Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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REMEMBERING ALISON PARKER AND ADAM WARD

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise today for a sad occasion, and that is to remember the lives of two Virginians, Alison Parker and Adam Ward, the journalists who were gunned down on live TV in Roanoke, VA, just a couple of weeks ago, as they covered a local news story.

There was a third victim in that shooting, Vicki Gardner, the president of the local chamber of commerce at Smith Mountain Lake, who is recovering. She was released from the hospital today, but she still has a long recovery ahead of her.

We saw during the summer a set of these tragedies in Roanoke, VA, my wife's hometown, in Charleston, SC, in Lafayette, LA, and in Chattanooga, TN. My friend, the Senator from Tennessee, is on the floor.

In Virginia, the shooting in Roanoke, which was carried out on live television, was horrific in itself, but it also was horrific because it brought up a lot of bad memories. The Roanoke community is within about 25 miles from Virginia Tech, where the horrible shooting happened in 2007 that killed 32 people and wounded dozens of others.

I spoke on the Senate floor in April on the eighth anniversary of that shooting. I talked, as is my habit to do in April, about the lives of those who lost their lives but also about some who survived and what they are doing today. I am saddened to be here because it is just another example of a horrible shooting in my Commonwealth. It is also sad because we really haven't made any progress in this body since I came to it in terms of trying to address this issue.

There is a lot of work to be done--legislative and otherwise--to try to address the growing litany of these horrific crimes, which deeply scar our own psyche and, frankly, I think, portray a picture of who we are as a nation to the rest of the world that is not accurate about who we are. I am going to introduce a bill that I think can help us address it. It is not the end-all solution because there isn't a single solution. But I am going to talk a little bit about Alison and Adam, and then I wish to talk about the bill.

Alison and Adam worked on a show on WDBJ, the ``Mornin'' program. They were sort of hometown heroes. Not only were they popular because they worked for the station, they were both from the hometown. Roanoke is where my wife grew up. I am very, very familiar with the wonderful Roanoke community. They both interned at WDBJ when they were in college. They were passionate members of this journalistic profession, and they were just starting on these great careers.

Alison Parker grew up in Martinsville, which is just up the road from Roanoke, about a 45-minute drive. She played the trumpet and French horn in high school. She graduated from James Madison University. When she was at James Madison, she interned at WDBJ. They loved her work, and they gave her a recommendation.

Her first job was not there at WDBJ, but it was in North Carolina. But as soon as she could move from North Carolina back to Virginia, that is what she did. She came back to her hometown station. She covered all kinds of news and human interest stories, including a recent piece on child abuse that was a very powerful one. Her colleagues describe her as ``proactive'' and ``wise beyond her years.'' She met her boyfriend, whom she was planning to marry, while working at WDBJ.

Adam Ward went to Salem High School. Salem is the city that adjoins Roanoke. He graduated in 2007 and played football on two State championship football teams. Teachers there describe him as ``vivacious,'' ``kind,'' ``giving,'' ``respectful,'' and ``genuine.'' He had passion for Virginia Tech, the local college. He started to go to Tech football games with his dad when he was 3 years old. He interned also at WDBJ when he was a communications student at Tech.

His colleagues remembered him as somebody willing to get the image that reporters need. We all know in this line of work the guys behind the camera are so important to it. They make the on-camera talent shine, and that was the way Adam was. He loved to play tricks on the on-camera talent, kind of tweak them and make them not get above their station in life, but he was a wonderful guy.

He found love at the station too. He had become engaged to a producer at the station who sadly was watching in the station the day that the footage of him being killed was shown, which shocked the world.

I really feel for these families. I know we all do. You couldn't have watched that without having a feeling, even if you were a thousand miles away from the Ward and Parker families.

I remember having said to the Virginia Tech families this: It would be presumptuous of me, and so I am not going to say I know what you have lost, because I don't know what you have lost. But when you hear about these people, I do feel like I have a sense of what the world lost, I have a sense of what the community lost. I don't know what the parents and the siblings lost, but you kind of have a sense when you hear about these people from those at WDBJ, the Roanoke community, the community of journalists. You kind of have a sense of what we lost as a society when they were killed.

I should just say a word. Since 2002, Vicki Gardner has worked at the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce. It is a major tourism area in Virginia, a State park. It is a feature that was created by a hydroelectric dam, and they were celebrating its 35th anniversary. She was deeply involved in the planning.

Again, she was badly wounded. She has described maneuvering around to try to duck bullets as she was shot in her back. She has had a couple of operations, but, thank God, she has been released to go home today, and we are thinking about her too.

I said the shooting opened a lot of old wounds in Virginia, and especially in this community, sadly, because Virginia Tech is so close. When I spoke on the floor in April, I talked about two of these young people, Colin Goddard and Lily Habtu, who survived that shooting. Just think of the effect upon their lives 8 years later, as they deal with injuries that continue to be a challenge, and they deal with the horrible memories of that day. That was probably one of the most scarring events in modern history in Virginia. Everybody knows where they were, and everybody knew somebody connected to it.

We have revisited the cycle of shock, then anger, then calls for change, then wondering what the right changes were, and sympathy for the families. But we haven't really changed, and I would just humbly submit that I think there are things that we can do--reasonable things we can do that will bring some accountability.

