National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 - Conference Report

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, what we saw in Roseburg last week was a repeat of the evil we have seen in countless places across the country, causing tens of thousands of deaths in towns and cities and suburbs and rural areas across this country.

Evil visited Roseburg. We saw the worst of human character in those moments of mass killing. We saw also the best in human character in the response from the firemen, police, and emergency responders who risked their lives and saved lives.

When the sound of gunshots rang out that morning, my own recollection was triggered of a morning just a few years earlier when I stood with the parents and loved ones on that day of the mass slaughter in Sandy Hook in Newtown.

My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Roseburg, with the victims and their loved ones. I know that nothing said here--certainly nothing I can say--will help mend those wounds and ease the grief and pain of those loved ones for the great lives lost and the many left behind.

I am frustrated and angry coming here today because the places of those mass killings have become shorthand for a deep disease, an epidemic of violence in America today--Virginia Tech, Columbine, Charleston, Sandy Hook, Newtown, and now Roseburg. They are shorthand for mass slaughters which have occurred at the rate of about one a week while President Obama has been in office. There have been 142 school shootings since Newtown alone. There are 30,000 deaths per year in America, the greatest, strongest country in the history of the world.

The mass killings are not even the source of the largest numbers. They are individual deaths, such as that of Javier Martinez, a young man from New Haven with an enormously bright and promising future. When I visited his school after he was killed by a gun because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, his classmates asked me to talk about gun violence--not as an abstract notion but as a real threat to them and their community.

It is a phenomenon that faces every community every day, everywhere, and everyone. All of us are touched by it if we think about it, if we put aside the denial that all too often affects us, a denial that causes people to minimize the threat. We all are victims or we know victims or we know of the tragic consequences of real stories in our community as a result of gun violence.

The deaths in Roseburg are tragic, but no less tragic was Javier Martinez' death, nor are the gun deaths that occur in situations that involve domestic violence, gangs, fights between individuals, accidents, and suicides--a major source of death by gun violence--and countless other circumstances where people who are dangerous or who lack the mental health or the maturity to responsibly use guns nonetheless have access to them and use them for deadly purposes.

Let's be very clear. The Second Amendment is a guarantee under our Constitution to law-abiding citizens that they can use guns for lawful purposes, whether recreational or hunting, that they can possess as many as they please, and the vast majority of them support measures that will keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

Keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people is the reason we have advanced commonsense, sensible measures to stop gun violence, and the failure to adopt them has made Congress complicit--in effect an aider and abettor to those deaths--because Congress has enabled the continuation of death and destruction that has become a fact of life in America, a disgraceful and shameful emblem of Congress's failure to act. There is a point when inaction causes culpability, when it becomes, in effect, aiding and abetting and complicity. Congress in some ways might just as well be standing at the elbows of those shooters, whether in Charleston or Roseburg or Sandy Hook or elsewhere.

Regret and grief are appropriate, but they are no solution. They are no excuse for inaction. Inaction is reprehensible when it comes to gun violence--an epidemic and disease spreading in this country just as surely as a contagion or infection. The inaction of this body speaks louder than words.

My simple reaction is, enough--enough of inaction. The time for action is now on universal background checks, a ban on illegal trafficking and straw purchases, a prohibition on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well as mental health initiatives and school safety measures. This kind of comprehensive package of reforms has been proposed. This body failed to adopt it, but that is no excuse for inaction now.

There is no one measure, no single solution, no panacea, no simple fix to this problem, but we must begin because laws have consequences. I refuse to adopt the defeatist or denial approach of many of our colleagues who say the laws simply will not work, cannot do anything, will not solve the problem.

We are here because we believe laws can improve the lives of ordinary Americans, no less so when it comes to gun violence or any other problem we face. In fact, we ought to approach this issue of gun violence with the same urgency and immediacy that America would in attempting to solve any public health crisis because surely we face a public health crisis and emergency in gun violence.

