[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 105 (Tuesday, June 23, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H4195-H4200]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GUN VIOLENCE AWARENESS MONTH
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Ms.
McClellan of Virginia was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of
the minority leader.)
General Leave
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members
may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and
include extraneous material on the subject of this Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentlewoman from Virginia?
There was no objection.
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to anchor this Congressional
Black Caucus Special Order hour to speak directly to the American
people about Gun Violence Awareness Month.
We are here to address the public health crisis facing not only the
constituents of the Congressional Black Caucus but all Americans. Gun
violence is an everyday reality that robs loved ones, erodes our sense
of security, and shortens too many bright futures.
Every year, roughly 44,000 people in the United States die of gun-
related injuries. In 2023, the most recent year for which the CDC
provided complete data, 46,728 people died from gun-related injuries.
Black men ages 15 to 34 are most at risk, with firearm homicide rates
at 22.6 per 100,000.
White males, particularly those who are 65 and older, have been
disproportionately impacted by firearm suicides at a rate of 17.8 per
100,000.
In my own State of Virginia, gun violence kills over 1,200 people and
wounds over 1,600 people. Suicides are 66 percent of those deaths.
In Richmond alone, where I live, 221 people were shot in 2025. While
that number is the lowest on record since 2015, it is still too high.
These statistics are jarring, but they are more than just statistics.
Each number is a personal tragedy--mothers, fathers, sons and
daughters, friends, and loved ones whose lives were cut short due to
gun violence, like 23-year-old Genesis Jones of Petersburg, Virginia,
who was killed while celebrating her brother's 25th birthday when a
large altercation in the area led to gunfire that killed her and 42-
year-old Dominic Antoine Jackson. They died because too many people
resort to gun violence to resolve what was once done by fists.
Barbie Perez, 28 years old, was shot multiple times by the father of
her child during an argument. He reportedly pushed Perez, and then the
argument moved outside. He went to his car and then came back, pulled
out a shotgun, and shot Perez in the leg and chest. Perez' mother saw
him press the gun against her back and fire more rounds before putting
the car in reverse and leaving the neighborhood.
Sierra Jenkins, a 25-year-old journalist at the Virginian-Pilot and
Daily Press, was one of three people killed and five people shot in a
shooting in downtown Norfolk after an argument broke out.
Increasingly, gun violence takes our children, becoming the number
one cause of death for teens and children, like Zion Terry, the 18-
year-old John Marshall student just weeks away from graduating, and his
14-year-old sister from Henderson Middle School, Sadie Terry, both
killed by Sadie's father in a fit of rage.
Marquan Mitchell-Nash, my son's classmate, 1 week after I stood on
this floor and took my oath of office, was killed accidentally by a gun
he and his friends were using as a prop while filming a music video.
Shawn Jackson, an 18-year-old Huguenot High School student, and his
stepfather, Lorenzo Smith, were killed moments after Shawn received his
high school diploma because of a beef that started on Instagram and
ended at that ceremony.
Samiyah ``Mimy'' Yellardy, a 17-year-old George Wythe High School
student, was shot and killed in her own home on early Sunday morning
during spring break.
McKenna Young, an 11-year-old, and 1-year-old Landrie Harris were
both found with apparent gunshot wounds inside their Memphis home,
where their mother was found with stab wounds.
These deaths impact families, but they impact entire communities. We
cannot allow this violence to become normalized. We must stand together
to advance commonsense gun safety legislation, invest in gun community
violence intervention programs, and address the root causes that
perpetrate this cycle of harm.
Year after year, we go back to our districts, and we talk to
community leaders, faith leaders, and families about the real threats
that they face. The overwhelming consensus is that Congress must pass
comprehensive,
[[Page H4196]]
commonsense gun safety legislation if things are ever going to get
better, because standing in the well for a moment of silence and
thoughts and prayers after each death is not enough.
As a State legislator, I was proud to take action to address this
crisis, championing investment in the Firearm Violence and Intervention
and Prevention Fund, which provided a pathway to research,
demographics, and trends and implemented evidence-based solutions to
address the root causes of gun violence, because those causes in the
city of Richmond may be different than in Chesterfield, Norfolk,
Roanoke, or anywhere else.
