Recognizing National Gun Violence Survivors Week

Floor Speech

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Mr. SOTO. Madam Speaker, today, I rise because it is National Gun Violence Survivors Week, a time when we focus on sharing and amplifying the stories of gun violence survivors who live with the impacts of gun violence every day.

I recall the morning of June 12, 2016, when my wife and I were awakened at 6 in the morning by a barrage of texts because the unthinkable happened to our happy little town of Orlando, Florida. Gun violence on a massive scale had reared its ugly head at a place where people just wanted to have a good time, at the Pulse nightclub.

We lost 49 Americans that day, 49 of my fellow Orlandoans who were just there to enjoy friendship and camaraderie. Their lives were taken way too early from us. But we also have to focus on the 53 who were wounded, the survivors of the Pulse nightclub tragedy. One of them is a coworker of mine, Ramses Tinoco.

Ramses is a paralegal who was good spirited, hard-working, and always excited about the job. Suddenly, for several weeks, he wasn't able to come back to work, or at least in a regular fashion. I remember talking to him about what it was like to be there. It was hard for him to talk about it, and I don't blame him because no one should have to see those types of horrors.

Another good friend of mine, Ricardo Negron-Almodovar, a lawyer in Puerto Rico who came to central Florida for a new start, and within less than a year of living in Orlando, he faced this vicious tragedy. But he has been fighting back. He is now on the Pulse national memorial advisory committee. We have a bipartisan bill going through the House that would make it a national memorial to remember those 49 we lost and those 53 wounded survivors.

But I also want to talk about the folks who take care of the survivors.

Terry DeCarlo, who is pictured here on the far right, was retiring the Monday after the Pulse nightclub shooting from the LGBT+ Center in Orlando. Terry couldn't retire when his community needed him most, so he stayed on for a year, bringing in supplies, helping with mental health, helping the families coming from around the country to help their loved ones who were still surviving.

During that time, all Terry thought about was others. It was only a few months after he retired a year-plus later that he found out that he had advanced stages of cancer that was teeming through his jaw. One can only wonder whether, if he wasn't so busy, he might have gotten treatment or had noticed beforehand. But that wasn't Terry.

Terry cared about others. Terry lived to serve, and we just lost him last month. It is a sad tragedy, but Terry's legacy will be remembered.

We also have to honor with action, with real solutions. The shooter in this instance had a SIG Sauer MCX semiautomatic rifle, a weapon of war made for battlefields, not for a suburban nightclub, one that could do unspeakable carnage even before police could get on the scene.

There are things that are even more common ground than assault weapons bans. Our House passed a bipartisan universal background checks bill to make sure that, simply, those who aren't supposed to have guns don't get them. With giant loopholes for gun shows and private sales, this just doesn't make sense. It is time to pass it.

Also, the Charleston loophole, where we saw someone put a false address, and when the background check didn't come back, he automatically got his guns and shot up a church in Charleston.

It is time for action.

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