Advanced Geothermal Innovation Leadership Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to join my colleague and friend, Senator Murphy.

First, let me thank him for his leadership. We have worked together as a team. We have been partners in this effort from the very first days of our elections, and we were together at Sandy Hook on the afternoon of December 14, 2012, when we saw and met many of the families who suffered that absolutely unspeakable loss in an unimaginable tragedy that haunts us both to this day.

Just this morning, as a matter of fact, I was with one of the dads, Mark Barden, who has turned his grief into tremendously positive work in our schools, forming an organization called Sandy Hook Promise, one of the numerous grassroots organizations that has grown in the wake of that tragedy. Of course, Brady existed before Sandy Hook, but afterward, there was Sandy Hook Promise and Newtown Action Alliance. Connecticut Against Gun Violence expanded, Moms Demand Action, Students Demand Action, Everytown for Gun Safety, Gifford--the list reflects the outrage and fear of the American public against this epidemic.

I am here to talk about an epidemic, a public health menace. Of course, we must do something to take effective action and do it promptly against coronavirus, COVID-19, which also reflects a threat to our health and safety. It has already killed Americans. It threatens to spread. There is a need for preparedness and honesty and truthfulness to the American public about the extent of the threat and about the need for action.

Gun violence today in America--just today and every day in America-- kills more than 100 people. That number reflects only the fatalities. It is no measure of the people who are injured, sometimes crippled for life, and often emotionally damaged. It fails to reflect the families who suffer those losses and the trauma that affects children who are truly innocent bystanders to the drive-by shootings in downtown Hartford or Bridgeport or New Haven.

Literally, no community in America is immune from this public health epidemic, this menace that afflicts America unlike any other country in the world. Globalization has affected many public health threats, as we are learning about coronavirus. But America is unique in the magnitude of its gun violence epidemic, as my colleague Senator Murphy has said so well.

The costs are not just in human lives and emotion. Even if you care nothing about the human condition, think about the dollars and cents-- the costs, the medical care, and, of course, the talent and energy, the intelligence, the productivity that is lost literally every day in those 100 lives. There is no vaccine. There is no panacea. There is no magic cure for this epidemic.

The bill that brings us here today is just one piece of legislation, one tool that is vitally necessary, but it is only one step. It will not solve all of the problems of gun violence, but we know it will save lives. We know it from our experience in Connecticut. We know this enforcement mechanism will keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

It adds no new prohibitions. It imposes no new categories of people who are prohibited from buying guns. Those categories and those prohibitions are already in the Federal law. This background check expansion to all sales--not just federally licensed deals but private sales, sales on the internet--is simply a way to enforce the existing prohibitions, which were supported, by the way, by the NRA when they were passed decades of ago. It simply makes those prohibitions real.

I know, from my experience as a prosecutor over decades and as a State attorney general, that the best laws on the books are dead letter if they are unenforced. That is really why 98 percent of the American people, the vast majority of gun owners, and even NRA members support this legislation. It is a simple, commonsense way to enforce existing prohibitions that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. It is the least we can do for those victims of gun violence whose images and voices and faces are with their families still and many of them with us every day.

We should be very clear--because this measure should not be oversold--that it will not alone solve the problem of gun violence. There are a variety of other measures. I have introduced the emergency risk protection order legislation that would enable law enforcement-- local police or State and Federal law enforcement--to take guns away from people who are dangerous to themselves or others. That legislation would require a warrant, and it would enable the warrant to be eventually challenged in a court proceeding. It would provide due process, which would be particularly important in domestic disputes when an estranged intimate partner may have a gun or when there is suicide and self-harm is threatened. This has worked in Florida thousands of times, where it was passed most recently, and in Connecticut. Connecticut was the first in the Nation to adopt an emergency risk protection order, and it has worked.

Along with that law are safe storage measures. There is Ethan's Law, which was named after Ethan Song, who was lost to his wonderful parents, Kristin and Michael Song. Ethan was visiting a friend whose parents failed to store their gun safely, and in that unimaginable tragedy, he was lost.

Of course, there are also other measures, like eliminating sweetheart deals that provide unique and virtually absolute immunity to gun manufacturers. The Sandy Hook surviving families are seeking redress against the manufacturer of the gun that killed their 20 children and 6 great educators. They are overcoming the obstacles imposed by the law that provides that immunity to the gun manufacturers.

Assault weapons bans, ammunition background checks, and high-capacity magazines are a series of measures that we should consider. It is not that every one of them is necessary, but every one of them can help to save lives. Not one of them alone will prevent all of these fatalities.

