A Call for Action Against Gun Violence
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I am saddened and angered that the high school in my district, Great Mills High School, in St. Mary's County, was the site of the most recent school shooting, of which there have been 17 just since the beginning of this year.
Two students were injured, and the gunman, also a student, was killed. And an entire community of parents, students, teachers, and faculty has been shaken by this violence.
If it had not been for the courage and quick action of the school resource officer, Blaine Gaskill, and local law enforcement, the casualties might have been far, far greater.
Blaine Gaskill is a hero, as are the teachers, students, and other school personnel.
Tim Cameron, the sheriff of St. Mary's County, and the sheriff's office, of which Blaine Gaskill was a member, responded exactly as they had practiced: efficient, effective, and caring.
Kathy O'Brien, who heads up a place called Walden in our county and in southern Maryland, was on site within an hour, dealing with the crisis and the mental health challenges it caused.
Principal Jake Heibel made sure the school responded effectively. The superintendent of schools, Dr. James Smith, had made sure that the school would act in a way that was appropriate.
We thank all of them.
But, Mr. Speaker, our Nation is suffering from a crisis of gun violence. It has affected schools, places of worship, entertainment venues, city streets, and other places where a lot of people congregate.
No other industrialized society or nation faces such a crisis, and that is because, in America, our laws allow almost anybody to access dangerous firearms, almost no questions asked.
Furthermore, we allow the sale of assault rifles of the kind used by soldiers in the battlefield, designed to kill a lot of people quickly.
In this instance, it was a handgun, a Glock. I do not know the capacity of the magazine that was used, but it was not an assault rifle.
This Republican-led Congress, Mr. Speaker, has chosen to follow the lead of the NRA and do nothing of substance.
We did pass a bill the other day that gave schools some help, some grant money, to ensure the safety of their schools. That was appropriate to do. But they could do that now on their own. We will help, that is good, but it does not address the real problem. Perhaps that was the point.
And America's students, however, Mr. Speaker, won't have it. I had the opportunity last Wednesday to stand with thousands of students who walked out of their schools, walked into democracy, and marched to the Capitol to call for action against gun violence.
These young people, Mr. Speaker, displayed the best of America, using their voices and their actions, to promote a just cause and a worthy effort to make our Union more perfect.
The other Members and I who joined these young Americans could see that they do not take this and other national challenges lightly. Indeed, they had much to say about the future they want for our country and for the role they want to play to shape it.
One of the students, Mr. Speaker, from Maryland, Matt Post, spoke extraordinarily eloquently.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record his remarks.
My name is Matt Post. I'm a twelfth-grader, the Student Member of the Board for Montgomery County, and, I think, as students we need to make a few things clear.
To start, we will not sit in classrooms with armed teachers. We refuse to learn in fear. We reject turning our schools into prisons.
We will accept nothing less than stricter gun control. If it's what it takes, we are going to shame our national policymakers into protecting us, not just in schools but in churches, movie theaters, on the streets, and for the communities of color who are disproportionately devastated by the sickness of gun violence.
The lawmakers who fail to support us, those who look for every answer to our nation's gun problem but the guns themselves, are complicit in every single death that comes after. To every politician sitting in the Capitol behind us, you get to decide who lives.
And so, this is not a partisan issue for us. There's nothing cosmetic about life or death. This is about our basic morality as a country.
When the commander-in-chief's solution to this gun epidemic is more guns, you know we have a moral problem in the White House.
When national policymakers value the blood money of the NRA over the lives of children, you know we have a moral problem in the Halls in Congress.
And when this is doomed to happen again--when, in the coming weeks and months, more of my peers will be slaughtered in their own classrooms, when their deaths will be dismissed as collateral--you know we have a moral problem in this country.
So let's make one last thing clear: their right to own an assault rifle does not outweigh our right to live.
The adults have failed us. This is in our hands now. And if any elected official gets in our way, we will vote them out and replace them ourselves.
`Enough is Enough!'
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I am not going to read the remarks in their entirety, but I do want to highlight one thing Matt had to say, which I thought was so profound.
He concluded his remarks by saying: `` . . . their right to own an assault rifle does not outweigh our right to live.''
His right to live is guaranteed by the Constitution as well.
There were many others like Matt, Mr. Speaker, other student leaders from our area, who stood up and spoke out and roused their peers to be engaged.
Along with Matt, I want to recognize Brenna Levitan; Eri Shay; Emily Dohler Rodas; Michael Solomon; Nate Tinbite; Christian Crawford; and a student from American University, who helped them organize, Aaron Thorp.
These student leaders, and their many peers who marched with them last week, deserve to be heard in the Halls of Congress.
Mr. Speaker, we must not fail them.
Like the young leaders of generations ago, of centuries ago, a millennia ago, these young leaders are calling to our conscience to take action, and we must not fail them.
We must not fail the students and teachers and parents of Great Mills High School in St. Mary's County; or Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida; or Marshall County High School in Kentucky; or Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon; or Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut; or Virginia Tech; or Columbine; or any other school that has witnessed the carnage of a school shooting.
Mr. Speaker, we must take real action--action to make our schools and our communities safer from gun violence.
I am proud to stand with the young Americans who walked out--and I thank them for their passion and their advocacy--and who say they do not want to go to school and be afraid.
One young woman said the first thing she does when she goes to school now is to look for a place to hide.
Mr. Speaker, we must do better than that. I will continue to work closely with the community in Great Mills in the days and weeks ahead, as we try to heal and move forward.
But, Mr. Speaker, in order to do that, this body, the people's body, who raise our hand and swear an oath to the Constitution and the laws of our country, designed to create a more perfect Union, a Union in which the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is protected by the people's House, Mr. Speaker, let us act.
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