[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13938]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              GUN VIOLENCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Illinois (Ms. Kelly) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KELLY of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, time and time again, I have come 
to this floor to urge my colleagues to stand with me against the 
rampant plague of gun violence spreading across our Nation, and I stand 
here again heartbroken.
  I recently had the difficult and tragic duty of speaking at Tamara 
Sword's funeral. Tamara was the mother of five and the daughter of 
Chicago gun violence prevention advocate Andrew Holmes, a personal hero 
of mine.
  Andrew is a man who has dedicated his life to preventing gun violence 
and supporting families of gun violence victims. For decades, he has 
traveled to hundreds of crime scenes to console those who lost friends 
and family members. In a cruel twist of fate, he was the one who needed 
consoling when Tamara was caught in the crossfire while at a gas 
station.
  I wish Tamara's story was an exception, but we know it is not. It is 
a tragic reminder that only in America does an everyday trip to the gas 
station, the movie theater, or church end in gun violence or maybe you 
are a reporter and a photographer just doing your job or a sheriff 
filling your car with gas.
  All across America, gun violence is surging. More than 30 cities are 
reeling from a summer of senseless shootings, with death tolls reaching 
historic levels. In Chicago last week, we marked the highest number of 
gun homicides in a single day in more than a decade.
  After each mass shooting, Congress launches into its ritual that is 
used as an end run around real reform. We give our speeches; we hold 
our moments of silence, and then we wait for the national buzz to fade.
  My colleagues seem to forget that our actions may fade, but the 
violence remains. Violence--gun violence--is a major public health 
problem in the United States. Every moment that we don't act, we risk 
losing even more lives to senseless gun violence, which might be 
homicides, suicides, or accidents.
  Last week, I hosted a dinner for a group of parents who lost their 
children to senseless gun violence. They think we simply do not care. 
They wonder. There has been Newtown; there is Hadiya Pendleton; there 
is the church shooting, movie theaters, the mall, but still, we do 
nothing.
  Today, I rise again on behalf of victims of gun violence. I rise to 
say that we can no longer dismiss the mass shootings as isolated 
incidents and ignore everyday shootings altogether because the fact is, 
when our Nation is averaging one mass shooting a day, they aren't so 
isolated. When shootings are so commonplace that they are called 
everyday shootings, they cannot be ignored.

                              {time}  1030

  Over the Labor Day weekend, 9 people were killed and 34 were wounded 
by gun violence in Chicago. It is time that we own up to the gun 
violence problem that is gripping our Nation and robbing us of a 
generation of young people one shooting at a time.
  This year, for the first time in history, gun deaths are on pace to 
be the leading cause of death of Americans aged 15 through 24, and the 
suicide rate is climbing, also. The future of our Nation is hanging in 
the balance here.
  It is time for Congress to act. There are a number of gun violence 
reform bills that truly make sense and that are truly bipartisan.
  I urge my colleagues to stand with the American people and to take 
action, because the American people are on the side of gun violence 
reform that makes sense.
  The other thing you can do is to try attending a funeral of an 
innocent person--of a mom of five kids, who cling onto her coffin, or 
of a young teen who lost his life to senseless gun violence. I wonder 
how you would feel then.

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