I led the senate to pass a bill to establish a center that takes a
comprehensive approach by empowering communities to address those root
causes in all its forms, and now I am working at the Federal level. We
had a similar program that the White House set up under the Biden-
Harris administration to work with communities to address the root
causes of gun violence in those communities through evidence-based
research. Now, it is gone.
I don't even know if the CDC is still tracking the data necessary on
these deaths, but as a member of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force
and as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, I am committed to
keeping our communities safe with these commonsense gun reform policies
like universal background checks and gun trace data. Yet, the majority
has failed to bring a single piece of gun violence legislation to the
floor for a vote this Congress, even when there is bipartisan support
for investing and addressing root causes of gun violence.
{time} 1950
We are working against the backdrop of an administration whose
Federal funding cuts actively prevent us from doing our jobs to reduce
such violence.
Last year, the Trump administration terminated nearly 400 grants from
the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs, which provided
supported for everything from victim services to substance use and
mental health treatment to juvenile justice and child protection.
These grants were initially valued at $820 million over multiple
years. And when the administration rescinded the remaining balances for
these awards, they cost our communities an additional $500 million and
more lives.
The Trump administration then made deep cuts to OJP's Community
Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative, the largest source of
Federal funding for community violence intervention, even though it is
popular on a bipartisan basis.
This funding was authorized by Congress and the Bipartisan Safer
Communities Act of 2022. Since then, over $300 million was invested in
addressing community violence intervention programming and research.
Now, half of those investments have been cut.
The President's latest budget cuts more than $500 million in funding
to the DOJ's State and local grant programs, including restorative
justice programs, community-based approaches to advancing justice,
including zeroing out the community violence intervention programs.
These programs are necessarily vital if we are going to intervene in
the public health crisis of gun violence.
The Trump administration has also moved to rapidly and effectively
reshape American gun policies, loosening restrictions, and putting more
lives in danger.
This past April, ATF released 34 proposed and final rules that would
severely deregulate the firearm industry. Last year's, you call it the
big, beautiful bill, I call it the big ugly law, removed the $200
silencer suppressor tax even though silencers and suppressors were
outlawed decades ago on a bipartisan basis.
All this does is invite tragedy back into our communities. Again, we
cannot allow violence to become normalized and an acceptable part of
our daily lives. So I call on my colleagues to let this June, this Gun
Violence Prevention Month, serve not only as a moment of awareness but
a call to action to pass meaningful reform that will save lives,
support survivors, and build safer communities for the next generation.
I thank each of my colleagues who will speak tonight. Mr. Speaker, I
yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois' Second District (Ms. Kelly).
Ms. KELLY of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Congresswoman for
convening us tonight on this extremely important topic. Mr. Speaker, I
rise today because, as we all know, there is a gun violence epidemic in
our country. It is a public health crisis.
Yet, our President is actively making this crisis worse. I don't know
if the Congresswoman realized this, but 10 years ago yesterday,
Katherine Clark, the late, great John Lewis, John Larson, David
Cicilline, and myself led the sit-in on the floor because we could not
get any movement to deal with gun violence prevention. I am proud to
say the Democrats all participated in that sit-in that lasted almost 24
hours.
Nothing happened right away, but we were making a statement that
needed to be made, and, eventually, we did get a Bipartisan Safer
Communities Act. But we all know more needs to be done.
This past Juneteenth weekend, nearly 40 people were shot in Chicago,
and 7 people died. What should have been a celebration of freedom
turned into a horrific reminder that we are not free from gun violence.
President Trump responded on Truth Social by claiming that he can make
Chicago a safe city in one month.
Mr. President, you do have the power to make Chicago safer. Release
the funding that you froze to provide support for community violence
intervention organizations. You stole $16 million that should have gone
to CBI organizations in Chicago. Those closer to the problem are
closest to the solution. Give those funds back to our city.
You can also reopen the White House Office of Gun Violence
Prevention. You can tell the ATF to overturn their 30 new rules that
make it easier to traffic illegal guns and harder for law enforcement
to investigate gun crimes.
I know that the President will not put forward any of these real
solutions to gun violence because, frankly, he really doesn't care.
