[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 91 (Wednesday, May 25, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2688-S2690]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                    Robb Elementary School Shooting

  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to just share candid emotions about 
yesterday's tragic shooting of schoolchildren who were 2 days from the 
end of the school year in Texas--19 deaths of little ones and 2 
teachers and others injured. This is rough. I don't have any notes 
because I am really emotional about it. These shootings kind of give me 
PTSD, I have to admit.
  I was the mayor of Richmond, and our city had the second highest 
homicide rate in the United States. At a much younger period of my 
life, I found myself going to too many funerals, to too many wakes, to 
maybe the most memorable crime scenes, then also to homicide victims' 
family support group meetings in church basements in my city.
  Then I got to be the Governor of Virginia. In April of 2007, my wife 
and I landed in Japan while leading a trade mission, and we went to a 
hotel and immediately got a phone call saying that there was a shooting 
underway on the campus of Virginia Tech University and that I should 
turn on CNN, which I did, in Japan.
  As I saw the events unfold, I said: Take us right back to the 
airport.
  We had flown 14 hours. We were in the hotel for about an hour but 
went right back to the airport and flew all the way back home to what 
was the worst day of my life in trying to comfort 32 family members who 
had lost kids or their spouses who were faculty members--and that 
process went on for years--in the days right after the horrible tragedy 
but then commissioning a study about what went wrong and then trying to 
find an appropriate settlement with these families that would honor 
their loved ones.
  I had to deal with State police officers--hardened, hardened law 
enforcement veterans--who walked into the classrooms at Virginia Tech, 
to find carnage and on each body a cell phone ringing because a parent 
had seen it on television and wanted to call to make sure it wasn't one 
of their children who had been killed. My law enforcement officers 
talked about how those rings that would never be answered just haunted 
them, haunted them.
  So when there are these shootings at a school, at a nightclub, at a 
concert, in a grocery store, in a church, in a synagogue, I feel like I 
am back in April of 2007, experiencing those emotions for the first 
time.
  I was analyzing my own emotions for the first time last night. Why 
have I not been able to reach a point of more--I don't know--emotional 
equilibrium about this after 15 years? I realized that the reason was 
that my emotional reaction that is kind of a PTSD thing is not just 
because of the shootings, not just because of the deaths, not just 
because of the promising lives cut short; it is compounded by a 
realization that, here in this body, we have done nothing.
  It would be bad enough to experience the violence and be reminded of 
that most painful time in my life, but to experience it as a U.S. 
Senator, as a Member of a body, and to say, ``Well, what have we done? 
We didn't do anything at the Federal level after Virginia Tech, and we 
didn't do anything after Pulse, and we didn't do anything after Las 
Vegas, and we didn't do anything after Sandy Hook, and we didn't do 
anything after one tragedy after the next,'' then that compounds in 
some ways, and that is the thing that makes the emotional reaction a 
reaction that is as fresh today as it was in April of 2007. It is a 
wound that can't heal until we do something to heal the injury, to heal 
the problem.
  I was thinking about this last night, and I was trying to, you know, 
think, what is some wisdom that I can derive to make me feel less down 
and less despondent? And I just thought of two things that I wanted to 
share. One is a spiritual insight, and the other is a practical reason 
not to lose hope.
  So, as a spiritual insight, a few years ago, Pope Francis was kicking 
off a yearlong effort to encourage the revitalization of parish life--
not the life of the big, universal church but the life of parishes. He 
challenged parishes, but this challenge could go for people, and it 
certainly could go for political leaders. He challenged parishes to be 
(statement made in Spanish) ``islands of mercy in the midst of a sea of 
indifference,'' and I thought, what an interesting challenge.
  The thing about that challenge that I thought was so beautiful and a 
little bit unexpected is he didn't counterpose mercy to evil or mercy 
to cruelty or mercy to hatred; he contrasted mercy with indifference--
with indifference.
  There is evil in the world, and there is hatred in the world, and 
there is cruelty in the world. Yet usually those forces are not strong 
enough to succeed for very long unless--unless--there is widespread 
indifference. We are challenged not to be indifferent.
  If we assess why the Senate, this great deliberative body, has been 
unwilling to act for 15 years, I don't think it is cruelty or evil; it 
is indifference. It is the very thing that Pope Francis was warning us 
to avoid.
  We should be merciful. We should not be indifferent. Evil doesn't 
thrive for very long absent indifference. Yet, despite what we often 
say after tragedies like this, with our thoughts and our prayers and 
our sincere emotions, if we don't demonstrate by more than just words 
that we are touched by these tragedies, then we are committing the sin 
of indifference.
  I hope very much that the tragedy of these little children's deaths 
may push us out of the indifference that we have been sunk in at least 
on this issue. I really hope that it will.
  Then, finally, there is a practical reason I am not going to give up 
hope that it will. I mentioned that I was the mayor of Richmond, 
dealing with a homicide problem, and that I was the Governor during 
what was at the time the worst mass shooting in the history of the 
United States. Sadly, it has been eclipsed. The Virginia Tech shooting 
is no longer the most tragic shooting in history. Others have eclipsed 
it in terms of the numbers of those killed.

