Gun Violence

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, today, the House oversight and reform committee heard from a witness who, by all means, should never ever have had to come before the Congress, Miah Cerrillo, an 11-year-old girl who survived the shooting in Uvalde, TX.

Our House colleagues will also hear from Felix and Kimberly Rubio, the parents of 10-year-old Lexi, who was killed in the shooting. You can just imagine their broken hearts.

They will also hear from the only pediatrician in Uvalde available to treat the victims on that awful, awful, awful day.

I hope every single Member of the House and Senate pays attention to these proceedings. God knows, many in Congress need to listen to what these witnesses have to say.

We need to listen, and Congress needs to act, because across every neighborhood, every school, every city, every town--urban, suburban, rural--Americans are wondering the same thing: When is Congress going to act to stop the violence?

Now, that is precisely what we are working on right now in the Senate. It will be hard to believe, after hearing what these witnesses have to say, that the Senate cannot find a way to come together and act on gun violence.

Over the past week and a half, my Democratic colleagues, led by the efforts of Senators Murphy, Sinema, Blumenthal, Manchin, Coons, Heinrich, and others, have been holding good faith talks with Republicans to see if we can arrive at an agreement on gun violence legislation.

As I have said, these bipartisan talks deserve the space they need to produce meaningful results, and so I hope my colleagues continue to make progress toward an effective agreement--hopefully, by the end of the week.

The overwhelming consensus of our caucus, among the gun safety violence prevention advocates and among the American people, is that even if we can't get everything done, that getting something real done is worth pursuing.

Let me repeat that. It is an overwhelming consensus in this caucus, among the broad panoply of gun groups, gun safety groups, and among the American people: Get something done. Get something real done, even if it is not everything that many of us would wish for.

Given the other side's long-held refusal to do anything meaningful on gun violence, we know how difficult this is. But that is all the more reason for us to explore every realistic opportunity to getting something real done.

We know we won't get everything we want. The debate for gun safety will continue after this moment, but we have a moral obligation right now to try and get something meaningful--something meaningful--done for the American people in the name of those who have died.

This is not a partisan issue. Gun safety is overwhelmingly backed by a large majority of Americans, a majority of Democrats, Republicans, Independents. It is bipartisan because all Americans know the same thing: We stand alone in the developed world in the number of mass shootings that take place every year. We stand alone among the developed nations in the world in that on any given day, another school, another grocery store, another hospital, another concert, another neighborhood can suddenly become a site of unimaginable tragedy.

Americans, many for the first time, are thinking: I am going to be shot, whether they are in a supermarket, their kids are in a school, or anywhere else.

And we stand alone in that year after year, the plague of mass shootings in this country has been met by inaction. When other countries have faced these mass shootings, they have acted, and they have acted well.

Why aren't we?

The American people are tired and angry of the same thing happening again and again. They are tired of nothing getting done. They are tired of the greatest country in the world being paralyzed and not acting in a right way, mainly because people on the other side of the aisle haven't joined us.

But I urge my colleagues now, let's get something done. The sooner we act, the greater chance we have of preventing another senseless mass shooting in America. Let's break this cycle of gun violence, and let's end the days when parents, doctors, and children have to come to the U.S. Capitol in order to beg their elected representatives to take action.

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