Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act--Motion

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, since the tragedy 3 weeks ago tomorrow in Parkland, FL, we have all, as a nation, had a conversation about how did this happen, why did it happen, and what can we do to make sure something like this never happens again. As part of that conversation, we have spent a significant amount of time talking to all sorts of different groups and individuals--from students and teachers impacted by this to experts across the country, to other communities that have put in place policies to address this. We have learned a lot about not just this particular incident but some of the dangers around the country.

It is interesting, just in the last couple of weeks since it happened, you have seen a significant increase in the number of potential shooters who have been reported to law enforcement and people who have been arrested. I think one of the lessons from this terrible tragedy is, we live in a day and age when someone who is out there talking about hurting people has to be taken seriously. We can no longer afford to be a country in which people make these sorts of threats, and they are taken lightly.

Based on all of this information we have gathered, last week I came to the floor and announced a number of initiatives that I hope the Senate will move forward on to make sure these things never happen again. It is important to begin by recognizing that those of us who serve here are in the business of passing laws and making public policy. Making public policy isn't just about coming up with the best idea you can come up with, but it is also about coming up with the best idea you can come up with that actually has a chance of being implemented into law. What that means is, in order to get something done, we need 60 votes in the Senate on virtually any issue, we need a majority of the votes in the House, and we need a White House that is willing to sign it. If those three things don't happen, you do not have a law.

So what we spent time trying to do is identify what can we get 60 votes for in the Senate, can pass in the House, and be signed by the President that will make a difference. That has been our criteria. That does not mean there are not other important issues that deserve to be debated--and they will continue to be debated--but it means what can we pass quickly and put in place because, unlike tax policy or some of the other issues we talk about here, there is a time urgency related to this. The time urgency is that it is fair to say there is a high probability that somewhere in America today there is someone like the killer in Parkland who has ideas about doing something similar, and we do not have the luxury of waiting until November or waiting until next year before we act, especially if there are things we agree on.

Something remarkable happened over the weekend. Almost all of the 17 families impacted by this horrifying event came together and spent a significant amount of time meeting and talking because they wanted to issue a joint statement as families. It was difficult because these families and some of the people in these families have very different views on a number of issues, including on the Second Amendment, but the one thing they all agreed on is, our schools should be safe places and that when we drop our children at school in the morning, they should be safe, and no one should be worried there is a possibility their children may not come home that afternoon because someone walked into the school and took their life.

I would say that is not just true of these 17 families; I think that is true of the country. No matter where you are on the issues regarding the Second Amendment--how much or how little you believe our laws should govern and regulate the sale of guns and what type of guns should be sold--I cannot imagine there is anyone in this country in their right mind who does not believe our schools should be safe. I also do not believe there is anyone in this country in their right mind who would disagree, if we have the opportunity to identify someone before they act, we should act against them and stop them. Because there is such broad consensus on those issues, those are the first steps I believe we should try to take.

Now, sometimes when you describe it that way, people think, ``Well, that is all you are going to do or that is all you want to talk about,'' and that is not true. That can't be true because these Second Amendment issues preexist Parkland. We have debated them in the past, and we will continue to debate them in the future. They often find their ways into court. So those issues aren't going anywhere, and they will continue to be here for us to debate and act on, if the body so chooses.

The issue that I am afraid will go away, the issue I am afraid may be forgotten in a number of weeks is the fact that, in this case, there was the chance to stop the shooter before he acted. There were clear signs. It is one of the things you see in every single one of these events. It isn't like from one moment to the next they woke up one morning in a bad mood and did these sorts of things. They had been showing signs, for a significant period of time, in case after case after case. If we know this, should we not then create systems in this country to identify people before they act and stop them?

On that point, I believe there is broad consensus, and on that point is where I think we should start. Let's act. If there is a law we can pass or a program we can put in place to prevent one of these things from happening, let's do it. Obviously, we may part ways on different views on the other parts of this, but at least, for now, we are together to get these things done. This is the commonsense way forward. This is the way people operate in real life.

