National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 - Conference Report

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, let me thank Senator Blumenthal for being such a great partner. He and I have traveled a very long journey together since September of 2012 when we both stood together at the firehouse in Sandy Hook, CT. We have become evangelical in our belief that this mass slaughter has to stop. On Friday we all stopped for a moment and we sent our sympathies to those who were killed in Portland: Lucero Alcaraz, Treven Taylor Anspach, Rebecka Ann Carnes, Quinn Glen Cooper, Kim Dietz, Lucas Eibel, Jason Dale Johnson, Lawrence Levine--he was the assistant professor there--and Sarena Dawn Moore.

Mr. President, 274 days this year and 294 mass shootings. We are averaging one mass shooting--multiple people being shot at one particular moment--more mass shootings than we have days in the year.

Of course, for us, this shooting and the information that came out in the aftermath of it was particularly chilling because we have seen this young man before. The young man, Christopher Harper-Mercer, was isolated, withdrawn, and obsessed with guns. His family had many of them. He had rebuffed attempts at socialization by his family. He had grievances that he mainly shared with himself. He eventually turned those grievances on nine people who died and about an equal number who were injured.

We know that story because we saw it play out in Connecticut as well--a mentally ill individual, a young man who became isolated from his friends, his community, and his family, who had a rather large store of weapons, and who then took out his frustration and his outrage on 20 little kids at Sandy Hook Elementary.

But I guess to me what is definitional about this scourge of mass violence is not necessarily what happened on Friday but what happened the day after, on Saturday. On Saturday there were likely another 80 people killed by guns all across the country. That is about the number we run every single day. Every day there are a handful of exceptional stories, stories that make your heart turn, that make your gut cringe.

On Saturday there was an 11-year-old boy who confronted his 8-year-old neighbor in Tennessee over the fact that she would not let him play with her pet bunny. When she protested and said she did not want him to play with it, he marched back into his house, got a shotgun, walked back over to her, and shot her with a shotgun. How on Earth did an 11-year-old boy get that quick access to a shotgun? How on Earth have we gotten into a moment in which a dispute over whether you can hold a little pet bunny turns into a murder?

What I can tell you is that I guarantee that scene does not play out in other countries in this world, that 11-year-old boys don't shoot 8-year-old girls with shotguns in Sweden or Japan or in Great Britain. We know that because what is happening here in the United States is exceptional. This rate of 80 people being lost to guns every day, this normalization of mass shootings, is exclusive to the United States. We have a gun homicide rate in the United States that is not twice the average of other OEDC countries, it is not 5 times, it is not 10 times, it is 20 times the average of our first-world competitor nations. We have to ask ourselves, what is different about the United States? What is different about life here, the way in which we resolve disputes, from all of these other nations that have gun violence, gun death rates that are 20 times lower than the United States?

Let's be honest about one thing. It is not that the United States has higher rates of mental illness than other countries. It is not that our mental health delivery system spends less than other countries. There is no more mental illness in the United States than there is in any other industrialized country. Some studies will tell you that we spend more on mental illness treatment and behavioral health treatment than any other country. Yet gun deaths are 20 times what they are in other countries. It is not because we lack for protection. Our malls and our churches and our movie theatres are not any less protected or less secure than those in other countries. We invest in law enforcement at a same or greater rate than all of these other nations. What is different? What is different here in this country? What is different is that we are awash in guns. We are awash in illegal guns. We celebrate weapons that are designed exclusively to kill other people, and we collect them and show them off for sport, military-style assault weapons, cartridges, drums of ammunition that hold 100 rounds, whose utility is only associated with ending life. That is what is different. That is what is different about the United States.

I will admit that the solution is comprehensive because I will be the last person to tell you that fixing our mental health system will not have a beneficial effect on the rates of gun violence. Adam Lanza and Christopher Harper-Mercer were deeply troubled individuals who were ill-served by a behavioral health system that was far too opaque and complex for them. Law enforcement needs more help on the streets of New Haven and New York and Chicago and Los Angeles. All those things will help. But what distinguishes America from the other parts of the world that have much lower rates on gun violence is not investment in law enforcement and is not our rate of mental illness. So we have to have this conversation about our laws that allow for this flow of high-powered guns and illegal guns onto the street.

Senator Blumenthal and I are going to join together tomorrow to introduce what we think is a modest measure to ensure that no guns get sold to people who cannot pass a background check. Walmart does it today. They say: We won't sell you a gun unless you can pass a background check. But unfortunately many other retailers take advantage of a loophole that allows for 72 hours to pass without a background check, which then allows them to sell a gun.

We just think there should be a simple premise. If you can't pass a background check, you shouldn't be able to get a gun--getting a green light to walk out of a store with a weapon that can kill people.

But that is just one brick in the wall. There are a series of other measures that enjoy 90 percent support in this country, whether it be making sure people who are subject to spousal restraining orders cannot buy a gun during the period of time in which they are under a restraining order or just expanding background checks to gun shows and Internet sales or just giving more resources to the background check system so they can make sure they upload the proper records. Mental health is part of the solution. It is not a substitute for the reform of our gun laws, but it is part of a solution as well.

I am proud to join with Senator Cassidy to introduce the primary comprehensive mental health reform legislation on the floor of the Senate. It has 10 cosponsors at this moment: five Republicans and five Democrats. We think you should fix the mental health system because it is broken, full stop, but we also understand it will have a downward effect on gun violence.

I wish to close by echoing the sentiments of Senator Blumenthal. We are going to introduce our legislation tomorrow, and we are hopeful it will be taken up by this body.

What we really worry about is that this silence from Congress has become complicit. I know that sounds like a very hard thing to say--that sounds very hyperbolic--but let me walk you through why I have come to believe that the failure to act in the wake of these mass shootings has made us complicit in them. I think these young men--and it is not all young men, but it is mostly young men--these young men whose minds are becoming unhinged and are contemplating mass violence, they take cues from the total, complete, absolute silence from Congress in the face of mass shooting, after a mass shooting. If the Nation's top elected leaders, the people charged with deciding what matters in this Nation, don't even try to stop the mass carnage, then these would-be shooters reasonably conclude that we must be OK with it because if a society doesn't condone settling a grievance with a gun, wouldn't the people in charge of it at least try to stop it.

But we don't try--and that is what is most offensive. That is what truly turns my stomach. We just lived through a summer in which 4,000 people died on the streets of this Nation, and this body is sending a loud, clear signal that we don't care--we don't care. Nine more people died on Friday--another mass slaughter--and we are back to normal this week.

We are going to debate the Toxic Substances Control Act this week. I don't deny that is probably a very important piece of legislation, but we are acting as if there isn't an epidemic of preventable murder happening in this Nation and that it is getting worse.

Somebody wrote last week that the gun control debate ended the day after Sandy Hook because that was the day America decided it was OK to murder 20 first graders. I know that is not the message my colleagues are intending to send, and we appreciate all of the sincere notes of sympathy that have been sent over the course of the last 2 years, 3 years, to Newtown and those that went out on Friday to Oregon, but words are beginning to become meaningless. The tweets aren't helping. I would argue they are becoming a cover for cowardice.

It is not a coincidence that America has a gun violence rate that is 20 times that of any other competitor nation. We are doing something wrong here and the whole reason we draw our paychecks is to make wrong things right. If we cannot do something--a background check law, a mental health bill, more resources for law enforcement--if we cannot do anything to try to stop this soul-crushing, life-extinguishing violence, then we might as well go home.

I yield the floor.

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