[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 7026-7027]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       OFFERING PRAYERS TO THE GRIEVING AFTER A SENSELESS TRAGEDY

  (Mr. COOKSEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. COOKSEY. Mr. Speaker, there is little that can be said during 
such moments of tragedy such as what the Nation witnessed yesterday in 
Colorado. There are thousands of disaffected, terribly disturbed 
teenagers across the country, but few will resort to violence. In this 
case, two of them did. Their violence was of a self-destructive sort 
resulting in their own self-inflicted deaths after they took the lives 
of innocent children.
  It is all too easy for armchair psychologists to draw hasty 
conclusions about what explains this tragedy and

[[Page 7027]]

the five other school shootings our Nation has witnessed over the past 
2 years: guns, the culture, violence on television, nihilistic music 
and video games, frightening Internet sites. It is simply not possible 
to explain the cause.
  Who could explain why millions and millions of other teenagers, 
nearly all exposed to the same influences, do not choose to embark on 
such a senseless path? It is a senseless tragedy, nothing more. We can 
only offer our prayers to the grieving.

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