Gun Control Measures
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I rise to echo the sentiments of the Senator from Washington State. She has absolutely articulated the reasons this Senate should just stop what it is doing and bring these bills to the floor for a vote so we can begin to make it more difficult for the wrong people to be able to buy guns in our country. We have no background checks, no ability to identify who they are.
This debate is one that should have already taken place in August after what happened in El Paso and after what happened in Dayton. We should have had the debate out here on the Senate floor. The House has already passed legislation that deals with the background checks of any person who wants to buy a gun in our country. That is the least we should be able to do.
By the way, it polls out at 89 percent. There aren't many issues that poll out at 89 percent. The reason it does is that the country is horrified by what it is seeing day after day on its televisions as the carnage continues to rise, as the hemorrhaging of communities continues unabated across our country.
The NRA retains a vice-like grip on the Senate of the United States. It is almost as though it is able to put a lock on these doors-- courtesy of the Republican leadership--so that no bill can come down here into the well of the Senate to be debated on background checks. The NRA just refuses to allow those bills to come out here. So we have no debates. We have no votes. We have no accountability. This is the status of the U.S. Senate in September of 2019 as we see an epidemic of violence across our country.
Bring those bills onto the floor, Republican Party. Forget the money from the NRA. Forget all of its spending. Let us not put a price on the lives of 34,000 Americans who died just last year on top of the lives of those who died the year before and the year before and those who will be part of a preventable epidemic in our country next year and the year after and the year after into the future.
After we finish debating background checks, we should then have a debate on military-style assault weapons and whether they should be sold in our country and a debate on high-capacity magazines and whether they should be sold in our country. Those were the weapons that were used in Dayton. Those were the weapons that were used in El Paso. Let's have a debate here on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
Let's have people have to be made accountable for allowing these dangerous weapons that belong on battlefields but not on the streets of our country. In fact, when they are on the streets of our country, they turn our streets into battlegrounds, whereby the criminal--whereby the bad person--has a weapon, in many instances, that is more powerful than that of the police. That is just plain wrong. We can do something about it if the Senate allows these doors to open, if the Republicans allow this debate to take place. Of course, it will not because the NRA controls access to the floor of this Senate.
Then let's have a debate on the loopholes that allow abusers-- domestic abusers and terrorists--to be able to purchase guns in the United States. Let's have that debate here on the floor of the Senate.
Let's have people have to vote on whether or not they want domestic abusers to be able to purchase guns in our country or if they should be able to keep their guns if they have already been identified by the local police as being a danger because they are domestic abusers, and the same thing is true for safeguards against terrorists purchasing weapons.
And when are we going to have the debate on research at the Centers for Disease Control on the causes of gun violence in our country?
I have introduced that bill for 10 years to have that research done. The House has now moved legislation to deal with that issue, but over here, so far, these doors are locked. That legislation cannot make it to the well of the Senate so that we can have a debate.
The NRA guards these doors. The NRA will not give permission to have a debate on whether or not we do research on gun violence in our country. What are the causes? Why are we the highest among industrialized countries? What is it that differentiates us from other countries in the world?
So for me, I say it is time for us on this floor to ensure that NRA stands for not relevant anymore in American politics, in senatorial politics, and that the doors are open, that the legislation can come down, and that we can have a full debate here on the Senate floor after all that we have learned in these last weeks and months and years about how unnecessarily easy it is for people to be able to purchase these weapons.
This is a debate that the American people want, and we are either going to have that debate in the course of regular Senate business or we are going to have it next year in the Presidential and House and Senate races all across our country, because this issue now is completely changed in terms of how the public views it except among the Republican leadership in our country.
So if that is how they want it, then, just be sure that young people especially are outraged across our country. They are outraged that we don't debate climate change in the well of the Senate. They are outraged that we don't debate gun safety legislation in the Senate.
So there is a kind of a ``sow the wind, reap the whirlwind'' political consequence that is going to occur, and all I can say is that we can hope and pray that the Senate Republican leadership allows for this debate and does not wait for Donald Trump to give them permission to have this debate. There shouldn't have to be a complete and total excision of senatorial prerogatives to another branch of government. We should be able to do this ourselves--the Senate.
This issue goes right to the core of the safety of every family in our country, and if we do it, I actually think that almost every Senator here will be praised for ensuring that we have background checks. That is what the polling says.
If we don't, then perhaps a small handful of Republican Senators will be praised by the NRA, but it will be at a terrible price in terms of the lives that are lost.
In Massachusetts, we have the lowest gun fatality rate in the country. If Massachusetts' laws were the laws for the whole country, 34,000 people would not have died last year, but only 6,000 people would have died.
And what is our key law? If you want to buy a gun and get a license in Massachusetts, you have to go into the police station and talk to the police chief. We have 351 cities and towns. That is how you get a gun license. It is the police.
So we know how simple it is to have a background check to make sure that we know who is buying these guns. Down in Parkland, the home of that young man had been visited over and over and over by the police, but he didn't have to go to the police to get a license. He got right around that system.
Who knows you best? The local police do. We don't want to keep guns out of the hands of those who should be able to purchase them--hunters and others--but you do want the police to be involved. You do want background checks to make sure that the wrong people can't buy them. We know that is at the heart of this problem.
So for me, this is an absolute necessity for the Senate to have to have dealt with before the end of this session. It would be historically inexcusable for us to have avoided having that debate here.
I just say that enough is enough. Let's just end business as usual. Let's put in place the process by which this Senate--this greatest deliberative body in the world--reclaims the reputation that it has lost, and let's debate gun safety legislation here on the floor of the Senate.
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