Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut, and I would say to the Senator from Connecticut, those attempting to disparage the size of Connecticut--being from Colorado, I certainly won't do that, but I would ask you to share the biggest concern you have heard about requiring universal background checks on gun sales.

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Mr. BENNET. I appreciate the answer to that question.

I will share some of the experiences of Colorado, and I will ask the Senator from Connecticut a question.

I want to say first to the people of Orlando and the people of Florida how sorry I am for the tragedy that has befallen them. On Sunday morning, I got up and opened the paper on my device and saw at that time that 20 people had been killed, and then it quickly grew to 50. I can only remember the shock when we had the shootings in the Aurora movie theater, and I know the Senator from Connecticut had the tremendous shock of the killings of the elementary school children in Newtown, CT. I thought, as I always do when this happens, that my brother or sister could have been in there, my mother or father could have been in there, or my son or actually one of my daughters could have been in there, and I thought of the feeling somebody must have when they know they are never going to see their loved one again.

I was fortunate, obviously, not to be in that circumstance, but on Sunday morning, my wife Susan and I were taking my 11-year-old daughter--my youngest daughter--to camp, and the only thing I was trying to do before I got her there was to make sure she didn't see the news, make sure she didn't hear about what happened, make sure she didn't leave her parents feeling the anxiety they felt after Newtown happened, the horror they felt after Aurora happened, the knowledge that they are growing up in a country unlike the country we grew up in, where children have a reasonable fear that something like this could happen to them.

Our experience in Colorado--as the Senator knows, on July 20, 2012, a gunman walked into a crowded theater in Aurora--people were there just to watch a show--and killed 12 innocent people, just like the innocent people who were killed on Sunday morning or the children killed in Newtown. There were 58 wounded from the gunfire. We lost 12 lives, people who were full of life and aspirations, loved by family and friends. I have read their names on this floor. I have talked about who they were on this floor.

But unlike Washington, in Colorado, our legislators rose to the occasion and made some tough decisions, which is why I am asking this line of questions to the Senator from Connecticut. They got together and they actually strengthened our background check system. Colorado's Legislature closed the gun show loophole and the Internet loophole and required a background check for every gun sale.

What has happened? Let me give an example. In 2015 the stronger background check system blocked 7,000--I want to be precise about this--7,714 people from buying guns. That may sound like a lot, but 350,000 people applied for guns in Colorado in 2015. That is just over 2 percent of the people who applied for guns. Ninety-eight percent of the people who applied got their guns.

By the way, I have a report from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which on a monthly basis publishes all this data so everybody in Colorado can see what is going on. It has, among other things, the average wait time, the average time it takes on the Internet to get this check done in Colorado. It takes 9 minutes to get the background check.

More important than the percentage--that, of course, is a low percentage--is who is in the percentage. We have murderers who have been denied guns. We have rapists who have been denied guns. We have domestic abusers in that 2 percent who have been denied guns. We have kidnappers who have been denied guns. Is there anybody who is going to come to the floor of the Senate and say that Colorado is worse off because we have kept guns out of the hands of murderers and kidnappers and rapists?

This isn't mythical; this is the actual fact of what is going on in a western State that has background checks. Nobody can come here and argue that we are not safer because these people who shouldn't have had a gun don't have a gun, this 2 percent.

But in stark contrast--this is why I came to the floor tonight--this is in stark contrast to what the Colorado Legislature did after the Aurora shooting. This Congress did nothing after Newtown, after Aurora, after Orlando--nothing. Time and again we return to this floor after a mass shooting and yet are unable to do the simple things, such as close the gun show loophole once and for all. That is not about taking guns from people who already have guns; that is about keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have guns. If your State is like my State, that is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 percent of the people who can't get a gun or apply for a gun permit.

The least we can do is close the terrorism loophole that allows terrorists on the watch list or people who are on the watch list to buy a weapon. That makes no sense at all. I think the American people clearly agree with that. The American people clearly support background checks. Ninety percent of the American people believe we should strengthen background checks.

I thank my colleagues who are here today. It is a particular privilege to be here with my two colleagues from New Mexico, and I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his leadership.

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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I would just like to add one thing, if I could.

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Mr. BENNET. You know, it is Pride Month, and we have our Pride parade this Sunday in Denver. For the last 10 years, that is how we have celebrated Father's Day. Father's Day coincides with Denver's Pride parade, and my wife and children and I all go. This Sunday my phone rang. My oldest daughter was on a civil rights tour in the South with her choir, and we started talking about this, and she reminded me that we missed last year's Pride parade because we were at the Shorter AME Church in Denver worshipping with that congregation in the wake of the shootings in Charleston. She was the one who had to remind me of that, but when she did, it was another reminder of how searing these experiences are for the next generation of Americans.

I thank my colleagues.

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