[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 78 (Tuesday, May 9, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1555-S1556]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Gun Violence

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it has been a rough weekend in Texas. Last 
weekend, tragedy struck the city of Allen, TX, and a driver in 
Brownsville drove into a group of migrants, killing a number of them 
and injuring others. In both cases, the circumstances surrounding these 
incidents are still being investigated.
  On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, people of all ages visited a 
popular outdoor mall in the suburbs north of Dallas. That is where 
Allen is. Shoppers filtered in and out of stores with their children 
and were enjoying what appeared to be a normal weekend, but, as we know 
now, the day took a tragic turn when a man drove up to the crowded 
shopping mall and got out of his car with a gun and began 
firing. Shoppers ducked behind cars and ran into stores. Customers 
crowded into tiny storage rooms. Parents used their own bodies to 
protect their children. The shooter murdered eight innocent people and 
wounded seven others before being killed himself by police. The victims 
were between the ages of 3 and 37.

  A patch on the shooter's clothing and his social media posts suggest 
that he might have espoused White supremacist and other extremist 
views. As I said, law enforcement is still gathering information about 
him and his motives, but what we know so far is that he was discharged 
from the army prematurely due to mental health reasons. But it is 
unclear if that discharge or any other factors would have legally 
disqualified him from purchasing a firearm.
  Obviously, a dishonorable discharge, a felony conviction--those sorts 
of things--would result in your being prohibited under existing law 
from purchasing a firearm, but we don't know whether there are other 
circumstances beyond his premature discharge from the army after only 3 
months due to mental health reasons which rise to the level necessary 
to invoke one of those disqualifying actions.
  So at this moment, there is still a lot we don't know. And, of 
course, at times like this, we are all trying to make sense of this 
unspeakable tragedy. Obviously, I am eager to learn more about the 
circumstances that led to this attack. But one thing is for sure, and 
that is local law enforcement officials leading this investigation and 
searching for answers have already done heroic work, thanks to an Allen 
Police Department officer who was at the mall for other reasons and who 
was able to respond quickly and neutralize the shooter. But for that 
police officer, many others would have been injured and died.
  So I am grateful to the police officers, the emergency medical 
technicians, and healthcare workers who responded to this tragedy--as I 
said, especially the heroic officer who responded to gunfire and 
immediately ran toward the danger.
  The shooter was carrying multiple weapons and had five additional 
guns in his car. If not for the quick action of that police officer, 
there is no question that even more families would be grieving today. I 
have spoken to local officials who are responding to this crisis, 
including Mayor Ken Fulk and Police Chief Brian Harvey. I offered my 
condolences and offered whatever help we might be able to provide, 
whatever assistance we can provide.
  One of the things Chief Harvey told me that he particularly 
appreciated is the FBI had come forward with crime victim services, a 
number of FBI agents providing that assistance to the victims of this 
terrible shooting, which relieves a lot of the pressure on this local 
police department. And, of course, the FBI is now taking the lead in 
the investigation, supported by Texas Rangers, the Department of Public 
Safety, and, of course, the Allen Police Department.
  So, today, I join all Texans in grieving this senseless tragedy. We 
mourn the eight lives that were stolen and lift up the survivors, who 
will never forget the horror they endured that day.
  I know, Mr. President, because I have been part of negotiations over 
the last few years involving the so-called Fix NICS legislation--
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut and I took the lead

[[Page S1556]]

on that bill to try to fix gaps in the background check system. The one 
area of consensus between people who are avid supporters of the Second 
Amendment and those who believe that we ought to ban some types of 
weapons, even for law-abiding citizens--the one area we can agree on is 
that people with criminal records and people who are mentally ill 
should not be able to purchase firearms. And that is simply enforcing 
current law.
  So we were able to do something in the Fix NICS bill a couple of 
years back--I think it was 2018 now--that I believed met my test for 
whether we should do legislation like that, and that is: Will it save 
lives? And I believe it has.
  More recently, we passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which 
is so new that it is only now being implemented. This bill did, of 
course, a number of things. It provided for an enhanced background 
checks for gun purchasers between the age of 18 and 21. The reason why 
that age group is so important is because the profile of many of these 
disaffected young men--who are obviously suffering from severe mental 
illness, who are so tortured that they not only want to commit suicide, 
they want to take other people with them--that cohort, that group of 
young purchasers, I believed we needed to go back and look at some of 
the juvenile records for mental health adjudications, for criminal 
convictions.
  These are the sorts of things that, if you had been an adult, would 
disqualify you, and you would not be able to purchase a firearm under 
existing law. But in Uvalde, TX, Salvador Ramos turned 18 years old, 
and even though everybody in the neighborhood knew he was a ticking 
time bomb--he had tortured animals; he had posted threats on social 
media; he shot his own grandmother who insisted he go back to school 
after a long absence due to COVID restrictions--he was able to purchase 
firearms without revealing anything about his juvenile record, without 
consulting with the local police, who knew him well.
  That has all changed by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. And the 
most recent tally I saw from the FBI is that approximately 100 
different purchases have been intercepted for individuals between the 
age of 18 and 21 who had disqualifying juvenile records that are now 
being queried as a result of that bill.
  But the other parts of it that were so important are that we made the 
single largest investment in community-based mental health care in 
American history in that bill. We were able to find an offset so it 
didn't involve spending new money, but it was billions of dollars in 
investment so more communities can have locally based community health 
services. Because, frankly, there are too many people falling through 
that net. The net doesn't really even exist.
  And we also made sure that our schools provided more comprehensive 
services. Part of the problem, though, is that, as there is more demand 
for mental health counseling and treatment, there are not enough people 
qualified to provide those sorts of services. So this is a huge 
problem.
  The bill provided grants and incentives to educational institutions 
so more people would train in those areas and so there would be more 
resources available for people suffering from psychological stress or 
even mental illness so that they can hopefully get better and become 
productive members of society.
  So I know, at times like this, people say: Well, we need to do 
something. Twice in recent history the U.S. Congress has come together 
on a bipartisan basis to do something that meets that test I mentioned 
a moment ago: Will it save lives? And I believe, in both instances, the 
legislation we passed that was signed by the President will save lives.
  But, of course, then we see what happened in Allen, and we wonder: 
What else is there? I mentioned the fact that these mass shooters, not 
only are they taking the lives of innocent people, they are, 
essentially, committing suicide themselves. They know they are not 
going to make it out of here alive. And there is this phenomenon that I 
learned from law enforcement called ``suicide by cop'' where actually 
mentally ill individuals who are unwilling to take their own life will 
encounter the police in a violent encounter which results in their loss 
of life, which, essentially, is a way of their committing suicide.
  I believe these mass shootings are also a form of suicide because 
these shooters know they are not going to make their way out of it. 
But, tragically, not only do they take their own life; they take the 
lives of innocent others.
  So we grieve with all the families and the entire community in and 
around Allen, TX, as we do each time one of these incidents occurs, and 
we will continue to look for ways we can find solutions to this sort of 
violence. But eventually or ultimately, I believe, what we are talking 
about are crimes; that while we can investigate crimes, we can 
prosecute crimes, we can punish crime, and we can even deter crime, but 
we haven't yet figured a way to stop crime.
  But, hopefully, there is more we can do.