Gun Control Measures
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I want to recognize my friend and colleague Senator Murphy for his moral leadership on this issue and for continuously demanding that all of us do better and that all of us do more to address what is an epidemic of gun violence.
We are here tonight and through the night to call on Leader McConnell to do a very simple thing, which is to bring background check legislation and other gun safety legislation to the Senate floor for a vote.
Forty thousand Americans had their lives cut short by guns last year. Forty thousand Americans died. It is unthinkable that we would allow mass violence to occur in our country with this type of frequency. What is shocking is that not only do we accept this as part of the American way of life--as though it were enshrined in the Constitution that we must have this amount of violence in order to have our Second Amendment rights--but that we allowed the question of what to do to keep our people safe to turn into a partisan question. The Democrats are out here on the floor saying: Why don't we figure out what we can do to make people safer? And on the other side of the Chamber, there is no one.
This isn't the first time this has happened or the second time or the third time or the fifth time. When we come down to the floor to demand action on gun safety, we have no dance partner.
It shouldn't be this way, especially given where the public is.
I don't just mean Democrats or Independents. Americans of all stripes, Democratic and Republican gun owners, agree that commonsense gun safety reforms are the way forward. This means background checks. It means no guns for violent criminals or domestic abusers and no guns for anyone who could endanger themselves or endanger others.
About 90 percent of all Americans support these very sensible reforms. Here is the thing. They support them not for purely ideological reasons or partisan reasons; the reason these things pull 85, 90 percent of all Americans, even among NRA members, is because, A, it doesn't infringe on your Second Amendment rights, and, B, it works.
It is no coincidence that the two steepest drops in murder rates in our country came right after the passage of two sets of significant gun laws: The first were the national firearms control acts of 1934 and 1938, and the second were the background checks and assault weapons ban bills in 1993 and 1994. Those legislative efforts, and the decrease in violence that followed their passage, prove that progress is possible.
Here is the thing. Whenever we get into this conversation, we get into kind of trying to figure out whether whatever law we are trying to pass would retroactively be able to fix whichever moment of silence we are now focused on and sad about and despairing about. That is not the way to look at this.
Sure, there are individual situations, where, if we pass background checks, it would absolutely help, but it is also a matter of the Federal Government putting some parameters on the kinds of guns that you can get and the requirements in order to own a gun.
What is happening? Why are we still stuck? Why are we still stuck? Republicans in the Senate are just waiting on the White House. It is as simple as that.
This isn't some partisan attack from me, a partisan Democrat. This is literally what Leader McConnell said. He said he will not schedule a vote or schedule a debate on the House-passed bill to expand background checks for gun purchases because President Trump has indicated he will not sign it. According to Leader McConnell: ``[I]f the President took a position on a bill so that we knew we would actually be making a law and not having serial votes, [he would] be happy to put it on the floor.''
Let me just say, that is not actually how the Senate is supposed operate. We are supposed to originate the legislation. We are supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body. We are supposed to determine what kind of law to make. We are not supposed to play ``Mother, may I'' with the President of the United States and wait for clearance before we even initiate a debate.
The idea that, in this body, where today we voted on the UAE Ambassador, the Ambassador to Sweden, I think--not that those are unimportant matters--but we had full postcloture debate time when, basically, we were in a quorum call--we were in a quorum call; no one was talking--we cannot afford to set aside 30 hours or 50 hours or 2 weeks of Senate time to figure out what to do about the gun violence epidemic? Shame on us.
Congress should be taking up bills, debating them, passing them, and the President can make his decision about whether to sign or veto them. We cannot wait for President Trump on this because he is deeply, deeply inconsistent, not just generally speaking but specifically on the question of gun safety.
In the immediate aftermath of every horrific shooting, the President talked about doing something meaningful to address gun violence, but then he backtracked.
In February of 2018, in the wake of the horrific shooting at Parkland, President Trump said: ``[W]e're going to be very strong on background checks.'' A year later and 2 days before the House passed legislation that would require universal background checks for most gun purchases and transfers, Trump threatened to veto the bill if it passed.
In February of 2018, during a televised meeting with lawmakers, the President proposed raising the age for buying assault rifles from 18 to 21, and then he backtracked.
More recently, following the shootings in Texas and Ohio that left 29 dead and dozens wounded, Trump tweeted on August 5 that Washington ``must come together'' to ``get strong background checks.'' That sounds pretty good.
On August 19, just 14 days later, he reversed course. When talking with reporters, he used an NRA-approved talking point: ``[J]ust remember, we already have a lot of background checks,'' and he warned of gun control's ``slippery slope.''
The President has a long history of changing his position on guns. In 2011, he was against gun control. In 2013, he supported background checks. A year after that, he protested against background checks for gun purchases in New York State. This is just how he rolls, specifically, on this issue but frankly on a lot of stuff. You could say the same thing about having an honest broker as it relates to immigration. He is just not reliable. That is how he rolls.
We don't have to be downstream from all of that. We are the article I branch. We can do what we decide to do as the so-called world's greatest deliberative body.
To make it worse, in the weeks since the attacks in Ohio and Texas, we keep hearing from Republicans that gun violence is not caused by guns. To quote the President directly: ``[M]ental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.''
``[M]ental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.'' I want to spend a little time on this one because this one is really offensive and really deeply hurtful. Setting aside the lack of progress on guns, we are also losing 10, 20, 30 years of progress we have made destigmatizing mental health services.
Mass shooters and regular people experience mental illness at the same rate. There is no indication that mass shooters or individual people who are homicidal experience mental illness at any higher rate than your general population. Blaming the mentally ill is just factually untrue, but it is more insidious than that.
About 20 percent of all Americans at some point need some mental health services. The great difficulty in terms of getting mental health services is not just the availability of care; it is also that people still feel embarrassed to say: I need some help.
Shame on the President of the United States to equate someone who may need care for postpartum depression or post-traumatic stress coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan, or who may experience bipolar disorder, or whatever it may be--a kid with autism--to imply that people who need mental health services are somehow dangerous and that they are the ones who should be cracked down on. That is a deeply, deeply dangerous thing to say about 20 percent of all Americans who simply need to get better and who simply need to not be characterized as crazy or dangerous or that they should be ashamed of what they are experiencing. Shame on the President of the United States for equating mental illness with being dangerous to society.
Consider for a minute the progress we have made as a society to destigmatize mental health. We have fundamentally changed the way we talk about it, and because of that, we have helped to reduce the shame around living with mental health challenges, and more people are willing to prioritize their mental well-being. People should not be embarrassed or scared to seek the help they need, and they certainly shouldn't be blamed for the gun violence epidemic in our country.
I want to read a letter from a Hawaii resident, Elizabeth Sader from Lahaina, Maui. She writes:
Two mass shootings in 24 hours. This cannot be our new norm. We need change. . . . We can no longer assume heading to the store, an event, or school is safe anymore.
There are places in the United States that make it easier to get a gun than it is to adopt a pet at a local animal shelter. This is not right.
We need sensible gun laws in this country. We need better systems in place to prevent this from happening again. I cannot imagine what the world is going to look like for children growing up today.
The Senate has the power to save lives and protect more of our kids by enacting sensible reforms. What we need is for Republicans to do the right thing and to rise to the moment. Thousands of people are dying every month. We cannot wait for the President.
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