Gun Violence in Our Country

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, in the 10 years since the Sandy Hook shooting, the NRA has spent more than $100 million to help elect Republicans who will make it easier to sell more guns so we can kill more kids--$100 million.

They have gotten what they paid for because we have had 189 more school shootings and 279 people killed on school grounds since Sandy Hook.

Some of my colleagues may be happy about that, but I am angry, and my constituents live in trauma.

Mr. Speaker, I had a student in my district who wrote in to tell me: ``We are tired. We are exhausted. We are sick of going to class and any public area and forming an escape route.''

I had another constituent who asked me: ``How many children and teachers are going to have to be killed by guns before our government takes action?''

The honest answer is that I don't know. In the wake of these shootings, I have to tell them that I work with people who wear AR-15 lapel pins on the floor of the House, people who send holiday cards where their whole family cosplays as Rambo. They actually believe that our Founders envisioned and designed a country where you have a right to shoot innocent strangers dead, but no American has the right not to get shot.

Five months into this year, America has already had 199 mass shootings. Sometimes, we have a moment of silence on the floor afterward, but quite frankly, there are too many to keep up. I am not proud of this, but we ignore most of them. The American people can't.

I had a mother who wrote to me saying: ``Each day, as I send my two children off to school and daycare, I find myself fearing that it may be the last time I will see them.''

Another wrote to say: ``I am the parent of a 5-year-old. I cannot believe that we are living in a country where 5-year-olds die like soldiers at the mall and where another mother will come home today without her child. I do not feel safe in public places. I have no peace while my child is at school, and because I am a teacher, I don't feel safe at work either.''

Five months into this year, we have had 15,166 deaths due to gun violence. Yet, my colleagues across the aisle have not allowed a single bill to come to the floor to address that risk.

After the shooting at Covenant Elementary in Tennessee, I got this message from Meaghan, a student teacher. She said:

``After working in over five schools now, I have loved every moment of my teacher education experience, meeting so many amazing students and faculty members that have shaped my mind the way I hope to for my own students one day. And each day I have gone in, I have to admit, I have silently wondered if I would come out, if our kids would come out, if my peers would come out, if my teachers and mentors would come out.

``I have caught myself dozing off and imagining what I would do if someone came into our room with a gun. I have imagined every person in that room with bullets in them and blood splattered from the walls to the floors.

``I know you all get these messages in your offices. Do you read them? Do you understand the fear, the trauma, and the death that your inaction has caused? Is it worth the NRA money? Do you even care?''

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