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Floor Speech
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Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, last night, as I was doomscrolling--as they say one does at 2 in the morning when you can't sleep--what I was looking up were places to buy ballistic protective backpacks for my daughters, who are 4 and 7, and places to buy ballistic protective white boards, which could be donated to my girls' school, that would act as shields should a shooter go to their school. It is bad enough that I felt I had to do that, but the fact of the matter is, those pages were already bookmarked because it was not the first time that I have had to look them up.
Just 10 days, 240 hours, less than 2 weeks is all it took. It took just 10 days from the racially motivated domestic terrorism attack in Buffalo before we had to mourn the loss of yet more Americans--this time, 19 babies and 2 teachers--to a senseless, horrific, and, importantly, preventable mass shooting in Uvalde, TX. These were children gunned down at their school, with their small bodies mangled, utterly destroyed by lethal weapons of war that are designed to quickly kill adults.
So, last night when I got home, I held on to my two babies so tightly. They didn't know why, but I wasn't going to let them go. I was just so grateful they came home from school.
Today, there are at least 19 more families in our country that will never be able to forget the horrific site of what happens to a baby's body, to a child's body when shot at close range with an AR-15 or similarly styled rifle meant for battlefields and not schools.
I come to the floor today because, as a mother, I am beyond angry. I am furious, heartbroken, and fed up. I am sick to my stomach thinking about what those parents are feeling right now. They sent off their babies to school yesterday morning, just like I did. They packed their lunch, like I did. They argued with their babies about hurry up, the bus is coming. You are going to miss the bus. No, you really do have to wear a sweater. I know that you don't think it is cold, but you have to wear a sweater or today is PE day, and you have to wear your tennis shoes. But unlike my daughters, those babies never came home again. They will never laugh their beautiful laughs again. They will never smile their wild, silly, gorgeous smiles again. That is a hell on Earth I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
As a Senator, I ask my colleagues: How many more children will you allow to be murdered on your watch? How many more? How many more tiny bodies have to be ripped apart by weapons of war before you will stand up to the gun lobby and the NRA? How many more children will you allow to go to school each day traumatized, fearing for their lives; children, terrified of being gunned down in their classrooms, practicing active shooter drills instead of studying their ABCs and 123s. When will it be enough for you to do something, anything, to simply do your job? When will children's lives matter more than your check from the gun lobby? When?
Last night, my colleague from Connecticut Senator Murphy came to the floor to ask our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, ``What are we doing?'' But my Republican colleagues know exactly what they are doing. They know exactly what they are risking, whose lives they are endangering when they refuse to lift a finger in the wake of yet another mass shooting.
When the assault weapons ban was allowed to expire, the number of mass shooting deaths tripled--tripled. We know that the ban works, and we need to reinstate it.
Republicans are yet again pushing for nothing to be done, falling back on the old line that only one thing stops a bad guy with a gun, and that is a good guy with a gun, knowing full well that there were good guys with guns at both Uvalde and Buffalo. And here we are, mourning dozens of lives anyway.
And I have even heard some of them say let's equip the teachers with guns. I would rather equip teachers with more pieces of chalk and more learning tools than guns because even if those teachers had had a gun in the classroom, they didn't have a chance to react to go grab that gun, and they are dead today.
They pretend like all we can do is send thoughts and prayers or they say it is too soon to talk about politics. But they know that we don't have any time to wait. This time, we didn't even have 10 days to wait from Buffalo.
It is their job to do more than send thoughts and prayers. It is their job--our job--to prove that we care even the least little bit about those little bodies and the giant heartbreaks they leave behind.
We know how to stop these attacks from happening as often as they do. Heck, the entire rest of the world has figured it out. We all know there will be another and another and another attack in the weeks and months ahead if we do nothing. More innocent lives will undoubtedly be lost.
So if you are not willing to act, if you are not willing to do the most basic part of your job to prevent the senseless loss of innocent life, then again I ask, why are you here?
The Senate should immediately, at a 50-vote threshold, vote on the commonsense gun safety reforms that the American people have demanded for so long. And don't tell me this is about the filibuster because we have, time and again, voted at the 50-vote threshold on things that matter, like raising the debt ceiling or the defense budget. Yet the lives of our babies, the right of our babies to not be torn apart by weapons meant for war is not worthy of that?
We are talking about universal background checks. We are talking about the kind of reforms that widespread majorities of Americans support. And in the face of yet another moment of unimaginable, unbearable, unfathomable grief, let's show the Nation that we value children's lives more than an arcane Senate procedure rule. Let's do what adults are supposed to do. Let's protect our kids, the most vulnerable, the most innocent. Let's do our jobs. Let's do what we were sent here to do, what our children are depending on us to do.
We owe it to each victim of this tragedy and every tragedy before it and their loved ones to finally act. Enough was enough a very, very long time ago. May those babies rest in peace, those little angels now in Heaven.
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