[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 7025]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          TRAGEDY IN COLORADO

  (Mr. ROEMER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Committee on Education 
and the Workforce and a father of three children, I rise to ask for the 
prayers and join in the grieving for the families that lost children in 
Littleton, Colorado. We lost, reports indicate, maybe 16 of our 
children. We have lost more children in one day than we have lost in 
four weeks of bombing in Kosovo. We have lost children in Pearl, 
Mississippi and Paducah, Kentucky. We have lost children in Jonesboro, 
Arkansas and Springfield, Oregon. We have lost children to violence 
throughout the last several years.
  While our children are entitled to a very good education and safe 
schools, we also need to enforce discipline in our schools, to target 
these children that are coming to school with problems in an early 
fashion, and we need to enforce the values in American society.
  When we have guns in society, we are going to have guns in our 
schools. When we have violence in society, we are going to have 
violence in our schools. And when we have hatred in society, that 
hatred is going to permeate into our schools.
  Let us, as Madison said, have a larger vision of America. Let us have 
and engage in a national dialogue to stop this hatred and violence in 
our schools.

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