National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to follow my colleague from Connecticut on a topic that has bedeviled and baffled us together almost since the time we became Senators. It is a topic that is heartrending and gut-wrenching for both of us.

I thank him for his leadership and partnership in this effort.

Mr. President, we are here on the 2-year anniversary of the tragic Orlando nightclub attack. On June 12, 2016, a man armed with an assault rifle and a pistol, with hatred in his heart, stormed the Pulse nightclub and murdered 49 people. This man turned a safe haven, a place of joy and celebration, into an unimaginable nightmare.

On that day, and on so many other days--in fact, virtually every day--all of us who lived through the Sandy Hook massacre firsthand relived the terrible tragedy of that day in our State.

Tonight, coincidentally, Sandy Hook Promise, a group that was formed in the wake of that tragedy and has done so much good work around the country to make our Nation safer, is having its annual dinner. I will be attending and speaking there with many who were involved in seeking to make sense of that tragedy and accomplish specific, tangible, commonsense measures since then.

The Orlando nightclub attack remains the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in our Nation's history. We ought to take particular time today to commemorate this national tragedy. We also should think about the epidemic of gun violence, like Sandy Hook, and hate crimes generally across the country--which may not involve gun violence--that plague our Nation daily, the greatest Nation in the history of the world. This scourge of hate crimes and gun violence-- often the two go together--is a continuing plague.

In an average year, more than 10,300 hate crimes that are committed involve a firearm. That is more than 28 every single day.

Meanwhile, the FBI tells us that for the second year in a row, hate crime offenses are on the rise in this country, an increase of 6.3 percent from 2015 to 2016, and that increase itself follows a 7-percent increase from 2014 to 2015. These statistics are stunning. They are particularly sad, given the underreporting of hate crimes. We know that many hate crimes are never reported because of embarrassment and fear of retaliation. The real incidence of bias-motivated crimes is likely much higher than even these intolerable numbers tell.

We know that LGBT people are more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other minority group. I am heartbroken to report that LGBT people are introduced to these instances of violence at a very young age. There is no preparing children for it.

The youth experience of this kind of bias, bigotry, and hatred is extraordinarily high, and it often is manifested in violence and physical harassment in school. Students report being severely beaten and robbed by their peers. One young man recounted being beaten, driven 5 miles out of town, stripped naked, and left to walk home alone.

When we hear these stories, we should not be surprised that more than half of LGBT youth feel unsafe in their schools. We should not be surprised, but we should be outraged. We should be angry that this kind of bias, bigotry, and harassment continues to affect LGBT people. In this great Nation, it is intolerable. Schools should be places where young people learn, grow, and build friendships, free of fear of being assaulted by their peers and becoming the next victim of this unspeakable crime.

Apart from the bias, bigotry, and hate crimes that are the result of this kind of unacceptable precedent, gun violence continues to plague our schools, as well as churches, theaters, and other public places. But the plague of gun violence is not only in the mass shootings, which attract the most attention. It is the one-by-one or smaller groups that account for the 96 deaths every day and 30,000 deaths every year.

These numbers have become so familiar as to be banal. The banality of this evil is itself an insidious disease. It eats away at the moral core of our country. It continues to make us a lesser nation.

Our failure to act makes this Chamber complicit in those deaths. This body cannot avoid its moral culpability for those deaths. The Senate of the United States and the entire Congress are, in effect, aiding and abetting this epidemic of gun violence, which is probably the most deadly public health crisis that plagues our Nation right now.

Imagine if a communicable disease, say Ebola, took 90 lives every day. There would be marches in the streets and demonstrations. The country would react, but it has become so inured to this public health epidemic of gun violence that there is no reaction unless there is a massive incident like the Parkland High School shooting.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School became a turning point for this country on gun violence. When young people demonstrate, march, hold vigils, and walk out of schools--in Ridgefield, I attended one of those walkouts, a profoundly moving and important event. I believe these events can provide a turning point that will move this country into a new social change era, a new movement of social change comparable to the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement and marriage equality and women's healthcare, a movement that can truly transform this Nation, raise its consciousness, but also elicit action.