When there is a spread of a contagious disease, whether it is flu, tuberculosis, or Ebola, we track the source, hospitalize the victims, take remedial action, admit them to treatment, and take preventive measures to prevent that kind of disease from recurring. When there is a spread of food poisoning, we don't throw up our arms and say there is nothing laws can do. In fact, law enforcement and health authorities track down the packages that are contaminated and provide relief for the people who suffer from that kind of occurrence and take preventive measures to stop it from recurring by imposing sanitary conditions and rules and regulations on the food producer.

Infections, contagion, and spread of disease can be deadly and crippling; they can threaten fear and harm and cause panic. Gun violence is exactly the same. It is equally insidious and pernicious, and its impact is greater than any of those single epidemics. The spread of stolen guns--guns that are stolen or illegally purchased--is much like a disease in America today, and the ones who will testify to that fact are our law enforcement authorities who see it firsthand and are on our side in urging responsible, commonsense measures and reform.

When this Nation faced, in effect, an epidemic of car deaths and injuries, we didn't stop everyone from driving, but we did put in place reasonable safeguards--seatbelt laws, drunk driving measures, and speed limits--and we enforced them.

They were resisted at the time. Drunk driving measures caused outrage among some civil libertarians, but now they are part of our everyday expectations about how life will work in America, and they have drastically reduced auto fatalities and injuries. The recognition of the damage and destruction that has been caused by automobiles means that we educate and we take commonsense, responsible measures.

Much of the knowledge that led to those commonsense, sensible measures came from research--yes, knowledge. It was fact-based, evidence-driven research done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Like many of my colleagues, I am dismayed by the fact that similar, incredibly valuable public health data about gun control from this world-class institution is unavailable to us because of the restrictive, politically motivated budget riders forbidding it. It is unconscionable that Congress's response to this problem is denial, shutting out research and responsible, fact-based evidence involving the provision of information.

This country knows how to respond to a public health crisis. We are America. We face the challenges; we don't deny or disparage the truth tellers.

After the Stockton schoolyard shooting in California where 34 children were shot and 5 killed, President George H.W. Bush issued an Executive order in 1989 banning the import of semiautomatic assault rifles. There were repeated circumventions of that order. Part of the response was, in 1994, a measure authored by Senator Feinstein--our great colleague--banning the manufacture and transfer of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. That measure expired, but it shows how we can act and how we can face challenges.

Ronald Reagan was almost killed by an assassin's bullet--a would-be assassin's bullet--in 1981. Ten years after the event, he wrote in the New York Times that if the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act reduced gun deaths by as little as 10 percent, it would be ``well worth making it the law of the land because there would be a lot fewer families facing anniversaries such as the Bradys and the Reagan's faced every March 30th.'' That bill, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, became law in 1993 with his support 12 years after that near assassination.

Both Stockton and the Reagan near assassination show that these measures are possible. It may look like a marathon. It is never a sprint. It is not only possible, it is obligatory.

I look forward to a number of my colleagues and myself--and I note that a partner in this effort has been my colleague Senator Murphy, who will follow me shortly--I look forward to all of us coming together and spearheading and championing again a set of reforms that will help make America safer and better. The time for action is truly now. This public health emergency cannot go unaddressed. The gap in our current laws can be remedied.

I have already offered the Lori Jackson Violence Survivor Protection Act, a bill named for a brave Connecticut mother of two children who was estranged from her husband, fled her home for her life, obtained a temporary restraining order for her and her children's protection, and then was gunned down by her estranged husband because the temporary protective order did not require him to surrender his weapon--a gap in the law that must be remedied. That bill would do so.

This bill is modest. My bill would close this loophole requiring protective orders, whether temporary or permanent, to require the surrendering of weapons. Women who are victims of domestic violence are at the greatest risk. Women who are victims of this insidious peril are most in danger when they first leave or try to leave. That is when the temporary order is, in effect, most necessary, the danger at its greatest but the law at its weakest in stopping gun violence.

We are on the right side of history. We are on the right side of law enforcement. We are on the right side of public opinion. The overwhelming majority of Americans clearly favor these kinds of measures and the overwhelming majority of gun owners too. If history is on our side, we must be on the right side of this issue.

I urge my colleagues to join me in this effort to keep faith with the victims of Newtown and Sandy Hook, to demonstrate that our grief and regret is more than just words, that it will lead to action. The time for action is now.

I yield the floor.

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