In real life, if you and another group of people agree on something, you do the thing you agree on first, you get that out of the way, and then you have the debate and the vote on the things you may not have a consensus on. We have a chance to do some things, and they are meaningful.

The first is a bill Senator Hatch introduced yesterday. We joined him, along with a broad bipartisan coalition, on the STOP School Violence Act. Senator Hatch's bill is a bill that was innovated by Sandy Hook Promise. It is their No. 1 legislative priority right now, and it is a bill I cannot imagine having a single ``no'' vote in the U.S. Senate. What the bill does is it basically creates a Federal grant program through the Department of Justice for States and through the States' local communities to create risk assessment programs--in essence, to have programs in place to train teachers, administrators, and students to identify the warning signs of someone who may hurt themselves or may hurt other people. It also sets up a task force in each one of these school districts to monitor these students, to identify them collectively. For example, if it had existed in Broward County or something like it that was effective, you can only imagine a room where the sheriff's office and the school and the Department of Children and Families and potentially even the FBI were all there comparing notes. If those entities had been together in one room comparing notes, the sheriff's office would have said we have been to his house 40 times for all sorts of things. The school would have said we had to kick him out, and we had to do all kinds of things because he had fights, he was violent, and made threats. The FBI would say someone actually called our hotline and said this guy was going to shoot up a school. I cannot imagine, through that collaboration, there would not have been action or, at least, the opportunity for action. It didn't happen that way, and we have a chance now to change that.

By the way, I saw last week where it was described by some media outlets as a modest bill. This is not modest. Just because it is not controversial doesn't make it modest. Preventing an attack, identifying an attacker, and stopping them before they act is the best thing we could possibly do.

Hopefully, the STOP School Violence Act is something we will be able to move on fairly quickly. The House announced earlier today that they will be taking that bill up next week on the floor, and I hope we will move quickly to pass Senator Hatch's bill that has already over 20 other Senators involved in it.

Another bill that has been filed that we have joined with as well, with Senators Toomey and Coons, is ``Lie and Try.'' Another problem we have identified in the broader scheme of things is that local law enforcement may not always have sufficient information to investigate individuals who try to buy a firearm, knowing that they are prohibited from doing so. Under our current law, when a person fails an FBI background check, some State law enforcement authorities are not even made aware of the failed background check. Individuals who are willing to lie and try to buy a gun in these situations could very well be very dangerous, and laws are only as good as our willingness and our ability to enforce them. We have to crack down on this. If someone who is ineligible to buy a firearm is trying to buy a firearm, shouldn't law enforcement already, at least, know that--because they may be able to take that piece of information and put it together with other pieces of information to realize this is someone we need to be looking at because they might be up to something.

I hope we can pass that. Again, I cannot imagine anyone not being in favor of it. This law would require Federal authorities to alert State law enforcement within 24 hours when someone who is prohibited from buying a firearm lies and tries to do so.

The third thing I hope we will look at--and we are working on the language now to address this--is the PROMISE Initiative in schools. As I already said, improving our prevention and information sharing systems as the first two pieces of legislation would do is the best thing we can do to stop school shootings before they happen, but these systems will not work if the clearest warning signs of school shootings--suspicious and violent misbehavior at the school--are not reported in the appropriate places in the first place. Anything blocking this flow of information is very dangerous, and it is a risk to our children. For this reason, a directive to schools issued by the Federal Government during the previous administration deserves for us to look at it again.

In 2014, the Department of Education, working with the Department of Justice, issued guidance which used the threat of reduced Federal funding to encourage schools to alter how and which misconduct at school is reported to law enforcement. Now, the goal of this directive was to reduce the school-to-prison pipeline, to reduce suspensions and expulsions, to prevent racially biased discipline. These are laudable goals, which I share and support, but we have to balance that with some common sense. The failure to report violent misbehavior from students-- like the shooter in Parkland--to law enforcement can end up having some very serious repercussions as we saw. So no matter how laudable this goal is, it is not worth risking the safety of our children or losing the public's trust and the trust of our parents about sending their kids to school. This directive needs to be refined. It has to allow for schools and law enforcement to communicate, when warranted, for the safety of the student and the community, and furthermore we need clear pathways of intervention and repercussions that need to be established and followed so local education agencies and law enforcement are effectively able to work together to either navigate students back onto the correct path, properly identify and address red flags that can lead to severe consequences or prevent a student from being lost in the system altogether.