Instead, he once again threatened the deployment of the National Guard
to Chicago.
The National Guard will not make our cities safer, but it will cost
taxpayers millions and millions and millions of dollars like it is
doing in D.C.
Let's be truthful about the real reason why President Trump wants to
deploy the National Guard. It is not to reduce crime. It is to instill
fear and abuse his power. It is to reinforce ICE agents who have
terrorized our city and targeted people based on the color of their
skin.
For generations, Black communities have been burdened with the
consequences of being underinvestigated and overpoliced. While gun
violence became the leading cause of death for all children and
teenagers in 2020, it has been the leading cause of death for Black
children since 2006.
We talk about the death, but how many people and families have
survived, and the mental and physical damage--everybody doesn't die,
but the mental and physical damage of those survivors is vast.
Chicago has worked to reduce these efforts, and last summer, murders
were at the lowest rate since 1965.
We have seen success because of our local efforts, our CBI programs,
and our local police rebuilding trust with the community. We know there
is more to be done: ban on assault weapons, safe storage, resources
that help those organizations on the ground, and I can go on and on and
on.
People deserve the right to be able to play in a park, ride on a bus,
come out of choir practice, get off the bus, and get tea from
Starbucks.
This is the only country in the developed world that has issues so
severe as this.
We need a President and more Members of Congress to realize no one is
truly safe until we are all safe, and we need to do more around gun
violence prevention.
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I said that gun violence is more than
just statistics. Every death is someone's loved one.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia, (Mrs. McBath),
the Representative for Georgia's Seventh District and someone touched
by gun violence directly.
Mrs. McBATH. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Virginia so very
much for holding this Special Order hour on behalf of the Congressional
[[Page H4197]]
Black Caucus, but more so, because this is National Gun Violence
Awareness Month, and I am very, very aware of this month.
I make time and effort every single year during this month to
continue to highlight the scourge of gun violence in America as a
public health crisis. I thank the gentlewoman very much for hosting
this Special Order hour.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today during National Gun Violence Awareness
Month to address a crisis that continues to devastate our families and
communities all across our Nation.
For far too many Americans, especially Black Americans and other
marginalized groups, gun violence is not an abstract policy debate. Gun
violence is a daily threat, a lived reality, and, too often, a source
of unimaginable pain and loss.
For me, this mission is deeply, deeply personal. Nearly 14 years ago,
my son, Jordan, was taken from me by senseless gun violence. I know
that I have told the story a thousand times on this floor to this body,
and I will continue to do so because his life and his story do matter.
{time} 2000
My son was simply going shopping with his friends, from one mall to
the next. They stopped at a convenience store gas station to get
chewing gum because my son Jordan said: If we are going to pick up
girls at the next mall, we have to have fresh breath.
They stopped at a convenience store gas station in Jacksonville,
Florida. Within 3\1/2\ minutes, a man drives up next to them and parks
next to them, on the passenger's side. He labels the boys gangbangers
and thugs, and racially profiles them because of the music that they
were playing. He started a verbal altercation with the boys, in
particular, my son, Jordan.
My son, as I had trained him to do, defended himself. He basically
said: We are not bothering you. We are not doing anything wrong. We are
just playing music. Can you just roll up your window?
This man proceeds to tell him: You can't talk to me that way.
He took his gun out of his glove box, got out of his car, and took a
shooter's stance. As the boys were trying to move out of the line of
fire and backing out of the parking lot, he took a shooter's stance and
shot 10 bullets into their car.
Three of those bullets hit my son, and he lay dying in the back seat
of the car, in his friend's arms. Thank God, the other boys were not
hurt.
I recount this story over and over and over and over again because
there is no measure of time that can dull this open wound and this
pain. My son Jordan's memory inspires me to ensure that there is no
other parent in this country who will ever have to endure what I have
endured and what so many families in the United States continue to
endure.
We often talk about the lives of people who are lost. We rarely
acknowledge the lives saved and people who are still with us because
someone intervened or because a program worked. As my colleague has
expressed, all the work that we did with the Bipartisan Safer
Communities Act has saved lives. That is because the community stepped
in before a trigger was actually pulled.
