[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 162 (Tuesday, October 3, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S4903]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 CRIME

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, it is my honor to represent the State of 
Illinois and the city of Chicago. I cannot tell you how many times 
Members of the Senate and the House in the other party have gone to the 
microphones to condemn the city of Chicago and its crime rate.
  Let me tell you point-blank, there is too much crime in the city of 
Chicago, but it is not the only city in America that suffers from that 
problem. Cities large and small have problems every single day with 
violent gun crime. My hometown of East St. Louis is a tiny little town 
of 20,000, 25,000 in comparison to the large metropolis of Chicago. Yet 
the rate of gun violence there is even higher in East St. Louis than it 
is in Chicago.
  We have to do everything we can to deal with it. Let me tell you what 
``everything we can'' means. It means we have to look at the flood of 
guns coming into these cities from out of State, primarily, without 
background checks, that are getting into the hands of criminals, who 
are turning around and killing innocent people. To ignore this flood of 
guns in the United States of America and condemn crime is to basically 
take a position that you are not going to look at reality. And that is 
what we are faced with.
  We have to have a sensible policy when it comes to background checks, 
universal background checks, to make sure guns are not ending up in the 
hands of people who will misuse them. When they confiscate thousands of 
guns every year, which they do in Chicago, they find that they come 
from the surrounding States, which have lax laws, if any, when it comes 
to checking the background of purchasers. That is a critical element. 
If you raise that issue on the floor of the U.S. Senate, you will have 
the whole side of the aisle--the other side--coming here and waving 
their arms about Second Amendment rights.
  I want to tell you, we need common sense when it comes to guns and 
gun safety. I want that to be part of the conversation on making our 
cities safer.
  The second thing I want to really raise is personal to the Senate. If 
you want to stop crime in the streets of Chicago or any city--Cleveland 
or Chicago, for example--one of the first things you need is a 
competent, aggressive criminal prosecutor, a person known as a U.S. 
attorney who works as part of the 85 U.S. attorneys across the United 
States enforcing the strong Federal laws we have enacted.
  So why don't we have a U.S. attorney in the city of Chicago? Why 
don't we have a U.S. attorney in the city of Cleveland? Because of the 
objections of one Republican Senator who has come to the floor over and 
over again to stop these appointments from taking place. The nominees 
have been cleared. They have gone through background checks. Both 
sides, Democrats and Republicans, have approved them. They are sitting 
on the calendar, and they cannot move because one Senator from the 
State of Ohio, a Republican Senator, refuses to lift his hold and give 
us a chance to vote on them.

  So you can give all the speeches you want on the floor of the U.S. 
Senate from every Member on the other side about how we have to end 
crime in the city of Chicago, but do me a favor. Speak to this one 
Senator and convince him that a competent, aggressive criminal 
prosecutor as U.S. attorney in the city of Chicago is one step toward 
that goal. To ignore that and to let him hold up this nominee is just 
unfathomable and inexcusable.

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