[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15400]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       MASS SHOOTINGS IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Speier) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Speaker, I know you have heard the story. Sunday, in 
Las Vegas, 59 people at a concert were mowed down and more than 500 
were wounded.
  I know you have heard this story, too: last June, 49 cellphones on 
the floor of the Pulse Nightclub were ringing and ringing and ringing 
and were never answered.
  What about this story: two years ago, eight students who just wanted 
to learn and their professor who was there to teach them were mowed 
down in their classrooms at Umpqua Community College.
  And everyone knows that, nearly 5 years ago, the bodies of 20 
elementary school children and 6 teachers lay in Sandy Hook Elementary 
School in what was then the unthinkable act of horror.
  So here we are again with what was once unthinkable becoming mundane.
  Mr. Speaker, how have we as a society become so debased, how have we 
strayed so far from what is right and what is just so that we hardly 
blink at the massacre of innocents in schools and movie theaters and 
classrooms and concerts and nightclubs? And it goes on and on and on.
  So I ask you today, how many lives must be destroyed before Congress 
acts? Nine lives in Charleston showed us nine was not enough. Thirteen 
lives at Columbine showed us that 13 was not enough. Certainly 20 small 
children killed in their classrooms at Newtown? No. The 32 lives lost 
at Virginia Tech? Again, not enough. Forty-nine lives in Orlando? No. 
The more than 33,000 Americans killed each year by guns? No, that is 
not enough.
  The fact that more Americans have died from guns in the United States 
since 1968 than on battlefields in all our wars since the American 
Revolution, is that not enough?
  Now 59 people have been murdered in Las Vegas and hundreds more are 
left struggling with injuries, both physical and mental, but the worst 
part--and believe me, I have trouble picking out the worst part--daily 
mass shootings have somehow become just ordinary.
  The massacre in Las Vegas was the 273rd mass shooting in the United 
States this year.
  Last year, I posted the name and photo of every single victim killed 
in mass shootings on the walls outside my office. There were 476 
shootings, with 597 people killed and 1,734 wounded. Not enough. It is 
never enough.
  That is how I learned about Tamia Sanders, who was 14 years old when 
she was killed while sitting on her porch next to her mother; about 
Antonio Hinkle, who was 32 when he was gunned down and killed at a 
cookout pushing children out of the way of gunfire; and about Willow 
Short, age two, who survived a heart transplant only to be slaughtered 
outside and alongside the rest of her family by her own father.
  I stand before you filled with rage and sadness to say this has to 
stop. Moments of silence provide little comfort--frankly, no comfort. 
It is a show here to somehow suggest that if you make the headlines, we 
will give you a moment of silence, but for the 476 other mass shootings 
each year, we are not going to give you a moment of silence.
  Do we really lack the courage of conviction? No. Other industrialized 
countries have seen no such blood-soaked streets.
  By remaining silent, we are not just being cowardly, we are being 
complicit in these crimes.
  Mr. Speaker, we must honor the dead by taking action. Now is the time 
for a vote, and we know what the vote is on.
  Our human instinct is to try to find patterns and make sense out of 
the most horrific and senseless acts. Whether the shooters are 
terrorists or domestic abusers or the mentally ill, one pattern is the 
same: access to deadly weapons that can allow a lone gunman to lay 
waste to human life on a massive scale must stop.
  This is why we must ban assault weapons that have, time and time 
again, caused mass bloodshed and the attachments that make them into 
automatic weapons that you can purchase for a mere $50.
  Automatic weapons are banned in the United States, machine guns are 
banned in the United States, but if you can buy a $50 attachment and 
make it into a machine gun, how have we banned anything?
  Let's make sure every gun purchase requires background checks rather 
than just 60 percent of gun purchases.
  Mr. Speaker, it is time to do more than be silent.

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