We can't quantify those victories, but we know that they matter. We
know that they worked. They remind us that prevention is possible, but
more so that prevention is absolutely necessary.
The pandemic revealed just how quickly gun violence can escalate. In
2020, the United States experienced the largest single-year increase in
homicides in modern history. That spike was not inevitable. It was a
warning about what happens when communities' safeguards and resources
are strained, taken away, or diminished.
In 2021, we passed the American Rescue Plan Act. We delivered $350
billion to State and local governments, including $15 billion
specifically for public safety and violence prevention.
These dollars helped cities hire crisis responders and people who
were doing work for gun violence intervention on the ground. They were
targeting those elements in our communities that precipitated a lot of
the gun violence. They were expanding community violence intervention
programs in America.
In 2022, we passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It is the
most significant, comprehensive gun violence legislation we have ever
enacted in this country. It strengthened our background checks, cracked
down on gun trafficking, and invested in mental health and community
safety initiatives. These were meaningful steps forward. They were
making a difference.
Yet, instead of building on these protections, the Trump
administration has used the last 18 months to dismantle these
safeguards and make it easier for dangerous individuals to have access
to firearms.
These choices have put American lives at risk, and they undermine the
progress the communities fought so hard to achieve.
Our work is far from finished. Gun violence remains one of the most
urgent public health crises of our day. It is a public health crisis.
We cannot allow the voices of our survivors, our families, and
frontline communities to be drowned out or to be dismissed.
I remain committed to advancing legislation that protects our
children, strengthens our neighborhoods, and prevents the next tragedy
from happening. I am so proud to continue to fight alongside my
colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus and gun sense champions
here in Congress who have long led the charge for justice and equity.
Shortly after my son was murdered, I, along with other mothers of the
movement, as we were called--it was the mother of Trayvon Martin, the
mother of Hadiya Pendleton, the mother of Eric Garner, the mother of
Michael Brown, the mother of Dontre Hamilton, and, of course, my son,
Jordan. We had the very rare opportunity to travel around the country
with Secretary Clinton, who was then running in the 2016 campaign for
President. We were allowed to campaign alongside her as the face of gun
violence in America.
That is the first time in the history of any campaign that gun
violence survivors and victims were allowed to tell their stories, were
allowed to remind Americans of the scourge of gun violence, and that no
one in this country, at any point in time, is immune from being hurt by
unnecessary gun violence.
In this country, the industrialized United States of America, you are
25 times more likely to die by gun violence. In this country, our
children are dying by gun violence, because it is the leading cause for
them to die by unsecured firearms in households.
We are the most violent industrialized nation in the world. Our
children suffer from the trauma of lockdown drills, not drills for
tornadoes or hurricanes. They are traumatized by those alone, even if
there is not an incident in their schools.
There is violence in every corner of the United States, in every
district. Every Member in this body has constituents who have been
hurt, maimed, affected, or influenced by gun violence.
We have domestic violence by gun, suicide by gun, child deaths by
gun, and homicide by gun. Gun violence in America is a public health
crisis, and it should be dealt with as such.
Gun violence prevention is not about infringing upon people's Second
Amendment rights. It is about sensible gun ownership, about law-abiding
citizens having access to firearms to hunt and to be gun enthusiasts,
but also having a balance to make sure we are preventing people from
being hurt, maimed, and suffering from gun violence.
{time} 2010
We owe it, I owe it, to every family member touched by gun violence
and to every family that we can still protect to meet this moment with
courage and conviction.
People are crying out, and how dare we, this body, be deaf to it?
If we say we are going to be pro-life, pro-life isn't just about what
happens in the womb. Pro-life is about existing life and people having
the ability to live in their communities and their homes and our
children to go to their schools and live in their neighborhoods without
being afraid of being gunned down. That is pro-life.
So as a survivor of gun violence, I have vowed to my deceased son and
to every survivor that I have met over the years to never ever let this
body forget
[[Page H4198]]
and to never let anyone forget our responsibility to keeping them safe.
Mr. Speaker, I will do my part, and I pray that this body has the
courage to do theirs.
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Georgia for
sharing her story and turning tragedy into action.
