[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Page 19861]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                 CONGRESS MISSES THE BUS ON GUN CONTROL

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, in less than two weeks, the students of 
Columbine High School will resume classes and begin their 1999-2000 
school year. Since the now infamous Columbine massacre on April 20th, 
the school has gone through a complete transformation. Sixteen high-
definition security cameras have been installed in the school; bullet 
holes have been patched or covered; the alarm system, which rang for 
hours during the reign of terror, has been replaced; and new glass 
windows have been installed to replace broken ones shattered by bullets 
and home-made bombs. In addition, keyed entry doors have been replaced 
by high-security electronic doors, a makeshift library has been created 
out of classrooms, and the school district has hired two additional 
security guards for protection.
  School officials will be making additional changes up until the very 
day students come back on August 16th, all in an effort to make the 
Columbine students feel safer when they return to school. Yet, 
Columbine students were not the only ones affected by last April's 
shooting. Students and teachers around the nation have lost the sense 
of safety they deserve to have at school. These students will hardly 
regain that safety by new landscaping or replaced alarm systems. These 
students and their families will continue to live in fear until the 
real issue at hand is addressed: the easy accessibility that young 
people have to guns.
  When school resumes on August 16th at Columbine and around the 
nation, Congress will have done nothing to prevent young people from 
purchasing dangerous weapons. Students across the nation will walk into 
school to begin a new year, while Congress is in a month-long recess, 
having done nothing to change the same loopholes in the same Federal 
firearms laws that put the weapons in the hands of minors.
  Congress's failure to act is inexcusable. Moderate reforms designed 
to limit juvenile access to firearms are long overdue. Yet, proponents 
of even the most modest gun safety legislation have come up against 
nothing but stonewalling and procedural delays. Sadly, it seems as if 
action on the juvenile justice bill is only propelled forward by 
additional tragedies; the Senate bill, having been passed on the day of 
another school shooting at Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia, 
and the final motion to appoint conferees occurring just one day after 
a mass shooting in Atlanta. I pray that it does not take yet another 
mass shooting to move this legislation out of Conference Committee and 
onto the President's desk.

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