Gun Control Measures

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I am here after talking to my good friend Fred Guttenberg, who visited my office just minutes ago to talk about what we are doing here on the floor of the Senate--what we are failing to do, more precisely, and what we have an obligation to do at this moment in history.

Fred Guttenberg lost his precious, beautiful daughter Jamie in Parkland at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in a tragedy that we all recall--at least I do--as though it happened yesterday.

Fred Guttenberg has made it his life's mission now, in his daughter's memory, to fight for commonsense steps to save other children from that kind of violence and other parents from all of our worst nightmare--I say that as a father of four.

But Fred Guttenberg, being the enormously hopeful, energetic, and positive person that he is, talked to me about Florida's extreme risk protection order statute--or, as it is known there, red flag statute-- and about how it is working to save lives and how it has been used more than 2,000 times since it was passed barely a year ago and how it, in fact, worked most recently in the case of a young man who made threats online with a stash of firearms in his home that were turned over to law enforcement voluntarily when they came to his home. They were turned over voluntarily by his parents.

They didn't need to use the warrant because his parents knew that a risk warrant was telling them something they already knew, which is that their son was dangerous and that firearms in that home posed a clear and present and urgent threat of another Marjory Stoneman Douglas tragedy.

So using that red flag or emergency risk protection order statute was actually unnecessary there, but it provided the police and law enforcement with a means to an end, and it has been used more than 2,000 times.

In fact, in our Judiciary Committee, a nominee for the Southern District of Florida, who is now a sitting State court judge, related to us how he has applied this statute. What he said to us is it works. It saves lives. It prevents suicides. It helps stop domestic violence that can lead to fatalities. These laws work.

These laws work to save lives, as we have seen in Connecticut, where proudly we have led the Nation in adopting a comprehensive set of gun violence prevention laws. The experience of Connecticut, the empirical evidence, the facts on the ground, the testimony of law enforcement all tell us these laws work. It isn't just one law. There is no single panacea. There is no one solution. It is a comprehensive set of commonsense measures.

The opponents of these measures will point to one tragedy or another that could not have been prevented by one law or another, and that is the reason that it has to be comprehensive, and it will never prevent all of the tragedy. There will still be gun deaths in this country, but these laws work to save lives.

And as Fred and I said to each other, if one life has been saved in the State of Florida by its emergency risk protection order statute, it was worth doing. If one daughter of one potentially grieving parent was saved, it was worth doing.

But it is many more than one life that will be saved if we adopt the measures that are before us. Ideally, H.R. 8, universal background checks that has come to us from the House, the closing of the Charleston loophole, which I have long championed and I have introduced as a separate measure here, emergency risk protection order or red flag statutes that my colleague and I, Senator Lindsey Graham, have worked on, negotiated over months and now is on the verge of introduction--we know that the task before us is to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, to prevent people who will kill or injure themselves or others from having those firearms.

The universal background check goal is to enforce a statute that was adopted many years ago that keeps guns out of the hands of specific people who are dangerous because they are convicted felons or drug addicts or fall into other categories, keeps guns out of the hands of dangerous people before they are hurt.

An extreme risk protection order statute keeps guns out of the hands of people who, like the shooter in Parkland, as my colleague Senator Graham says, all but took out an ad in the newspaper saying he was going to kill people--as this young man did in Coral Springs, when he went on the internet.

Under our statute, there is complete due process because not only must a statutory standard of proof be met for the warrant--the risk warrant, much like an arrest warrant or a search warrant--but then, in a subsequent hearing within a week or 2 or 3 weeks under other jurisdictions, there is a right to a hearing, and the burden of proof is even higher for that gun to be kept away. Then the order itself lasts for a specific period of time.

There are guarantees of due process here. Every one of these proposals--universal background checks and extreme risk protection orders--is within the Heller decision, consistent with the Second Amendment. We respect the Second Amendment. It is the law of the land, but they can help save lives.

That is why 90 percent of the American people support universal background checks, and they support extreme risk protection order laws. They know lives can be saved if guns are kept out of the hands of dangerous people.

