[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 24 (Wednesday, February 5, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H770-H771]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1030
            RECOGNIZING NATIONAL GUN VIOLENCE SURVIVORS WEEK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Soto) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SOTO. Madam Speaker, today, I rise because it is National Gun 
Violence Survivors Week, a time when we focus on sharing and amplifying 
the stories of gun violence survivors who live with the impacts of gun 
violence every day.
  I recall the morning of June 12, 2016, when my wife and I were 
awakened at 6 in the morning by a barrage of texts because the 
unthinkable happened to our happy little town of Orlando, Florida. Gun 
violence on a massive scale had reared its ugly head at a place where 
people just wanted to have a good time, at the Pulse nightclub.
  We lost 49 Americans that day, 49 of my fellow Orlandoans who were 
just there to enjoy friendship and camaraderie. Their lives were taken 
way too early from us. But we also have to focus on the 53 who were 
wounded, the survivors of the Pulse nightclub tragedy. One of them is a 
coworker of mine, Ramses Tinoco.
  Ramses is a paralegal who was good spirited, hard-working, and always 
excited about the job. Suddenly, for several weeks, he wasn't able to 
come back to work, or at least in a regular fashion. I remember talking 
to him about what it was like to be there. It was hard for him to talk 
about it, and I don't blame him because no one should have to see those 
types of horrors.
  Another good friend of mine, Ricardo Negron-Almodovar, a lawyer in 
Puerto Rico who came to central Florida for a new start, and within 
less than a year of living in Orlando, he faced this vicious tragedy. 
But he has been fighting back. He is now on the Pulse national memorial 
advisory committee. We have a bipartisan bill going through the House 
that would make it a national memorial to remember those 49 we lost and 
those 53 wounded survivors.
  But I also want to talk about the folks who take care of the 
survivors.
  Terry DeCarlo, who is pictured here on the far right, was retiring 
the Monday after the Pulse nightclub shooting from the LGBT+ Center in 
Orlando. Terry couldn't retire when his community needed him most, so 
he stayed on for a year, bringing in supplies, helping with mental 
health, helping the families coming from around the country to help 
their loved ones who were still surviving.
  During that time, all Terry thought about was others. It was only a 
few months after he retired a year-plus later that he found out that he 
had advanced stages of cancer that was teeming through his jaw. One can 
only wonder whether, if he wasn't so busy, he might have gotten 
treatment or had noticed beforehand. But that wasn't Terry.
  Terry cared about others. Terry lived to serve, and we just lost him 
last month. It is a sad tragedy, but Terry's legacy will be remembered.
  We also have to honor with action, with real solutions. The shooter 
in this instance had a SIG Sauer MCX semiautomatic rifle, a weapon of 
war made for battlefields, not for a suburban nightclub, one that could 
do unspeakable carnage even before police could get on the scene.
  There are things that are even more common ground than assault 
weapons bans. Our House passed a bipartisan universal background checks 
bill to make sure that, simply, those who aren't supposed to have guns 
don't get them. With giant loopholes for gun shows and private sales, 
this just doesn't make sense. It is time to pass it.
  Also, the Charleston loophole, where we saw someone put a false 
address, and when the background check didn't come back, he 
automatically got his guns and shot up a church in Charleston.
  It is time for action.

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