We need not only more words and rhetoric and speeches but also action on the commonsense measures that this body has failed to enact: background checks applied to all gun purchases; tightening the information that goes into the database used in those background checks, even beyond the Fix NICS bill that was a minor change adopted earlier this year; a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity clips; a closing of the 72-hour loophole involved in the background check system for purchases of a gun; and, of course, the hate crimes or red flag statute that enables police and family to go to a court to seek a warrant to make sure that someone who is dangerous to himself or others will not be permitted to buy or possess these weapons.

These commonsense reforms have been before us for years, and since Sandy Hook, nothing has changed. This body has been inert and reprehensibly unresponsive. We know these measures work. We know from Connecticut's experience that they reduce crime and homicides. We know from our State's adoption of these reforms that we can lessen the number of shootings, as well as deaths and injury. We know what doesn't work: arming teachers in school, a proposal rejected by the law enforcement community, by the education community, and by ordinary citizens in communities around the country.

Connecticut has shown by our experience that these commonsense, sensible measures do work, but they cannot protect Connecticut citizens alone because our borders are porous.

Even a State like Connecticut, with the strongest gun laws in the country, is at the mercy of States with the weakest because guns are trafficked across State borders. So we need national standards and national laws that will protect us in Connecticut and all around the country who are at risk.

The new social change movement, powered and fueled by young people, can break the vicelike grip that the gun lobby has held over this Congress for so many years--indeed, for decades. I have worked on this issue literally for 2\1/2\ decades or more. When I was attorney general of the State of Connecticut, I championed and we passed a measure to ban assault weapons, among other reforms. It was challenged in the court. All of the same arguments were raised then legally that are raised now. We defeated them. In fact, I tried the case and argued it in the Supreme Court. Those arguments are as invalid today as they were then--based on the Second Amendment or void for vagueness or equal protection--and they will fail in the courts just as they did in our courts then. I have never felt nearer than we are now to meaningful reform because of those students, because of those young people, because of the outpouring that is riveting America and moving us forward, but it has to be translated and galvanized into votes in this coming election and in elections to come so that the will of the people is heard here and the vicelike grip of the gun lobby is broken.

Walking out of schools and walking into polling places is what is required, and these young people are showing us the path to do it. Even while we work in that arena, organizations like Sandy Hook Promise are showing us how to educate in a totally bipartisan way and raise awareness in our schools and bring people together so that we solve our conflicts peacefully and with words, not conflict.

Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse was killed at Sandy Hook, has worked hard on social and emotional learning--another way to bring us together at the earliest of ages. Social and emotional learning has been her mission since Jesse's death, and she has formed a foundation to choose love, to enhance the ethos of teaching young people that they can solve their disagreements and conflicts with words and caring that they can be taught in school.

First, of course, teachers need to be taught and trained how to do that teaching, and that is why I sought an amendment to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act with her inspiration to build that movement.

There will always be hateful people who want to lash out and destroy. On this anniversary of the Orlando nightclub massacre, we cannot concede defeat, and we cannot relent or relax our efforts. We need to commit to action, not just reflection or rhetoric. Every child who goes to school should do it without fear. Every person who goes to church should have no doubt about the safety of that sacred place or any other house of worship. Anyone who goes to a movie theater or to any other public place should do it without the apprehension that a person with a gun might be in wait.

For our LGBT community, we need a statute like the NO HATE Act that I have proposed--I introduced it last year--which would address the bigotry and bias that continues to plague them, not just in the hateful words but in the violence and harassment they suffer. Enforcement of the laws that exist now is absolutely essential. In fact, enhanced enforcement--devoting more resources to the police, FBI, and prosecutors who pursue these crimes--ought to be a challenge that we meet without question.

On all of these fronts, we should be united. It should be bipartisan. There should be no political division to make America safer, to make sure that we fulfill the vision of our great country that we will live peacefully together and enjoy equally the opportunities that are entitled by all of us.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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