These stories are so common and so tragic:

A young man exhibits disturbing behavior. He is clearly troubled. His friends, relatives, teachers, even law enforcement are aware of his hateful rants. He posts pro-Nazi photos online. We know the end of this story too. It is the story of Dakota Reed that started like so many others--Charleston, Pittsburgh, Orlando, Dayton, El Paso. He posted on November 11, 2018: ``I'm shooting for 30 Jews.'' Except here is how that story ended: When this young man threatened an anti-Semitism- fueled massacre, law enforcement was granted an extreme risk protection order. Dakota Reed was online, threatening to kill people, and law enforcement seized his 12 firearms.

For so long, we have been told there is nothing that can be done, but this one example, like the young man in Coral Springs, shows there are effective solutions. These laws work.

As so many Americans know, there is no shortage of ideas to stop preventable gun violence. There is only a shortage of courage. There is only a dearth of will.

For too long, Congress has been complicit. Congress has blood on its hands if it continues to fail in meeting this basic responsibility to keep Americans safer than they are now.

Almost every community has been affected by this national epidemic of gun violence. Massacres in El Paso and Dayton within a 24-hour period left 31 dead. Before Congress returned from its recess, a shooter in Odessa, TX, killed another seven. Communities are forever changed by these events. The fear that is engendered and the trauma of these shootings affects a community and tears it apart in ways that take years to recover from it.

Like my colleagues from Connecticut in the House and in the Senate, I will live forever with the sights and sounds of that day in Sandy Hook, the cries of grief in that afternoon and afterward, when 26 beautiful people--6 great educators and 20 young children--were killed. I was at the firehouse where parents went to find out if their children were dead or alive. They found out by waiting as the children arrived--but not all of the children. That is how the parents who lost their children found out.

Those anguished cries, the sobbing, the grief have been repeated 2,226 times since in mass shootings. They have left 2,000 communities grieving, but more than those mass shootings, there are the deaths-- every day, 90 deaths; 36,000 Americans killed by gun violence every year. That is about 100 every day, and gun deaths are on the rise, not reducing. There were 39,773 gun deaths for 2017, the most recent year for which it is available. That is not even counting the physically wounded, those who escaped mass shootings physically unscathed but with lifelong mental scars, and the thousands of friends and family members of victims and near-victims whose lives are forever altered by these incidents of gun violence.

Despite this unconscionable loss of life, Congress has done nothing, complicit in the mass shootings but also in the suicides and domestic violence.

Lori Jackson's death in Connecticut was at the hand of her estranged husband. Her children were traumatized losing their mother, and her parents became active advocates--courageous and strong advocates for a change in the law.

We have an obligation to act regardless of whatever the President says or does. There is nothing in the Constitution that says the U.S. Senate can act only if the President commits to signing some law. There is nothing in the Constitution that says we can act only if the President endorses a specific measure. We have that duty, independent of the President. We have a constitutional duty. We have already ceded too much of our power in too many areas. We cannot, we need not, we must not cede that independent obligation we have to act and act now.

Medical research tells us that 80 percent of the perpetrators of mass violence exhibit clear signs that they are going to carry out an attack, often including explicit threats of violence. The Parkland shooter is one of the latest examples. In all of those jurisdictions that have extreme risk protection order statutes, the experience is that they work.

I have introduced Jamie's Law that would provide for background checks on ammunition purchases--there should be universal background checks on purchases--in honor of Fred Guttenberg's daughter, Jaime. I have supported a ghost gun statute that would take account of the need to act on weapons that are literally made in people's homes using kits like the one used by the Rancho Tehama gunman. They are referred to as ``ghost guns'' because they possess no serial number or any kind of traceable identification or registration. One scholar estimates that at least hundreds of thousands of unmarked receivers already have been sold in the United States.

Of course, we need an assault weapons ban. There are some weapons that no one should ever be able to use as they were in El Paso, Dayton, Las Vegas, Parkland, Orlando, Newtown, Aurora, Columbine. These tragedies alone account for 211 people lost to gun violence.

Assault weapons are literally weapons of war. Assault-style weapons can fire hundreds of rounds in a minute, and until recently they could be converted to automatic weapons. A recent study found that when assault-style weapons are used with high-capacity magazines, 155,000 more people are shot and 47 percent more are killed than in other instances.

Earlier this year, I was pleased to join dozens of my colleagues in introducing the Assault Weapons Ban of 2019, making the sale, manufacture, transport, and importation of 205 specific military-style assault weapons, by name as well as by a number of features and modifications, illegal--banned under our law.