Mr. Speaker, it is every parent's worst nightmare that when your
child leaves home, whether to go to school, the mall, to worship, to a
park, to a birthday party, to a friend's house, walking down the
street, jogging, riding a bike, bird watching, driving and turning into
the wrong driveway, when you send them off, you never see them again
because of the scourge of gun violence.
It is every parent's worst nightmare when the alert goes out about a
mass shooting and you wonder: Is my child there?
It is every parent's worst nightmare when their child is in the
middle of a mental health crisis and because it is all too easy for
them to get access to a gun, that rather than getting the help they
need from medical providers, they end their suffering with a gun.
Mr. Speaker, it is every parent's worst nightmare that when you marry
off your child and the marriage goes wrong or the relationship, if they
are not married, and in the midst of that conflict the person who
professed to love your child the most takes their life in the ultimate
act of betrayal and control.
I want to thank Congresswoman McBath for having the strength to turn
her nightmare into action so no other parent has to live through it.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Ivey).
Mr. IVEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Virginia for her
powerful words and for hosting this Special Order, and I thank the
Congressional Black Caucus. I certainly want to thank my colleague from
Georgia (Mrs. McBath). I had the chance to serve with her on the
Judiciary Committee, and I know she feels this very deeply and very
passionately and rightly so.
I think it is important for all of us to try to make sure that even
if we haven't suffered a great loss like that, that we try to
understand and remember the importance of the impact of what that kind
of an event can do to a family, to a community, and what it has done to
the country.
I am blessed with six kids, and they all live in the D.C. area. We
meet together frequently on weekends. I am a grandfather, too. A few
months back, my granddaughter was in a heated argument with her cousin.
They are not the arguing type, so I kind of paused and started
listening. I was trying to figure out: What are you all arguing about?
She looked at me and said: Well, we are trying to figure out the best
way you should respond when an active shooter comes into your school.
She had her version of it, and he had his version. I just remember
being sort of stunned by the whole thing because I am 65. I grew up in
a different era, obviously. I am originally from Rocky Mount, North
Carolina, and Dale City, Virginia. They are two quiet towns, especially
back in the sixties and seventies, at least on this kind of front. I
went to schools where we had fire drills, but we didn't have active
shooter drills. We are now at the point where schools are being
approached and they are selling bulletproof blackboards, and they are
selling bulletproof backpacks and the like. That is where our schools
have come.
There have been debates about whether teachers should be armed or
not. Although we have seen that having armed personnel at a school
during an active shooter drill doesn't necessarily fix that problem,
but that is kind of where we went with that.
I came up and didn't really know much about gun violence until I
became a prosecutor, first here in Washington, D.C., at the U.S.
Attorney's Office. It just happened that I started that job in 1990,
which was in the middle of the crack wars. D.C. was averaging somewhere
in the neighborhood of 450 to 500 homicides per year. The numbers have
jumped from when I was a kid. Murder was a front-page story, but it got
so prevalent during that timeframe that sometimes they didn't report on
a homicide. They didn't even make the paper. There were just so many
coming in day after day after day after day. It was young people
killing young people, young males in particular, usually over drug
disputes, but sometimes not even that.
When I later became elected prosecutor in Prince George's County, I
had cases that were kind of the same ilk. A guy cut in front of another
guy in line. He was looking at my girl. He disrespected me. All of that
was sufficient to kill somebody on the spot.
Those were young boys. Well, young men in some instances, late teens,
early twenties. That is where we were as a country. That is where we,
in some ways, remain as a country.
Just before I was elected State's attorney and was sworn into office,
we had a double murder that took place in our community. What was
special about this one was that these were two deputy sheriffs who had
been killed, gunned down. They had been called to a family's house. A
mother and a father were having trouble with their son, and they called
because it was a mental health call.
The two officers, Arnaud and Magruder, came into the house, and they
said: Well, he is down the hallway. So they walked down the hallway
towards the bedroom not knowing that he had hidden the gun in his
bedroom inside the speaker of the stereo system. As they came down the
hall, he grabbed the gun, confronted them and shot both of them to
death. Then he ran out of the house.