  I felt that same despair then, and I threw myself into trying to make 
changes. I made the changes in the Virginia laws that I could make as 
the Governor by executive action, but there are some things I couldn't 
do by executive action. I needed the support of my legislature to do a 
comprehensive background check bill because, in the case of the 
Virginia Tech shooting, Seung-Hui Cho, the disturbed 19-year-old who 
committed that crime, was legally barred from owning a weapon, but 
weaknesses in the background check system didn't catch that, and he was 
able to get the weapons that led to that carnage.
  I couldn't get my legislature, even in the aftermath of the worst 
shooting in the history of the United States, to be willing to take 
action, but we never gave up. We kept pushing. We kept pushing in 
Virginia, the headquarters' State of the National Rifle Association. We 
kept pushing and pushing and pushing, and in 2019, 12 years after the 
tragedy at Virginia Tech, my legislature passed a set of commonsense 
gun safety rules: one handgun a month, a ban on certain kinds of 
weapons that nobody needs, a comprehensive background check, mental 
health support--a series of initiatives. My legislature did pass it in 
2019, and my State is safer as a result, but 12 years was a

[[Page S2689]]

long time to wait. There were a lot of tragedies that happened between 
2007 and 2019.
  Thank God for the Virginia Tech family members and for the other 
advocates who said: We will wait. We are not going away. We are 
patient. We are discouraged. Each loss we feel afresh, but we are not 
stopping until we make that happen.
  In my first months in the Senate, we voted on the floor on a 
comprehensive background check bill. I think that was the last time we 
had a meaningful debate about gun safety policy on the floor of this 
body--9 years ago. It is like there is a gag rule here. You know, it 
used to be, in Congress, you were not allowed to have debate or to vote 
about issues dealing with slavery during the 1830s. It is like we have 
a gag rule about debating gun safety on the floor of this body.
  But I remember voting that day, and it was on the anniversary of the 
shooting at Virginia Tech that we voted on a bipartisan background 
check bill in this body in 2013. The Sandy Hook families were sitting 
in the Galleries, and many of the Virginia Tech families had come up to 
join them to offer them support. I was reminded of the Scripture and 
the letter of Paul to the Hebrews being surrounded by a great cloud of 
witnesses. And here we were on the floor, trying to respond to this 
tragedy and do something to ease their grief, and we fell a couple of 
vote shorts. We couldn't get to 60. I think we had 57 votes that day 
for a background check bill. That was painful. It was painful. It was 
especially painful to fall short in the view of all of these grieving 
family members.
  But I draw hope from this. If we can make progress on this issue in 
Virginia--the headquarters of the NRA--we can make it in the U.S. 
Senate. It may not happen as quickly as I want, and it may not happen 
while I am still here to see it, but there is no reason to give up. If 
we can do this in Virginia, we can do this in the U.S. Senate, and we 
ought to. There is nothing we can do to bring back the lives of these 
young people, but if we can act to decrease the chance that this will 
ever happen again, they will at least have the ability to grab on and 
say: Our advocacy made a difference, and kids who go to school will be 
safer in the future.
  This is the last thing I will say, and I will sit down. I was walking 
around the building this morning, and because I am fluent in Spanish 
and people around here know it--a lot of the Capitol staffers are 
Latinos, and they talk to me in Spanish--I passed by a longtime Capitol 
staffer who said in Spanish: Senator, what is going on? What is going 
on with this country?
  I said: I know what you are asking me about, and it is such a 
tragedy.
  Then she said this to me. She is from El Salvador. She said: My 
country is a mess, and the violence is awful, and the homicide rate is 
unacceptable, but no children in schools feel unsafe. No people going 
to church services feel unsafe. What is going on, Senator?
  I didn't have a good answer for her. I didn't have a good answer for 
her.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, last night, as I was doomscrolling--as 
they say one does at 2 in the morning when you can't sleep--what I was 
looking up were places to buy ballistic protective backpacks for my 
daughters, who are 4 and 7, and places to buy ballistic protective 
white boards, which could be donated to my girls' school, that would 
act as shields should a shooter go to their school. It is bad enough 
that I felt I had to do that, but the fact of the matter is, those 
pages were already bookmarked because it was not the first time that I 
have had to look them up.
  Just 10 days, 240 hours, less than 2 weeks is all it took. It took 
just 10 days from the racially motivated domestic terrorism attack in 
Buffalo before we had to mourn the loss of yet more Americans--this 
time, 19 babies and 2 teachers--to a senseless, horrific, and, 
importantly, preventable mass shooting in Uvalde, TX. These were 
children gunned down at their school, with their small bodies mangled, 
