[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 116 (Thursday, July 14, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3298-S3299]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Highland Park Shooting

  Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, 2-year-old Aiden McCarthy was lying 
bloodied and pinned underneath his unconscious father when he was 
found--just a toddler, Aiden was still in diapers, had somehow lost one 
shoe and was down to just one blood-soaked sock, with scrapes across 
his body.
  It was last Monday, July Fourth, and Aiden was rescued from the site 
of a massacre, from the site of the latest mass shooting that has 
marred our country and left scarred all those who bore witness to its 
senseless terror.
  I was at a nearby parade in Illinois when I heard about the shooting. 
I rushed to the emergency operation center and was there the moment the 
police came in and told us that two Good Samaritans had found this 
young boy sheltered under his father's body.
  When Aiden was rescued, he kept asking for his mom and his dad. But, 
tragically, horribly, we later learned that they were never going to be 
able to comfort him ever again. Both his mother and father were among 
the seven people murdered during that Fourth of July parade shooting in 
Highland Park. Their names were Irina and Kevin McCarthy And they, like 
so many of us, had spent that holiday morning eager to take pride in 
our country, eager to celebrate the freedom and goodness and greatness 
that has defined our Nation since its first breaths on that first July 
Fourth, eager to celebrate America at her best.
  Instead, they experienced the very worst of it. They saw firsthand 
what can happen when a sick fealty to the gun lobby is prioritized over 
American lives. And Aiden is an orphan because of it.
  I woke up today unable to get the image of 2-year-old Aiden's one 
bloodied sock out of my mind. I woke up, as I have every day since that 
day, unable to stop thinking about how his mom or his dad put on his 
diaper that morning, just like I have done thousands of times with my 
own two little girls.
  I woke up thinking about how, when the first shots of that military-
style rifle rang out, his parents' first thoughts must have been about 
saving him, shielding him.
  So today, I come to the floor to say their names and the names of the 
five other victims, my constituents who should still be breathing at 
this very moment but aren't: Katherine Goldstein, Jacquelyn Sundheim, 
Stephen Straus, Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, Eduardo Uvaldo, and Irina and 
Kevin McCarthy.
  There are too many victims of preventable gun violence to name all of 
them here. In fact, gun violence is the largest killer of children 
under the age of 16 in this country--not disease, but the disease of 
gun violence. It happens in Buffalo, in Chicago, in Uvalde, in Newtown, 
in Pittsburgh, in DeKalb, in Virginia Beach, in El Paso, in two 
different Auroras, in Las Vegas. It happens in wealthy suburban 
communities, in low-income rural communities, and in urban areas across 
our Nation.
  It happens everywhere in America but almost nowhere outside of this 
country. It happens so much here that we only hear about it in the 
national news when a large enough number of people are killed at one 
time and in one place.
  Think about that. Every time gun violence occurs, someone decides 
whether or not the number murdered is worthy of column inches and 
breaking news graphics on TV. And, too often, the answer is no because 
there have been more mass shootings thus far in 2022 than there have 
been days in the year and because we, as a country, have grown numb.
  We witnessed that just last week in Chicago, as over the holiday 
weekend, Chicago's death toll climbed even higher than the devastation 
seen in Highland Park. Yet there was no national outcry.
  In Chicago's communities, gun violence is now viewed as all too 
common,

[[Page S3299]]