I had not even become State's attorney yet. I hadn't been sworn in
yet, but going to that funeral was my first official act as State's
attorney. Sadly, there were hundreds of more murders to come. We still
have them. Crimes are coming down in Prince George's County, and crimes
are coming down in Washington, D.C. Crimes are coming down across the
country, but any murder is too many. As we just heard from our
colleague from Georgia, that mother and that father never stopped
grieving over the loss of that child, and rightly so.
When I got to Congress 3 years ago, one of the things I started
trying to figure out was: What are the things that we can do to try and
address this problem?
I recognize that Democrats and Republicans are in different places.
We had an assault weapons ban in the United States in the nineties. It
expired. Evidence seemed to show that there was some success from that,
but our Republican colleagues then and Republicans across the country
opposed it.
{time} 2020
It has never been re-enacted. Are there common ground approaches to
try and address this problem? Are there ways in which we can find a
common ground approach to deal with some of these issues?
I looked around and thought if we can't do assault weapon bans, what
about ghost guns? Ghost guns came out maybe not even 10 years ago. For
those of you that don't know, ghost guns are guns that do not have
serial numbers on them. They can't be identified. The reason they are
popular, especially among criminals, is because you can use the gun and
drop it. If you don't leave any fingerprint or DNA on it, they sure
can't trace back through the gun to figure out who had it and who
committed the murder.
Guess what happened. The use of ghost guns surged. Between 2017 and
2023, there was a 1,600 percent jump in the use of ghost guns at crime
scenes. It went from 1,629 to 27,490 in a 6-year period.
What can we try and do about that? We can try to do legislation. We
do legislation here in Congress, right? Let's try and do the
legislation piece.
Democrats offered two bills to ban ghost guns and do it in different
ways. Hundreds of Democrats signed on, not one Republican signed on to
either bill, either piece of legislation to ban ghost guns.
That didn't work, but the crime, as you heard, continued to go up.
The use of ghost guns in crimes continued to go up. It skyrocketed,
really. The Biden administration said to the ATF, issue a regulation,
base it on the Gun Control Act, which is the longstanding law that
covers gun usage and the regulation of guns in the United States, and
maybe that will help.
They issued the regulation about 2, 3 years ago at this point. My
Republican
[[Page H4199]]
colleagues--I was on the Judiciary Committee at the time--railed
against it. It is a horrible overreach, they said, by the Biden
administration. It is an infringement on our constitutional rights, our
Second Amendment rights. Of course, there were challenges. It was taken
to court and worked its way up to the Supreme Court. Guess what
happened at the Supreme Court: 7-2 margin in Bondi v. Vanderstok.
The Supreme Court said: We are going to uphold this regulation. We
don't think it violates the Constitution. We are going to let it stand.
That opinion was written by Justice Gorsuch. In fact, all three Trump
Supreme Court appointees joined in the majority of that opinion. I
thought, well, maybe that is a big step in the right direction.
Now I am on the Appropriations Committee, and guess what. Just a few
weeks ago, the Republicans put out a bill and the bill contains
language to undercut the enforcement of that regulation.
Now, why would they do that? We know that only criminals want to use
ghost guns. There is no other purpose. If you are a law-abiding
citizen, it doesn't matter if you have an identification number on it.
It is just like a car. Cars have VIN numbers. Why can't guns have
identification numbers? It is certainly useful for law enforcement. It
can't be on those grounds, and it can't be constitutional grounds
because the Trump Supreme Court by 7-2 vote just told them this does
not violate the Second Amendment. They put out this reg, quietly.
I hope it doesn't pass in the Senate, but that is where it is now.
They are trying to undercut it, even though it is constitutional. It is
not just the ghost guns piece. It is other issues, too. One that I
thought we would be able to find common ground on was suicide.
In 2026, we have 27,600 suicides by gun, 4,600 were veterans. Whether
Democrats or Republicans, we all love veterans, right? Why wouldn't we
want to support efforts to try and bring down suicides among veterans?
As you just heard a few minutes ago, many of the programs that are
aimed at reducing gun violence, including for suicides, have been cut
by the Trump administration. Matter fact, one of the first things the
Trump administration did when they came into office was to eliminate
grants that helped reduce gun violence across the country that had been
proven to work over the past few years. Not only that, the President
issued an executive order that removed the Surgeon General's advisory
report on firearm violence because it used the term ``public health
crisis in America,'' I guess, which could it be any more obvious that
this is a public health crisis. It is the number one cause of death in
young people.