The least we can do is debate H.R. 8, which has been language on the Senate floor now for a year without its being called for a vote. That is really unconscionable. I know we use that word ``unconscionable'' so frequently that perhaps it has lost its meaning, but if we have a conscience and if we have a belief and a conviction in the democratic process, we should at least give a vote to this measure that is lifesaving, that is supported by almost all of the American people, and that is opposed only by the NRA and a gun lobby that is diminishing in power. In fact, the NRA is crumbling from within because of a financial scandal and on the outside because its extreme, inflexible positions are untenable to an American public that sees the public health epidemic before us as a result of gun violence and says: Enough is enough.

There is a movement that will eventually prevail. Whether it will win in this session--because we have been blocked again from unanimous consent by our Republican colleagues--I don't know. I do know with certainty that it will prevail because these grassroots have grown and have created a movement. The students of Parkland have created a movement. The Sandy Hook Promise, the Newtown Action Alliance, Brady, Giffords, and others have created a movement. Like many movements and social causes in this country--the civil rights movement being the best example--this is fuel and power and is led by young people who are saying with the most passion of all: Enough is enough.

Every one of them and every one of us knows someone--a family member, a coworker, a co-student, a colleague--who has been affected by gun violence. Almost two-thirds of those 100 deaths every day are from suicide, so we know mental health has to be addressed and that we need to invest more in mental health diagnoses and treatments.

Again, mental health diagnoses and treatments alone are not a solution. I have long spearheaded and advocated for mental health parity--more treatment, more insurance coverage--but they alone will not solve the gun violence epidemic in this country.

The fact is that the States that have universal background checks, according to a recent study, have had 52 percent fewer mass shootings than the States that have lacked them. It makes sense. Background check laws mean that 80 percent of the firearms acquired for criminal purposes can be stopped from being sold by unlicensed sellers.

We in Connecticut have one of the strongest universal background checks on the books anywhere in the country. Yet we know guns have, really, no respect for State borders. They cross State borders with impunity. They cause deaths in Connecticut even if they have been manufactured elsewhere or have been sold in the South and have come via the Iron Pipeline to Connecticut or to New York or to New Jersey, which also has strong gun laws. This national public health epidemic demands a national--Federal--solution that protects our Nation.

The Odessa shooting just this past August serves as a tragic reminder of the steep price that inaction exacts. The Odessa shooter failed a background check, but then he turned right around after he failed that background check from a licensed dealer and bought an assault-style rifle in a private sale. That private sale was not covered by a background check, and seven more innocent people are dead as a result.

On December 14, 2012, I promised the parents who lost loved ones at Sandy Hook and other families that I would fight and do everything I could to make sure that no more parents would have to bury their children. I have worked tirelessly, along with others, like my colleague Senator Murphy and many of us on this side of the aisle, on public health and safety measures that would stop gun violence. I have also worked with Senator Graham on an emergency risk protection order proposal that has shown very serious signs of acceptance on that side of the aisle and even by the White House. So far, inaction has been the result.

Since that day, December 14, 2012, there have been 2,389 mass shootings, not counting the individual lives lost in Hartford or in the suburbs or in the rural areas. It is an equal opportunity public health epidemic. Like any epidemic, no one is immune. Over 2,000 times, families have had to wait, like the parents of Newtown, to see whether that morning's kiss goodbye would be the last. They have had to wait to see whether that last wave at the school door would be the final one. That really is unconscionable in the greatest country in the history of the world.

When I stood here in the months after 2012--in fact, in 2013--when we last voted on a universal background check bill, it was supported by a majority of my colleagues. There were 54 who voted for it, but it was not enough to reach the 60-vote threshold.

From the Galleries, I heard one of those parents shout ``Shame.'' He was right. Shame on my Republican colleagues then, and shame on them now if they defy common sense and the will of the American people by preventing a vote--simply a vote. That is what we are asking for--a vote on H.R. 8. A year has passed since the House voted and approved this bill. Shame on them--my Republican colleagues--if they stand in the way of saving lives. Shame on them if they allow the carnage to continue on our streets, in our neighborhoods, and in our communities, crippling families and tearing apart those communities.

The vicelike grip of the gun lobby is breaking, and there will be bipartisan collaboration. It will be the result of not my persuasion from speeches given on the floor but of the American people at the polls, because the ultimate court is the court of public opinion and because the ultimate voice here is that of the American people.

In the military, there is a saying: ``The enemy has a vote.'' Here, the enemies are the shooters, and the enemies are the opposers of these commonsense measures. We cannot allow them to have a vote. It is the American people who will vote, and they will hold accountable those colleagues who fail to be on the right side of this issue and on the right side of history.

I urge my Republican colleagues to rethink, to revisit, to reconsider their staunch, unyielding, inflexible opposition to even having a vote. To them, I say: Do your job. We are here to vote and save lives.

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