[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Page 17144]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      NEWTOWN, CONNECTICUT TRAGEDY

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I wish to start by extending my deepest 
sympathies to the families of the victims of Friday's massacre and to 
the whole community and to thank the first responders and all those who 
are helping in the aftermath of this darkest of tragedies.
  Three days after the horrors of Newtown, we are all still reeling 
from what happened. Anytime there is a shooting such as this, we are 
crushed with sorrow. But there is no escaping the fact that the 
massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary stands out for its awfulness. The 
murder of so many little children and the adults who tried to save them 
doesn't just break our hearts, it shatters them.
  The last few days have been searing for all of us, and the days ahead 
will be too. Over the weekend, we began to see the faces of the 
children and to hear their stories.
  One parent, Robbie Parker, stood in front of the cameras on Saturday 
and shared with the Nation an impromptu eulogy of his 6-year-old 
daughter Emilie. It was a remarkable moment. Emilie was bright and 
creative and very loving, he said, and we marveled at his courage. Now 
the funerals--10 of them this week in 1 church alone.
  It has been said many times that no words are adequate to lift the 
agony of a parent such as Robbie Parker. What happened in Newtown on 
Friday is something for which no parent of a young child could ever 
prepare. But I think President Obama spoke for all of us in the very 
moving meditation he offered last night on the singularity of parental 
love.
  There is literally nothing we wouldn't do for our kids and that is 
one of the things that makes this massacre so terrible and which makes 
the stories of courage we have heard so inspiring; the young teacher 
who stood between the gunman and her students and lost her life in the 
process; the principal and the school psychologist who sprang into 
action and gave their lives too. As the President said, these luminous 
acts of self-sacrificing love are the moments that will define this 
tragedy in the years ahead because the heroism and the courage we never 
fail to see in the midst of tragedies such as this become the starting 
points of something better and more lasting than the vagaries of this 
life. They give us the hope we need in the face of so much evil and 
sorrow.
  We stand with the people of Newtown today and in the days ahead. We 
can do nothing to lessen their anguish, but we can let them know we 
mourn with them, that we share a tiny part of the burden in our own 
hearts, and that we will lift the victims and their families and the 
entire community in prayer.
  The Scripture says that while ``now we only know in part, in the life 
to come we shall know, even as we are known.''
  Scripture also says that in that day 
``. . . every tear will be wiped away, because there will be no more 
death, or sorrow, or crying, or pain, for the former things will have 
passed away.''
  May the people of Newtown and all Americans be consoled by this 
certain hope. May their burdens be lightened by the loving care of 
their neighbors and friends and even strangers in the days and weeks 
ahead. May this terrible tragedy prompt all of us to cherish the lives 
we have been given, our family members and friends and all who surround 
us in our daily tasks.
  This is no lasting city, we know. May we pass through it with a 
little more gratitude and with a firmer determination to live the kind 
of lives we have been called to live.
  I yield the floor.

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