I remember having a debate with my Republican colleagues on the
Judiciary Committee one time about whether it was number one or number
two, and I paused and said: Does it really matter? Is it okay if it is
only the number two cause of death in the United States for our
children? Isn't that sufficient for us to want to try and do something
on this front?
The Trump administration also cut funding to address gun violence
prevention, $66 million for assistance for gun violence victims, $82
million for law enforcement support and training and safety. Why would
we cut those? The training piece, if you didn't know how important it
was, you should really know after watching ICE in action in
Minneapolis. The killings of Good and Pretti, among other acts of
violence that took place at the hands of ICE agents in Minnesota and
across the country, I think clearly demonstrate that those agents were
not prepared for the type of policing that they were put out there to
do, not at all.
They certainly weren't trained in things like the force continuum. In
fact, many of them didn't even have the tools that you would use other
than guns along the force continuum, no tasers and the like.
It is the same thing when they put the National Guard on the street.
President Trump put them out in D.C., and I remember being out at
dinner with my wife one day when they first came out. They were walking
around in groups of four and five with M4s.
We were eating outdoors at a restaurant, so there were crowds of
people all along the walkways. I thought about it and I said: M4s are
so powerful that even if they shot the right guy and hit him, the
bullet would keep going.
Now, when you are in warfare and you guys are facing each other, the
soldiers are facing each other, that is one thing because if it goes
through that guy, it is going to hit another bad guy behind them. But
when you are in a crowded street like I was on the waterfront here in
Washington, D.C., the last thing you want to have to use is an M4
because the collateral damage is not just collateral damage. It is
human beings whose lives could be taken, even though they weren't doing
anything but just walking along the waterfront enjoying the evening.
Let me say this, as well. I think that the goal, at least that I came
here with, was to try and find ways to address gun violence. I thought
ghost gun restrictions would be one way to go. Clearly, that was wrong.
Let me try another angle on this. We put out a bill called Raise the
Age, and the thinking on that was, if we raise the age from 18 to 21
for people purchasing assault weapons, they will be okay with that
because it moved from 18 to 21 when Reagan was President. He supported
it for handguns.
If we are going to have 21 for handguns, shouldn't we also have it
for assault weapons? Why allow them to buy an AR-15, but they can't buy
a 9 millimeter? I got zero cosponsors from the Republican side on that
bill, this Congress and last Congress. I can't get any of them to
support it.
Mr. Speaker, I get it. I know there is a lot of political challenges
here and, frankly, we will keep working at it, but I knew when
Republican colleagues were shot and Democratic colleagues have been
shot, when we have been victimized by gun violence and we still can't
move on legislation to address gun violence, then I don't know that
there is enough to make it happen. When it is people outside of this
Chamber, other than us getting shot, is enough. I just don't know if
that is ever going to be the case.
{time} 2030
I think we have to continue to keep fighting and keep working to
address this problem because the homicides keep happening, the bodies
keep falling, the chalk lines around them keep being drawn, and the
pools of blood oozing out of their bodies until the police get there to
try to fix the problem that, in many instances, these guns are too
powerful to allow them to be fixed.
Let's try to find a way to address this. Let's try to find a way to
work together. Mr. Speaker, I know you are not going to agree to all
the legislation that I would propose. I certainly don't agree with a
lot that has been done by my Republican colleagues--surely, in the cuts
and especially to the ghost gun regulation. I can't figure it out.
I can't figure out why we would want to restrict information from
being gathered so that researchers and scientists can try to figure out
other approaches to reduce gun violence, other than just enforcement.
We have seen intervention and prevention programs work. Why shouldn't
we study them to see if we can expand them to see if we can find ways
to combine enforcement with intervention and prevention efforts and
reverse gun violence even more? Why can't we do that?
