[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 29 (Wednesday, February 14, 2024)]
[House]
[Page H586]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    REMEMBERING THE VICTIMS OF MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Massachusetts (Ms. Clark) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. CLARK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, last month, I joined my 
colleague Jared Moskowitz on a tour of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas 
High School in Parkland, Florida.
  The school is frozen in time. It is just as it was 6 years ago today 
when a gunman stole the lives of 17 people. There was a box of 
chocolates left in a classroom on a stack of textbooks, a stuffed 
animal with a Valentine's Day balloon sitting on a chair, writing 
assignments left unfinished, whiteboards covered in lesson plans.
  It was so ordinary, so hauntingly familiar. It is what you would see 
today if you walked into any high school on Valentine's Day.
  And then there was the horror--the broken glass, the bullet holes, 
the blood stains, the outlines left by children's murdered bodies, two 
of them right next to the teacher's desk where their classmates and 
teacher were hiding inches away.
  Three dads joined us that day. One by one, each of them led us to a 
spot where his child had been shot to death. One told us of how his 
daughter had run for safety in a stairwell, how she had missed safety 
by a split second, and how a single bullet ended her life before it had 
even begun. Her blood and the blood of her classmates mark the floors 
of that hallway, and they mark the soul of a country that could have 
saved them but chose not to.
  The collective failures to prevent this tragedy permeates every 
corner of that building and every corner of this building: the failure 
of the good guys with guns to respond quickly and without hesitation; 
the sheriff's failure to act on a warning of a school shooter in the 
making; the FBI's failure to investigate a tip about an angry, unstable 
teenager who wanted to kill people; and Congress' failure to keep an 
AR-15 rifle out of his hands.
  The men and women in this building could have prevented him from 
acquiring a weapon designed to kill and kill fast, but no. Nothing. 
There were no red flag laws, no universal background checks, no 
crackdown on high-capacity magazines, no assault weapons ban, no safe 
storage requirements. All of it was rejected by those, Madam Speaker, 
who perversely define freedom as unfettered access to weapons of war.
  Madam Speaker, there was no freedom for the students and staff gunned 
down that day. There is no freedom in violence, in terror, and death. 
There is no freedom in being forced to wonder if your child will come 
home from school. Will they live to see graduation? And there is no 
freedom from the grief of those parents whose worst fears had been 
realized.

                              {time}  1015

  Along one of those hallways there is a quote painted on the wall: 
``Never live in the past but always learn from it.''
  Madam Speaker, that building is just as it was 6 years ago, and so is 
this country. Our gun laws are frozen in the past as if nothing has 
happened. In refusing to act, Republicans not only ignore the past, 
they condemn the children to future violent death.
  Madam Speaker, let us honor our past by changing our future. Let us 
honor the murdered by honoring the right of the living to be free from 
fear.

                          ____________________