[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Page 3493]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN FROM GUN VIOLENCE

  Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, no family should be forced to endure the 
loss of a child. In his memoir, President Dwight Eisenhower wrote that 
the loss of his 3-year-old son in early 1921 was ``the greatest 
disappointment and disaster in my life, the one that I have never been 
able to forget completely.'' That is why one of the fundamental 
expectations that Americans have of their government is also one of the 
most simple: to protect America's children; to ensure that our 
communities, our streets, and our families are safe.
  But sadly, Congress has done little to combat the gun violence that 
continues to devastate American children and families. Many have 
characterized horrific shootings affecting children in our Nation, such 
as the one which occurred in Newtown, CT, as somehow separate from 
mainstream American society. But recent studies have shown that such 
incidents cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Instead, as a recent Yale 
University study has established, they are part of a wider, disturbing 
trend of gun violence wounding and killing American children. This 
study found that every day in the United States, around 20 children 
sustain firearm injuries serious enough to require hospitalization. In 
6 percent of those cases, the wounds prove to be fatal. Three quarters 
of child hospitalizations examined by the study were the result of 
unintentional or accidental injuries, often cases of children playing 
with an unsecured firearm.
  The study's rigorous clinical framework, combined with the reality 
that it is discussing children, makes for jarring reading. The 
researchers found, for example, that the most common firearm-inflicted 
injuries on children are open wounds, fractures, and internal injuries 
to the thorax, abdomen, or pelvis. Injuries to the nerves or spinal 
cord are also frequent. Traumatic brain injury resulting from gun 
violence is most often found in children younger than 5. These are not 
statistics of soldiers on a battlefield who volunteered to face danger. 
These are innocent children, in our communities, right here at home.
  This cycle of violence touches families around our Nation. Like in 
Detroit, where a recent Detroit News investigation showed that nearly 
500 Detroit children have died in homicides since 2000, mostly as the 
result of gun violence. That investigation cited, as an example, the 
story of 12-year-old Kenis Green Jr. Last August, he was shot and 
killed on his front porch during his uncle's birthday party. In Texas, 
last October a 5-year-old boy shot himself with a .40 caliber pistol 
that his babysitter left unattended when she went to take a nap. In 
South Carolina, last December a 15-year-old boy accidentally shot and 
killed a 12-year-old while loading a magazine into a firearm.
  If almost anything in the world was responsible for sending 20 
American children to the hospital every day, or was frequently involved 
in teenage suicides, or was inflicting traumatic brain injuries on 
toddlers, Congress would spring into action to address what can only be 
described as a public health crisis. We would enact comprehensive 
safety standards to stop the bloodshed. But when firearms are 
responsible for these horrific effects, inexplicably, we do nothing.
  I urge my colleagues to recognize this crisis and to act to protect 
our children from gun violence. I urge my colleagues to take up and 
pass gun safety measures already pending in this Congress to keep 
firearms out of the wrong hands and to make our society safer. We owe 
our children nothing less.

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