[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8579-8580]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         SLAUGHTERED INNOCENTS

  (Mr. HIMES asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, sometime today or tomorrow, this House will 
hold a moment of silence for 50 massacred Floridians who had their 
bodies torn apart by a madman with a military-grade weapon.
  Silence--that is how the leadership of the most powerful country in 
the world will respond to this week's massacre of its citizens.
  If this Congress had a single moral fiber, we would force ourselves 
to get to know the slaughtered innocents. We would get to know Cory 
James Connell, 21 years old and a student at Valencia College, a child 
with dreams cut short by a madman with a military rifle and--make no 
mistake--cut short by this Congress' fetish to repeatedly meet bloody 
tragedy with silence.
  Silence--that is what we offer in America that supports many of the 
things we could do to slow the bloodbath.

[[Page 8580]]

  Silence.
  Not me. Not anymore. I will no longer stand here absorbing the faux 
concern, contrived gravity, and tepid smugness of a House complicit in 
the weekly bloodshed.
  Sooner or later, the country will hold us accountable for inaction. 
But as you bow your head and think of what you say to your God, when 
you are asked what you did to slow the slaughter of innocence, there 
will be silence.

                          ____________________