and kids can no longer be kids. They have all heard too many stories of 
toddlers in strollers killed by a stray bullet or parents murdered 
while picking up their own kids from school.
  But these everyday gun deaths no longer garner the attention they 
demand. We have become desensitized, even as elementary schoolers' 
lives are being stolen and survivors' innocence are lost. Every gun 
death is a tragedy that can and should be prevented. This is a uniquely 
American disease, and it requires a national solution.
  So I am here on the floor today to plead with my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle to help keep another toddler from having to cry 
out for his parents amidst gunshots and terror; to help stop another 
day of patriotism, another math class, another trip to the grocery 
store from turning into a living nightmare.
  I plead with them to help prevent all that by passing the assault 
weapons ban, legislation that would block the further sale, transfer, 
manufacture, and importation of military-style assault weapons and 
high-capacity magazines for civilian use.
  I spent 23 years in the Army. So I recognize a weapon of war when I 
see one. I know why you would need to use them, the power they wield, 
and what they can do to a human body.
  I understand that the M4, the M16, and their civilian variants--known 
generically as AR-15 rifles--were designed for the battlefield. From 
their portability, rapid rates of fire, power and accuracy to their 
effective range, these weapons were designed to rip apart the human 
body so your enemy cannot get back up and fire back at you on the field 
of combat.
  These are weapons of the battlefield and have no business being on 
our streets and in our schools. There is a reason why the parents in 
Uvalde had to submit DNA to identify their murdered children. These AR-
15 style rifles fire small caliber ammunition at a velocity that can 
easily penetrate many kinds of body armor even at a distance. So when 
an unprotected child is shot with an AR-15 at close range, the results 
are horrific.
  And as anyone who has ever carried an M4 into combat understands, the 
American people should not be misled into thinking that AR-15 rifles 
are safe for our communities or that a ban on fully automatic machine 
guns is sufficient to protect our children from the most dangerous 
weapons of war.
  Mass shooters are hunting mothers in malls, fathers in theaters, and 
children in their schools. For that evil purpose, a semiautomatic rifle 
is the perfect weapon because it is lightweight, portable, and easy to 
load with high-capacity magazines.
  It couples the speed of automatically chambering the next round after 
each shot with maximum accuracy--a combination designed to kill as many 
people as possible, as fast as possible, as efficiently as possible.
  So the first thing I thought when I heard the audio of last week's 
tragedy was that it sounded like war because the last time I heard the 
sound of gunfire that rapid and that many rounds going off on the 
Fourth of July was when I was serving in Iraq. I never thought I would 
hear that on this holiday again, let alone here on U.S. soil.
  And I live, like so many other moms, in daily fear that my own 
daughters will be forced to hear that nightmarish soundtrack of war in 
their own classrooms or their own local parade.
  You know, a few weeks ago I went to talk to my daughters' class about 
Memorial Day. Both girls' teachers had asked me to come and explain the 
meaning of Memorial Day, to talk about the sacrifices of our troops, 
what we have done to safeguard our freedoms and rights as a nation, 
including, as the Constitution says, our right to life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness.
  As I was talking, I happened to look outside the window of my older 
girl's classroom, only to see my younger daughter walking in a line, 
following behind the other kids in her class in the middle of a 
shelter-in-place drill. And I watched as that little row of 3- and 4-
year-olds crouched down as small as they could get, and my daughter, 
with her head against the wall, put her hands over her head, learning 
to protect herself should there be a mass shooting.
  She is just 4 years old. And she was already being taught how to 
survive if someone with a weapon of war comes into the classroom where 
she is just beginning to learn her ABCs, believing that their right to 
fire assault rifles matters more than her right to make it to age 5.
  What I felt was close to horror. And I know other parents have felt 
the same. I am far from the only mom who will hug their kids a little 
tighter while putting them to bed tonight, then spend hours looking up 
ballistic backpacks to protect my girls in case the worst-case scenario 
becomes reality. But the horrible truth is, even ballistic backpacks 
may not stop these rounds.
  This week alone, hundreds of Illinoisans and survivors from other 
mass shootings were gathered at the Capitol. These people--mostly 
moms--are still recovering from major trauma. And they have jobs and 
childcare responsibilities and no experience lobbying Congress. Yet 
they made the trip to Washington, DC, because they know that their 
children's lives depend on it and because they are beyond furious at 
the lack of action to ban these weapons of war that have terrorized all 
of our communities.
  What these moms want isn't impossible. It wouldn't even be that 
difficult if more folks would grow a conscience. These parents want us 
to do better for them, for their kids, for all those in Highland Park 
last week, and for every person who has so needlessly lost their life 
to gun violence, whether in a mass shooting or in a tragedy involving a 
single bullet.
  The folks at that parade last Monday were there to celebrate life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Seven of them will never be able 
to do so again.
  We have to stop this. We have to end this cycle. And we can take a 
step towards doing so right now by getting these weapons of war off our 
streets and passing this bill immediately.
  To anyone who says no, to anyone who objects to passing this bill, I 
want to know how you can show off taking pride in our country on a 
holiday, then turn your back on its citizens 1 week later. I want you 
to say all the names of the ever-growing list of victims of these 
preventable tragedies.
  I want you to remember Aiden's pleas for his mom and dad, to think of 
the sounds of the gunshots that those children in Uvalde heard, to try 
to fathom the anguish of the parents whose teenagers are gunned down in 
senseless, everyday violence on our streets. I want you to explain to 
them why the dollars that you get from the NRA are worth their pain, 
their tears, their tragedy.
  Please, I am asking, explain how that campaign contribution is worth 
this endless cycle of blood and death. Explain how your gun-lobbying, 
fattened campaign funds are worth another parent having to bury their 
first grader in their favorite pair of Converse sneakers.
  Or, if you don't believe those checks are worth it, if you don't 
actually value your political self-interests more than those Americans' 
lives, then please join me in passing this bill. It is that simple.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.