We will see how it goes. I can't say I am super-hopeful right now,
but I truly believe that we can find a way to protect people's Second
Amendment rights and also protect second graders. We have to find a way
to make sure that they can be safe in school, on the streets, and in
their homes. We have to find a way to bring down the suicides for
veterans who serve this country and, in many instances, were broken
because of their service to this country, because of what we had them
do. We also have to find ways to protect law enforcement officers, who
put their lives on the line out there on the street and are
particularly at risk from gun violence, as well.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Virginia for putting this
together. I thank my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus. I
hope we can find a way to work together across the aisle, this Chamber
and the other Chamber on the other side of the building, and even with
the Trump administration, to get something done on this front.
[[Page H4200]]
I know the routine mantra that we just have to lock them up. We need
more penalties, more enforcement, no bail, and all of that. The problem
is that all of these first-time shooters, many of them mass shooters,
we didn't have a chance to keep them in jail because they never went.
We didn't have a chance to withhold bail because they didn't have to
pay bail to be out on the street.
Let's not wait. Let's address this problem. Let's work together.
Let's save lives here in the United States.
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri
(Mr. Bell).
Mr. BELL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the St. Louis
region, my constituents, and all the families across the country who
have been impacted by the gun violence epidemic, an epidemic forgotten
by some, intentionally ignored by others, that still ravages my home
and our Nation.
As a former prosecutor, sadly, I have had a firsthand view of what
families go through after losing a loved one to gun violence. I truly
have no words for the heartbreak and devastation I have witnessed these
families shoulder.
What is worse is that this isn't a complex equation. Gun violence is
the leading cause of death of children in America. Despite this, my
colleagues across the aisle have repeatedly failed to act to keep our
children safe.
Mr. Speaker, we must continue championing legislation and programs
that address the root cause of this disease plaguing our country. There
is simply too much at stake.
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned when I started, gun
violence doesn't just impact those who lose their lives and their loved
ones. It impacts entire communities.
Now that gun violence is the number one cause of death of children--
and I think about when I was a child, for some reason, as a member of
Gen X, I was terrified of quicksand. Now, the likelihood of my being
killed by quicksand was pretty low. Yet, everybody that I know who is a
member of Gen X, who was a kid in the eighties, was terrified of
quicksand. Now, my children are terrified of gun violence.
The anxiety they feel--particularly my son when they have an active-
shooter drill, the anxiety they feel when a loud pop occurs in a public
place--my son, who in the middle of his seventh grade year, after the
excitement of standing on this floor as I was sworn in to office, a
week later was mourning the death of his classmate, Marquan Mitchell-
Nash, who was killed when a gun that he and his friends were using as a
prop in a music video fired accidentally and killed him.
His school year ended a day early when Shawn Jackson, moments after
receiving his high school diploma, and his stepfather, Lorenzo Smith,
were killed due to gun violence that started as beef on Instagram.
Something that, in my generation, high school students would have
settled with their fists is now being settled permanently through guns
that can cause massive damage in a small amount of time and that are
all too easy to access because the root causes that lead them to pick
up that gun go unaddressed.
Every time there is a shooting, whether at a grocery store, a house
of worship, a school, a park, someone's home, while driving down the
street, a concert, a nightclub, a movie theater--no place is immune.
Every time there is a shooting, whether it is a mass shooting or the
unreported, often overlooked day-to-day domestic violence or individual
crimes, my son asks me a question: ``Mom, am I next?'' I look him in
the eye and say, ``I am doing everything within my power to ensure that
you are not.''
Mr. Speaker, I can't do it alone. Our communities can't do it alone.
We are about to celebrate 250 years of the remarkable idea that all
people are created equal and endowed by their creator with the
unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The
purpose of government is to help them achieve those ends, or at least
get out of the way.
I came here to help people and solve problems. The number one problem
plaguing our communities right now, and especially our children, is gun
violence. Yet, even when there is bipartisan support, we can't get a
vote on anything that will make a difference.
I am tired of having to see that look of fear on my son's face when
he hears of another shooting and having to hear that question. I am
tired of the pit in my chest when my kids leave the house, and I wonder
if they will come back, not because of anything that they do but
because of the public health crisis of gun violence.
So let's do something about it. At a minimum, let's address the root
causes, but thoughts and prayers aren't enough.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back.
____________________