I was pleased, also with my colleague Chris Murphy, to introduce a safe storage law named after Ethan Song of Guilford, CT, who was killed while playing with a weapon in his friend's home. This legislation would enact Federal requirements for safe storage, penalties for violators, and a grant program to help States establish their own safe storage law.

The SECURE Firearms Storage Act would require firearms importers, manufacturers, and dealers to safely store their inventory and, as well, individual gun owners to use standards that in fact have been endorsed by the NRA. Safely securing firearms prevents theft and unintended use of lawfully acquired and possessed owned guns.

In 2016, alone, 238,000 firearms were reported stolen in the United States. These kinds of laws are championed by Michael and Kristin Song because they know these laws work. Their child, their young son, was accidentally killed by a gun stored in a friend's closet, accessible to those two teens without any impediment. In many cases, including Sandy Hook, safe gun storage could have prevented mountains of grief and heartache and a river of tears. Gun owners who fail to safely store or secure their firearms must be held accountable, as this law would do in honor of Ethan Song.

Of course, high-capacity magazines--which is to say magazines that can fire more than 10 rounds--to help stop mass shootings should be banned as well.

There are other measures--and my colleagues have talked about them-- to keep gun dealers honest, to prevent hate crimes, to stop domestic and gender-based violence, to require development of smart gun technology. That is why also, on smart gun technology, with Senator Murphy, I introduced the SAFETY Act, which would encourage manufactures to develop and consumers to purchase smart gun technology.

Smart gun technology is actually one that I championed as attorney general. A number of gun manufacturers--at least one agreed to implement it, and he was nearly drummed out of business by other gun manufacturers at the time.

The firearm industry and responsible gun owners should already be embracing innovations that have been developed, inventions that are feasible, smart gun technology that has already created locks that prevent accidental shootings and fingerprint scans that can disable firearms for anyone but their lawful owners. We need to harness the power of American innovation and create smarter, safer firearms.

There is no reason to wait another day before passing these laws. We know there is a political movement that is gaining strength from groups like Moms Demand Action, Everytown for Gun Safety, Students Demand Action, Brady, Giffords, the Coalition Against Gun Violence, the Connecticut Coalition, the New Town Action Alliance, and Sandy Hook Promise. So many of these organizations are coming together to create a seismic change, a tectonic groundswell of support. That is the reason we are here tonight and the reason the President is even talking about a measure or set of measures that will help prevent gun violence.

We can do this. We can pass this measure. The President can stand up to the gun lobby and the NRA. The Republican leadership has it within their power to seize this moment made possible by the American public expecting and demanding that we act and saying to us: Enough is enough. Truly, enough is enough.

On December 14, 2012, I pledged that I would do everything I could do to make sure no more parents have to bury their children, as did those courageous and strong families in Newtown who have come to us asking for action, as have survivors and loved ones from countless other families. No other parent should have to bury children as a result of preventable gun violence. I have fought as long and as hard as I know how, and I will continue because we are not going away. We are not giving up. Nothing could persuade me to break that pledge.

I have been proud to stand with my colleague Chris Murphy in our partnership as a team that has brought together so many of our colleagues who are speaking tonight. The only question before us now is, How long will it take? How many more children and lives will be lost? How many more communities have to be added to that dreaded list of mass shootings? How many more suicides, including veteran suicides--20 every day, not all from gun violence but many of them due to firearms. How many more grieving families? How many more lives lost needlessly and senselessly? I thank my colleagues for being here tonight. We all hope the answer is fewer. We all hope that lives will be saved, as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible. That is why I have been willing to engage in discussions with the White House, as well as with my colleagues, along with my colleague Chris Murphy and others who are here--Senator Manchin and Senator Toomey. That is why we have spared no effort and left no stone unturned.

How many more days will go by before we fulfill our duty? The answer really should be ``none.'' We all have an obligation to fulfill our constitutional duty as a Congress to act--whether or not the President does. But to the President and to the Republican leadership, my message is this: Please, please work it out. Please lead. Lead or get out of the way. Please lead or at least give us a vote on H.R. 8, on universal background checks, on emergency risk protection, on commonsense steps that we know work. These measures work. They save lives.

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