Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, in every corner of our country today and across my State in Washington, countless students are taking part in a walkout in support of reforms to combat gun violence. I stand in solidarity with these students who are trying to provide an example of why we must make progress on this issue. No student should fear for their life while attending school, and I will continue to work on solutions here to curb gun violence.

We in Washington State have been able to make progress by passing initiatives to close gun show loopholes and to move forward on extreme person legislation. I should say that that was passed by the citizens of our State. We should look at the example of Washington's initiatives and the success we have had in our State in curbing gun violence as commonsense solutions that should be considered here in Washington, DC.

When we look at these issues, I am reminded of the tragic shootings in our State--of Sam Strahan, from Spokane, who was killed, and individuals who were killed in Washington in a Marysville-Tulalip shooting when Jaylen Fryberg, at just 15 years old, opened fire on students and killed Gia Soriano, Andrew Fryberg, Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, and Zoe Galasso and wounded Nathan Hatch.

These tragedies are more than we can take at our schools. These tragedies are something that we need to address here in Washington. So I stand in solidarity with our students who are trying to address these issues and address our Nation's need to come together and provide better solutions to protect our students.

We are still heartbroken about this shooting in the sense of it being an example of the challenges we face--a young man who took his father's gun. He was a father who never should have had the gun to begin with because he was on a domestic violence restraining order. Yet he was still able to go to a store, get the gun, and keep the gun in the home. Then the young student was able to take that to school.

I want all of these families to know that we still think of them, that we are still mourning the loss of these individuals, and that we are working very hard with our colleagues to come to some resolution.

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