[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 81 (Wednesday, May 14, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2907-S2908]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Gun Violence
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, as has been noted by my friend and
colleague from Wyoming, this is National Police Week, and I just want
to join in his chorus in saluting the law enforcement officials from
his State who are here in Washington this week, as well as those in law
enforcement from across the Nation. Many have traveled to Washington in
their annual trip to honor those lost in the line of duty and to share
their priorities with Members of Congress.
If we want safe communities, we need to support our law enforcement
and we need to work with our Nation's children, and that includes
addressing our Nation's gun violence epidemic. We know that gun
violence is the No. 1 cause of police officer line-of-duty death.
Currently, the No. 1 cause of death for American kids and teenagers in
America is gun violence--not automobile accidents, not cancer. We need
to treat this crisis like the national emergency that it is.
Commonsense gun safety measures are overwhelmingly popular with the
American people, even with gun owners, including banning high-capacity
assault weapons meant for the battlefield, as well as universal
background checks and requiring safe storage of guns.
But we know that making communities safer also requires addressing
the root causes of violence. The police that I work with in Illinois
and in the city of Chicago have made it clear to me: They can do their
job, but we cannot arrest our way out of this situation. We need to do
more.
Next week marks 3 years since the tragic school shooting at Robb
Elementary in Uvalde, TX. On what should have been an ordinary
schoolday, 19 innocent children and 2 teachers were gunned down in
their classrooms by a man armed with an AR-15.
After that horrific day, Congress came together on a bipartisan
basis--a rare bipartisan basis--to pass the most significant gun safety
reform in generations. We recognized that too many parents were losing
children and too many communities had been irreparably scarred. So when
Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, we agreed we must
do more to prevent gun violence from happening in the first place.
One of the most prominent provisions of that legislation was
Congress's decision to invest in using trained neighborhood and
community leaders to break the cycle of violence. With $250 million in
funding, we supported community violence interrupters from the South
Side of Chicago to Greensboro, NC; to Baton Rouge, LA; to Houston, TX,
and many other communities.
Unfortunately, the DOGE committee had a different idea when it came
to preventing violence. Last month, the Department of Justice canceled
more than $800 million in violence prevention, public safety, and
victim services grants. That includes millions of dollars in community
violence intervention funding that was senselessly cut.
[[Page S2908]]
What does this mean? Organizations I am aware of, like Metropolitan
Family Services in Chicago, lost $3.7 million overnight. These funds
had been providing mental health training and job skills to hundreds of
individuals who are most likely to perpetrate or be victims of
violence. We went right to the source.
Because of these initiatives, homicides in the city of Chicago have
decreased by 50 percent since 2021. But now, just a few days before the
start of summer months when gun violence will be at its peak,
neighborhood organizations across the country, including Chicago, have
had the rug pulled out from under them.
Does Attorney General Bondi really think that eliminating these
grants will stop the violence?
Ignoring reality won't stop the bloodshed that will occur without
these funds.
Does President Trump really think that cutting this funding makes
America safer?
The next time the President or any of his friends goes to FOX News or
some other news source and starts scapegoating Democrats for gun
violence in Chicago, they should remember that the President and his
billionaire cronies eliminated the successful bipartisan grants.
To make matters worse, the Trump administration doubled down on its
decision to rescind another billion dollars in school mental health
grants, which were also passed into law in the Bipartisan Safer
Communities Act.
There is a detention facility in the city of Chicago for teenagers
awaiting trial charged with serious crimes, violent crimes. Some of
them are being charged with murder. They wait months, sometimes years,
for their trial. I visited that facility. And, of course, it is a
detention facility, a correctional institution, but it is also a high
school. These teenagers from all across the city of Chicago, waiting
for trial, go to school in classrooms, eat in cafeterias, and, of
course, stay on the premises.
I asked the teachers and counselors at this facility for teenagers
who have been involved in violent crime: Who are these kids? You must
get to know them in this facility. What is their background?
Well, one counselor I remember said: Senator, virtually every mental
health challenge you can think of, we see in these kids. They came to
the Earth in the usual way, but something happened in their lives that
changed them. But there is one thing that they virtually all have in
common: They are all victims of trauma, witnessing murders, having
someone they love lost to gunfire. It is the kind of thing that can
change a life for the better or for the worse, and, in this case, many
of them are being changed for the worse. And so counseling them and
working with them to conquer these haunting experiences in their lives
is central to putting them on the right track.
Now, we have a decision by this administration to cut back on school
mental health grants. That was part of a bipartisan solution to deal
with gun violence. After any mass shooting, many are quick to explain
away the tragedy as just a mental health issue, not a result of the
fact that America has too many deadly weapons. Yet barely 100 days into
this administration, they have dropped any pretense about mental health
in dealing with gun violence. Apparently, preventing gun violence by
providing treatment to children is just too much for them to take. At
one time, this was part of the bipartisan solution.
In Illinois, tens of millions of dollars in school mental health
services have now been canceled, forcing students to face the future
without this counsel. One program had brought graduate psychology
students to low-income elementary, middle, and high schools to provide
treatment services to students and bolster the mental health workforce.
Another initiative in Lake County, IL, received nearly $6 million in
Federal funds to recruit and train mental health providers to work in
the schools. In an outrageous and unsubstantiated justification, the
Department of Education claimed that these funds ``violated the letter
or purpose of Federal civil rights law'' or ``undermined the well-being
of students these programs are intended to help.'' There is no evidence
of that.
Where is the outrage from those who joined in this bipartisan
response several years ago and took great pride in it? Democrats and
Republicans finally agreed on something.
Mental health counseling of children that are most vulnerable is a
way to reduce gun violence. I still believe that to this day, and yet
the Trump administration says: No, we are not going to invest in that.
Do you know what is going to happen? There will be more gun violence
and terrible, outrageous events like we have seen so often. Innocent
kids will die. Innocent people will die. And people will say: We just
need more mental health counseling.
Keep in mind that this administration just eliminated the funds for
it. What are they thinking? Where is the outrage from my colleagues on
the other side of the aisle?
I saw the press releases from our Republican colleagues celebrating
the funding that was originally created. Now, silence. That silence is
shameful.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.