[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11464]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



             PUTTING A FACE ON THE VICTIMS OF GUN VIOLENCE

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to have spent my adult life 
in public service, but one element that disappoints me is the failure 
of our society to address the critical problem of reducing gun violence 
in our society.
  Since I started my career, over 1 million Americans have become 
victims to gun violence. This is more than all the Americans who have 
died in all the battles since the Civil War.
  One of the reasons, I think, that we have failed to make progress in 
reducing this epidemic of gun violence is because we have failed to put 
a face on a million victims. One of the things that I would like to do, 
as a small contribution towards the reduction of this gun violence, is 
to help put faces on those victims. We cannot afford for them to be 
anonymous.
  Today I would like to spend a couple of minutes talking about young 
Kevin Imel. He was visiting a school mate during spring vacation. The 
evening before, an 11-year-old friend had been playing with his 
parents' gun. The guns were not safely stored. They did not have 
trigger locks. They had bullets. Kevin was not comfortable and would 
not play with his friend and made it clear to him.
  The next morning as they were watching Saturday cartoons, the friend 
suggested again that they play with this gun. Kevin was evidently 
forceful in indicating that one should not play with guns. It angered 
his 11-year-old classmate, who went to his parents' room while his 
mother was putting on makeup, marched out of the room with a rifle, 
announcing, ``Kevin, you are dead.''
  He fired a bullet that went through Kevin's shoulder. His little 
sister who was there helped carry him to the car, and Kevin bled to 
death on the way to the hospital.
  Kevin Imel's parents are well-known in my community. His mother is 
characterized with courage and warmth, who helps others by deed and 
leads by example in terms of leadership of what people in the disabled 
community can do.
  Lon, the father, was a labor leader. He worked for our former 
colleague, Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, and he too has been active in 
the community. Their service is all the more poignant, I think, because 
their son Kevin today is a series of warm memories and a life 
tragically cut short rather than growing into adulthood and being 
productive and carrying forward himself.
  It is time for America to remember the Kevin Imels of this world, to 
put a face on those million victims. I do think that it is time for our 
friends in the Republican leadership in this Congress to allow us to 
deliberate on items that would reduce gun violence. For almost a year 
now, the conference committee on juvenile crime has not met. The 
provisions that have passed the Senate, three simple common sense 
provisions that would help reduce gun violence, that are supported by 
the overwhelming majority of the Americans and indeed of American gun 
owners, have not been deliberated. It is time for the Republican 
leadership to honor the memory of people like Kevin Imel, allow us to 
deliberate, allow us to put these into action, allow us to help make 
sure that those million people who have died to gun violence have not 
died in vain.

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