It will not eliminate these instances. It is beyond our power to eliminate evil. We cannot do that. We have to be humble about it. But in every area we work on, we can work in this body with the thought that we can do things that will make situations better and that will promote incremental improvements.

RESPONSIBLE TRANSFER OF FIREARMS ACT

Mr. President, I wish to speak about a bill that I am going to introduce called the Responsible Transfer of Firearms Act. As we all know, current Federal law prohibits nine categories of people from getting weapons. Probably the most known are convicted felons, people who have been adjudicated mentally ill and dangerous, and people who are under domestic violence prevention orders.

This is a bipartisan Federal law. Categories have been added over time in a bipartisan way by the House and the Senate. As far as I know, there is bipartisan support for this provision because you never see bills introduced to eliminate these categories of what I will call prohibited persons. These are people whom many in Congress--bicamerally and bipartisanly--have determined should not possess weapons.

Now, the problem is a whole lot of those people do get weapons because folks either give or sell them to them.

What is the current law with respect to giving or selling a weapon to somebody who is prohibited?

The current law basically is kind of a no-responsibility law. You are criminally liable if you give or sell a weapon to somebody who is in those nine prohibited categories, but you are only criminally liable if you knew or should have known that they were prohibited. I practiced law for a while. That makes prosecution virtually impossible, because somebody will give somebody a weapon or sell it to them and then they will say: Well, I didn't know he was a felon. I didn't know he had been adjudicated mentally ill or dangerous.

There is no obligation on behalf of the seller. Now, we have put obligations on sellers all the time--affirmative duties and obligations--but in this area, we don't put an obligation on the part of a seller other than a registered and licensed gun dealer, who must go through a background check. We don't put any kind of obligation on anybody to do even minimal, reasonable steps to make sure that somebody is lawfully able to possess a weapon.

So what the Responsible Transfer of Firearms Act would do is it would revise the current formula. The current formula does have a liability for sellers but only under an elevated standard that really is almost impossible to meet. We would amend the Federal code, not to change the nine categories--those are the same--not to change the punishments for selling or transferring to them--that would stay the same--but we adjust the responsibility. It is a responsibility and accountability act.

So if you are putting a weapon in somebody's hands, either selling it or transferring it, you have to take ``reasonable steps'' to determine that the recipient is not prohibited from having that weapon. ``Reasonable steps'' is included in the statute--just those words. We don't say: You can only do that by showing one of the following five things. You can take any reasonable steps you think are necessary, but you have to take reasonable steps.

That is what this change in law would do. If you cannot show satisfaction to a court that you have taken reasonable steps, then you will be liable for putting the weapon into somebody's hands whom the Federal Government has said is not able to possess such a weapon.

This shift from the current framework would promote accountability and responsibility. Why should we let a seller just casually put a firearm into the hands of somebody who is prohibited by law from having it? Why should we do that? Why shouldn't there be some minimal accountability for a seller who is putting a weapon in the hands of somebody who has been determined not able to possess a weapon?

We put burdens on sellers. This is not a precise analogy, but if you go in and try to buy beer in a place, you are going to get carded. Why is that? Well, because we have put an affirmative burden on the sale of alcohol so that the seller has to make some effort to determine that the recipient is not prohibited from having it. We do the same thing with tobacco. There are other laws that put burdens on sellers as well, and this a minimal one--take reasonable steps.

To me the lives of some of these people who have been gunned down in those horrible crimes are just worth it. Let's just take reasonable steps. The reasonable steps won't solve all the cases, but it will help keep weapons out of the hands of those whom we have determined, in this body, shouldn't have them.

I close and just say this: Of course, we have to be humble enough to acknowledge there is no one solution to the epidemic of gun violence nor is there a complete solution to it. There is nothing that we can do that will eliminate the possibility that we could wake up tomorrow and see the same thing on TV. Human beings will do evil things. That is not going to change. That is not going to be eliminated by what we do here.

But what we do as legislators in legislation is basically believe--and if we didn't believe this, we wouldn't be in this body--that as we legislate, we can improve situations. We cannot eliminate the possibility, but we can improve it. We can make it less likely that one of these prohibited individuals will get a weapon in their hands and use it against others.

So I just conclude where I started.

Alison and Adam were wonderful people. This is a community that is still really grieving. What compounds grief in my experience--not as a legislator but as a person--what compounds and deepens grief is a sense of hopelessness. Wow, this horrible thing happened. We have had this horrible loss, and there is nothing we can do about it. That tends to turn grief into despair and depression.

Sadly, I was Governor when the shooting at Virginia Tech took place, and I had to deal with 32 families and more who had been injured, and the broader community was hurting so much. When you have gone through an experience--and we see this in our own personal life because everybody has had grief in their own personal lives. If you go through an experience where there is a lot of grief and loss and you feel that it is pointless or there is nothing you can do to improve it or transform it into something better or improve it so that maybe somebody else won't have to suffer through the same experience, that tends to take grief and turn it into something even more damaging--despair and hopelessness. I think one of the things we are called to do as legislators in situations where there is grief is to show there is some hope we can improve, because I believe we can improve. I have seen too many instances legislatively and in the lives of people that we can improve and we can get better, and as a nation we need to get better on this issue. This bill won't do it all, but I think it will be a sensible way to get better and to show those who are suffering and maybe even despairing under this epidemic of gun violence that we are not just going to accept it and sink deeper into despair and grief, but grab on to it and try to make improvements.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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