America's Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I thank very much my colleague Senator Blumenthal. I want to associate myself with all the remarks of my colleague from Connecticut.

Let me congratulate the riders from Team 26 for making it through such inclement weather, making it through such a challenging ride to bring these messages to the Halls of Congress and to the White House.

It strikes me that there are similarities between this ride and the challenges ahead of us. Every tough ride is a long stretch of both peaks and valleys. The challenge is knowing there is another hill coming before you and not giving up, knowing that at the end of that long ride, there is reward.

When we talk about the scope of our fight to change the laws of this country to try to put a dent in this epidemic of gun violence, we have to view our journey the same way. There are going to be peaks and there are going to be valleys. There will be moments of triumph where we change the laws for the better, where we see progress, as we have in Connecticut, where a new State law has resulted in a 40-percent diminution in the number of gun homicides. Then there are the valleys-- moments like we had here in early 2013, where despite 90 percent of Americans supporting the idea that you should prove you are not a criminal before you buy a gun, we weren't able to pass that law because of a filibuster here. Every great change is defined not only by failures but by peaks and valleys, as was their ride. I join Senator Blumenthal in thanking them for focusing on this particular issue of guns on campuses.

It is up to every individual as to whether they choose to buy a firearm, but they should make that decision imbued by the facts. And the facts are pretty clear that if you have a firearm in your home, it is much more likely to be used to kill you or to kill a family member than it is to kill an intruder, to kill someone trying to do harm to you.

Nancy Lanza had guns in the home for a variety of reasons, but one of the reasons, apparently, was that as a single parent, she wanted firearms for protection. Of course, her guns were used to kill her and then 20 small first graders and their teachers. Similarly, on campuses, the data tells us that in areas that have more guns, you are more likely to have higher rates of gun homicides. This fiction that if you just arm all the good guys, they will kill all the bad guys is not actually how it plays out in real life.

So I thank them for bringing these petitions here to shed focus on this movement to make sure we don't have students walking around campuses with concealed weapons. That doesn't make for a safer campus environment.

Lastly because I know others want to speak, I want to talk about two things that struck me from our meeting at the White House at the end of the day yesterday. The first was when all the riders on Team 26 got to tell their stories about why they decided to join this ride. Many of them, frankly, were doing it for deep love and affection for Monte Frank, but they all shared a common cause with him. Around that table were individuals who had suffered gun violence in their immediate family. One woman's son committed suicide shortly after the murders in Sandy Hook. Another husband and wife lost close friends in a mass shooting. But many of the individuals who were there were simply there because they had children who were in school, and they knew that there but by the grace of God, it could be their child.

I have a first grader I drop off every morning at school, and I know there is nothing different about my child's school than Sandy Hook Elementary School. And I think about Nicole Hockley almost every morning when I drop off my 7-year-old. She said she never imagined that it would be her, and she doesn't know why more parents don't step up and try to do something about this before it is their child.

The second thing I was struck by was their experience along the road. They noted that in over 4 years, they haven't run into anybody who has disagreed with their mission or who has given them a hard time about their advocacy. And that is really not surprising given the fact there is broad consensus among the American public as to what we should do.

There really is no disagreement in any of our States--regardless of geography, race, or political ideology--on whether we should make sure that criminals don't buy guns, make sure that people who have a serious mental illness can't get their hands on firearms. This appears to be controversial and politically toxic, the way we talk about it, but the way it is talked about on the Main Streets that Team 26 rode down, it is not controversial at all. It is a settled issue: Criminals shouldn't buy guns. And there is no justification, in most Americans' minds, for a Federal law that today, on average, allows for four of six guns to be sold without a criminal background check. They want the law changed. We shouldn't pretend this issue is politically controversial. It might be amidst lobbying circles in Washington, but it is not in the communities Team 26 rode through, and they can tell you that because they were cheered everywhere they went.

It is no small feat to organize this ride. It makes a difference in the communities in which they do events, the communities through which they ride, and it will ultimately make a difference here. Every great movement for change is a long journey made worthwhile at the end when, after you have ridden up lots of hills and down into valleys, you end up at the finish line.

I thank Team 26 for their work.

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