Yesterday, I wrote to the Department of Education and the Department of Justice, and I asked them to immediately revise this directive from 2014, and any associated guidance, to make sure that schools are appropriately reporting violence and dangerous actions to local law enforcement.

In addition to asking them to do that, proactively, I will also be introducing legislation to make sure that the Federal Government does not fail our children in this way.

Finally, I believe the Parkland shooting has identified an area of law that can be improved to reduce gun violence of all kinds, particularly school shootings. Amidst the many systems that we have in place, law enforcement often lacks a flexible tool that they can use to prevent the sale or the possession of guns to someone who should not have them, based on their behavior and the behavior that they have exhibited around those who know them best.

There has to be a way to identify and prevent circumstances like what occurred in Parkland, while also preserving the Second Amendment constitutional right of law-abiding Americans and the right to due process. That is why we are working to try to figure out a way to encourage States to enact policies like the gun violence restraining order, so State and local law enforcement and families who have identified someone who is at risk of either taking their own life or hurting other people could petition a court to obtain a court order that allows law enforcement temporarily to stop that person either from buying a gun or from possessing that gun and the ammunition. This would put power back in the hands of people who see something, not just to say something, but they have the opportunity to do something about it.

We continue to work on what the right formulation of that is. The most effective implementation is at the State level. We are trying to figure it out with our colleagues. There are different ideas floating around about the right way to structure it.

It has to have strong due process. You don't want this used to abuse people. You don't want courts to misuse it or have it being used for false claims, but we need to have a tool at our disposal. If the schools and local law enforcement, and others, identify someone who poses a threat but has yet to commit a crime, there has to be a tool available to stop them from buying guns or using the ones they already have.

The State of Florida is probably going to be passing, either today or tomorrow, a law that puts that in State law. Other States like Indiana and California have one as well. What can we do at the Federal level to incentivize more States to do this and have these tools? That is what we are working on.

Hopefully, we will have the resolution on a bill that doesn't just work, but that can pass. We can all file the perfect bill in our own minds, but if it doesn't have 60 votes, it is nothing but a piece of paper. That is why we need to work toward that.

I want to conclude by mentioning one of the students, Kyle Kashuv, who is a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Like many students at that school, he is motivated to advocate for changes in our laws to prevent something like what happened in his school from ever happening again. In his advocacy, he wants to make sure that the Second Amendment is protected. His No. 1 concern is to make sure that the rights of innocent Americans aren't infringed upon.

His opinion on this issue might be different from some of his other classmates, but that doesn't change their shared goal, which is to stop this from happening to anyone ever again. Although their opinions may vary, he and his classmates still go to school together and still root for the same sports teams at their school. They take the same classes with the same teachers, and they still faced the same danger on February 14. As they lift their voices in political discourse to advocate for change, they have differences. They have differences on some issues, but they share a common goal, to keep themselves and students like them safe.

I think we can learn something from this example--from them and from their parents. The lessons learned from Parkland are that changes can be made. Some of them I just mentioned action on would immediately reduce the chances of school shootings but would not infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.

The Members elected to the Senate, like the students at Parkland, have a wide array of opinions on many of these issues, but I think we all share a common goal. We all agree that our schools should be safe. So I am here to urge my colleagues to remember that we have to share a country, no matter what our views may be on any political issue. We have to find a way not just to live together but to thrive as a nation. We have to find a way to keep our children safe. If we keep that in mind, I am sure we can work together to create real, enduring consensus on solutions, on things we agree on that will stop these from happening again.

We can have respectful and productive debates on the issues upon which our Nation and this body are still divided, but let us first come together and do the things we agree on. Then we will have the time to argue and debate and solve the things we may not agree on. This is the opportunity before us, and we should not let it pass us by.

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