utterly destroyed by lethal weapons of war that are designed to quickly 
kill adults.
  So, last night when I got home, I held on to my two babies so 
tightly. They didn't know why, but I wasn't going to let them go. I was 
just so grateful they came home from school.
  Today, there are at least 19 more families in our country that will 
never be able to forget the horrific site of what happens to a baby's 
body, to a child's body when shot at close range with an AR-15 or 
similarly styled rifle meant for battlefields and not schools.
  I come to the floor today because, as a mother, I am beyond angry. I 
am furious, heartbroken, and fed up. I am sick to my stomach thinking 
about what those parents are feeling right now. They sent off their 
babies to school yesterday morning, just like I did. They packed their 
lunch, like I did. They argued with their babies about hurry up, the 
bus is coming. You are going to miss the bus. No, you really do have to 
wear a sweater. I know that you don't think it is cold, but you have to 
wear a sweater or today is PE day, and you have to wear your tennis 
shoes. But unlike my daughters, those babies never came home again. 
They will never laugh their beautiful laughs again. They will never 
smile their wild, silly, gorgeous smiles again. That is a hell on Earth 
I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
  As a Senator, I ask my colleagues: How many more children will you 
allow to be murdered on your watch? How many more? How many more tiny 
bodies have to be ripped apart by weapons of war before you will stand 
up to the gun lobby and the NRA? How many more children will you allow 
to go to school each day traumatized, fearing for their lives; 
children, terrified of being gunned down in their classrooms, 
practicing active shooter drills instead of studying their ABCs and 
123s. When will it be enough for you to do something, anything, to 
simply do your job? When will children's lives matter more than your 
check from the gun lobby? When?
  Last night, my colleague from Connecticut Senator Murphy came to the 
floor to ask our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, ``What are 
we doing?'' But my Republican colleagues know exactly what they are 
doing. They know exactly what they are risking, whose lives they are 
endangering when they refuse to lift a finger in the wake of yet 
another mass shooting.
  When the assault weapons ban was allowed to expire, the number of 
mass shooting deaths tripled--tripled. We know that the ban works, and 
we need to reinstate it.
  Republicans are yet again pushing for nothing to be done, falling 
back on the old line that only one thing stops a bad guy with a gun, 
and that is a good guy with a gun, knowing full well that there were 
good guys with guns at both Uvalde and Buffalo. And here we are, 
mourning dozens of lives anyway.
  And I have even heard some of them say let's equip the teachers with 
guns. I would rather equip teachers with more pieces of chalk and more 
learning tools than guns because even if those teachers had had a gun 
in the classroom, they didn't have a chance to react to go grab that 
gun, and they are dead today.
  They pretend like all we can do is send thoughts and prayers or they 
say it is too soon to talk about politics. But they know that we don't 
have any time to wait. This time, we didn't even have 10 days to wait 
from Buffalo.
  It is their job to do more than send thoughts and prayers. It is 
their job--our job--to prove that we care even the least little bit 
about those little bodies and the giant heartbreaks they leave behind.
  We know how to stop these attacks from happening as often as they do. 
Heck, the entire rest of the world has figured it out. We all know 
there will be another and another and another attack in the weeks and 
months ahead if we do nothing. More innocent lives will undoubtedly be 
lost.
  So if you are not willing to act, if you are not willing to do the 
most basic part of your job to prevent the senseless loss of innocent 
life, then again I ask, why are you here?
  The Senate should immediately, at a 50-vote threshold, vote on the 
commonsense gun safety reforms that the American people have demanded 
for so long. And don't tell me this is about the filibuster because we 
have, time and again, voted at the 50-vote threshold on things that 
matter, like raising the debt ceiling or the defense budget. Yet the 
lives of our babies, the right of

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our babies to not be torn apart by weapons meant for war is not worthy 
of that?
  We are talking about universal background checks. We are talking 
about the kind of reforms that widespread majorities of Americans 
support. And in the face of yet another moment of unimaginable, 
unbearable, unfathomable grief, let's show the Nation that we value 
children's lives more than an arcane Senate procedure rule. Let's do 
what adults are supposed to do. Let's protect our kids, the most 
vulnerable, the most innocent. Let's do our jobs. Let's do what we were 
sent here to do, what our children are depending on us to do.
  We owe it to each victim of this tragedy and every tragedy before it 
and their loved ones to finally act. Enough was enough a very, very 
long time ago. May those babies rest in peace, those little angels now 
in Heaven.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maine.