in the process. That is 
what we did on the Fix NICS Act.
  The leader made it clear that if there is a proposal out there that 
is able meet these same criteria, we will consider it on the floor of 
the Senate. He has asked us to come together and figure out what that 
legislation would look like. While there are certainly differences on 
both sides of the aisle about what we should do, I hope all of us can 
remember we share a common goal of stopping these mass shootings to the 
extent we humanly can.
  Again, if we knew how to pass a law to prevent people from committing 
crimes, we would have already done that. We may not be able to do that, 
but we sure can, I think, make some progress and hopefully save some 
lives in the process.
  There are a lot of discussions about ways to do that, and I am 
hopeful we can reach an agreement soon. We cannot allow these acts of 
violence to somehow become the new normal. As we keep the victims and 
their families and the dedicated law enforcement officers impacted by 
the shooting in our prayers, we owe it to all of them and to ourselves 
to work on a solution to prevent more communities from experiencing 
these types of tragedies.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Boozman). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.